Architectura caelestis



Todeskino completed the film Architectura caelestis
Being the first of a new series called New Film Conceptions, the material for the film was shot in the city of Palmanova in northern Italy, one of the few original european ideal planned cities, built in the late 16th century.

From a central point on the hexagonal main square there are different zoom shots of the 6 star shaped main roads. 6 pannings of 60 degrees are linking the zoom shots in two turnarounds.
The duration of each zoom shot through one position/road as well as the length and therefore velocity of the pannings are composed after the Fibonacci numbers and the golden section. After our work Ars combinatoria, in this new cycle New Film Conceptions, we carry on composing film frame by frame after these architectural principles, expanding certain structural or metric ideas in the history of avantgarde film.

This way of editing mirrors the space itself like in our film Le dernier art, in the case of Palmanova depicting, structurally and metrically, a Fibonacci spiral that is a symbol for a kind of golden proportional celestial or divine architecture reflecting archetypic forms in the human psyche as well.
The zoom shots follow different series of 2-3-5-8-13-21 frames, the pannings increase velocity in steps of 377-233-144-89-55-34 frames, almost geometrically measuring space-time filmically, transcribing it on to the frame numbers of the film strip, an approach that is perhaps quite unique in avantgarde cinema. Moreover the zoom shots put together various jump cut scenes relativating events in the time line, the film is even optical printed backwards and extended to 4 turnarounds, like C.G. Jung explains, in the unconscious everything is taking place simultaneously, life and death, like waltzing clockwise and counterclockwise. And his colleague Karl Kerenyi says, we escape the archetypic reeling in the labyrinth of death and unconsciousness via an aspiration towards the celestial realm (another metaference to the film reel). All that visionary film can be, and that pure digital cinema that is not based on framework and analogue material can not be to the same extend: frenzy, a sometimes enraptured ecstatic experience leaving us in a whirling, lurching dizziness.  
Or to quote the hermetic, alchemic "Emerald Tablet": "That which is below is like that which is above that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing."

Palmanova could be seen as a huge mandala to live in (see bird’s eye view). But for us these symbols are rather means of transgression than neo-religious attemps to reconcile the human psyche with its true „self“ and collective, transindividual wholeness, a neverending approach according to C.G. Jung. With transgression we mean a certain possibility of (inner) mythical experience that is breaking with the cultural forms, but unlike Georges Bataille, who claims that culture is sustained and completed by what transgresses it, we want to emphasize on the part of breaking in the original meaning of the symbol, not on the communication or its suspension (like for instance in deconstruction).   
The golden section and Fibonacci sequence applied to film by Todeskino

still from "Architectura caelestis" by Todeskino

the city of Palmanova, Italy from bird's eye view

Palmanova, the hexagonal "piazza grande"

old city maps of Palmanova
stained glass window of the cathedral of Chartres

the mandala like cross section through the human DNA

the Fibonacci sequence in the human skeleton:

 


"Modulor" by Le Corbusier, attempt to base modern architecture on objective measures according to the golden ratio and the human body

man in the pentagram that draws the golden section, Agrippa von Nettesheim, De occulta philosophia, early 16th century

it is well known that in the history of architecture many of the most famous and "beautiful" buildings were constructed after the golden ratio, for instance the pyramids of Gizeh, the Parthenon, the gothic cathedrals of Notre Dame Paris or Chartres, the Taj Mahal ...

the Fibonacci spiral in nature, the Nautilus

the Fibonacci spiral and golden section in art, Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" and Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam"

Michelangelo Adam Goldener Schnitt

William Blake, "Newton"

New Film Conceptions 1


the golden ratio and Fibonacci numbers applied to film by Todeskino 



stills from Todeskino's New Film Conceptions 1 - "Architectura caelestis"




"…I don't think that 'first' is important, I think it's that it's the first time for you… I mean, that's what originality is all about, because the first sound made was all the music that's ever gonna be played, that's it, that sound, the first sound made had all the notes that there are, so there's nothing about being the first. But being original has to do with it never having been done this way …" — Sonny Sharrock