Protocol-Cinema, or a Montage Puzzle based on Protocol
Literature and Anthology
Hello everyone, my proposal is to create a series of cinema based on protocol, both in a general way and technical way, focusing on protocol and poetics, revolving around the internet. However, please allow me to not discuss any internet ecosystem or non-fungible open currencies first. Let’s turn our gaze back to literature, as this visual reversal is important for this proposal. From Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer series to Georges Didi-Huberman’s series L’oeil de l’histoire, from the Goncourt brothers’ nine-volume diary to Michel Serres’ five-volume Hermès, these writers not only wove a vast world between words and sentences, but also established secret connections between texts, between one book and the next, between these physically separated materialities. Literature has become an anthology, as Benjamin said, connection is the prelude to the protocol.
Although the words are fixed and static, these writers use the accumulation of words, the tsunami of sentences, and the montage of books to force out countless nodes. The connections formed by these nodes are like the intricate patterns of an Egyptian carpet, with illustrations of plants and animals. The Goncourt brothers’ diary also contains images of irises and cuckoos, with the flowers against the backdrop of the earth and the birds in the depths of the sky. Who can say that the Goncourt brothers’ diary does not reflect the visual history of the 19th century? History is a protocol, whether it is the history of technology or natural history, it is first and foremost a history of protocols, protocols humbly transform blind collisions into active freedom.
Image and Image Collection
If we are to create cinema, we cannot avoid images, because cinema is the result of the flow of images, or we can say that cinema is the secret protocols established between images. In the literary writing plans mentioned above, words can already help visual imagination through the form of anthologies. In images, the visual is the visible object itself, whether it is Goya’s war images or Vaile Export’s uprising images. But from Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas to Bertolt Brecht’s War Primer, images begin to take on the form of image collections, with images from different eras, geographies, and media being placed on a workbench for collage. The Mnemosyne Atlas has 63 image panels, each with dozens of images, and the images create a tension of continuity across historical gaps. And the protocol is the result of this surging tension. 18th century images can be juxtaposed with 20th century images, the funeral of death can be parallel to the joy of rebirth on a single canvas. It is from Warburg’s image collection that Didi-Huberman discovers the power of dialectical images to conclude protocols.
As an image collection, War Primer is not limited to images-Brecht also uses poetic texts, turning the collection into an image-aphorism poetry, a contract between painting and words, an agreement between image and language. He even completes the operation of cinema in the collection: placing language montage on the edge of photo montage is like placing sound in the frame of the cinema. The Mnemosyne Atlas was born out of World War I, and War Primer was born out of World War II. Through them, we can see how images have helped technology, media, workers, and peasants to speak, how images have reached a silent agreement with the disadvantaged groups, helping them establish their unique subjectivity. Images became image collections, historical fragments have become historical materials, images have shifted from isolation to union, from alienation to intimacy, just like the insurgent people, more and more, constantly expanding, the network of protocols spreading until it occupies the whole street.
Cinema, or Montage Puzzle
Finally, we come to the cinema, which is also the core of this proposal. But the theme is protocol: literature and images are both part of the composition of the cinema, so they are the protocols inside of the cinema. Thus, we cannot ignore their role in the cinema. The essence of the anthology is montage, and the nature of the image collection is also montage. They form a frenzied dance of montage in the form of anthology or image collection, which can be said to be the primitive form of the cinema.
Before the invention of the camera, the cinema had already existed.
Please forgive me for taking a relatively large content to discuss these two elements above. But the main style of this PILL project is cinema poetry and cinema essay , and text cards and still frames will also be used, I cannot abandon them and directly discuss the cinema.
Printing once weakened the authoritarian structure and guild system, and now video, the streaming media of the post-photographic era, will also infiltrate the flowing market of the Internet in a liquid, silent form, and reach an agreement with it. It’s just like the encryption methods of the emerging information market. In Georges Perec’s Life A User’s Manual, he discussed a certain similarity between film and puzzles, while Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s La Rabbia practically explored this similarity. They discovered this similarity within the realm of montage, and anyone watching these two montage films would find an abundance of poetry, alchemy, psychoanalysis, military science, and dialectical imagery contained within.
Therefore, the image comes back to the literary anthologies and image collections mentioned earlier. This is the ancient covenant between art and technology. Regardless of the type, they are all of the same kind, they are also brothers.
Cinema Design
Below is my initial conceptual design on the project.
Type
Combining biology, literature, and imageology, the applications(external) and experience(internal) of the protocol (but it’s not a popularized documentary)
Style
Poetic cineam or essay cinema
Composition
A cinema series, for now divided into four parts, each 15 minutes, 60 minutes in total
- Part 1: Blockchain - The Nomadic Utopian Community
- Part 2: Tokenization - From Bits to Programmable Humanities
- Part 3: Digital Public Goods - Farewell to Coordinates
- Part 4: Smart Contracts - The Sea of Data
协议—影像，或一种基于协议的蒙太奇拼图
文学与文集
大家好，我的提案是创作一系列基于广义协议和技术协议的影像，这个影像以协议和诗学为主体，围绕互联网展开。但是，请先允许我不谈及任何互联网生态系统以及非同质化的开放货币。我们先把目光调回到文学，这个视觉的回转很重要。从吉奥乔·阿甘本的神圣人系列到乔治·迪迪-于贝尔曼的历史之眼系列，从龚古尔兄弟的九卷本日记到米歇尔·塞尔五卷本的赫耳墨斯，这些写作者不仅是在字与字、句子与句子之间编织成了一个庞大的世界，而是在文本与文本之间，在上一本书与下一本书之间，在这些具有物理区隔的物质与物质之间，建立了隐秘的联系。
文学变成了文集，本雅明说联系是协议发生的前奏。虽然字是固定静态的，但是这些作家就是用字的堆叠、用句子的海啸、用书本的蒙太奇，逼出了无数的纽结，纽结串联起的联系就像遍布繁复纹饰的埃及地毯，地毯上有植物和动物的图示，龚古尔兄弟的日记里也有鸢尾花和布谷鸟的形象，花的背景是大地，鸟的景深处是天空，谁能说龚古尔兄弟的日记反馈的不是十九世纪的视觉史呢？史就是协议，不管是技术史还是自然史，它们首先就是一部协议史，协议带着谦卑把盲目的冲撞转化为积极的自由。
图像与图集
如果要真的创作影像，无法绕开图像，因为影像是图像流动的结果。也可以这么说：影像就是图像与图像之间互相达成的秘密协议。在上面那些文学写作计划里，文字就已经能借助文集的形式去帮助视觉想象空间画面。
在图像里，视觉就是可视物本身，不管是戈雅的战争图像，还是瓦莉·伊克斯波特的起义图像。但从阿比·瓦尔堡的《记忆女神图集》到贝尔托·布莱希特的《战争通识》，图像开始变成了图集的形式去发生作用，不同年代、地理、媒介的图片得以放在一张工作台上去进行拼接。
记忆女神图集有 63 块图版，每个图版有数十个图像，图像跨越历史的间隙创造了一种连续性的张力。而协议，就是张力不断涌动的结果——十八世纪的图像得以和二十世纪的图像并置在一起，死亡的葬礼得以和新生的喜悦平行于一张画面。于贝尔·达米施正是从瓦尔堡的图集里发现辩证图像所具有的缔结协议的力量。战争通识作为图集没有局限于图像，布莱希特还运用了诗歌文字。图集变成了图像—箴言诗，画与字的契约、图与言的协定，他甚至在图集里完成了摄制影像的操作：在照片蒙太奇的边缘去安放语言蒙太奇就像在影像的画面中去安放声音。记忆女神图集诞生于一战，战争通识诞生于二战，我们能够发现图像如何帮助技术、媒介、工人、农民去进行言说，图像在沉默无声中和弱势群体达成了一种协议，一种帮助其去确立独一无二主体性的协议。图像变成了图集，历史碎片变成了历史材料，图像从孤立走向了联合，从疏离走向了亲密，它们和起义的人民一样，越来越多，不断扩张，协议之网不断蔓延，直到震撼人心地占据整个街道。
影像或蒙太奇拼图
终于到了影像，也到了这次提案最核心的部分。请先原谅我用了较大篇幅去谈论文学和影像。主题是协议，而文学和图像都是影像组成的一部分，因此它们是影像的内在协议，我们无法忽视它们对影像所起到的作用。文集的实质就是蒙太奇，图集的本质也是蒙太奇，它们以集合的形式组成了蒙太奇的狂舞，这可以说是影像最原始的形式。在没有摄影机之前，影像就已经出现。另外，这次影像的风格主要是以诗影像和论文影像为主，也要用到文字卡片和静帧图像，所以无法舍弃它们直接谈论影像。
为什么要用影像去谈论协议？很简单，首先是因为我们要普及数字互联网生态，就必须要更新武器，面对媒介不断革新的当下，宣传手段也必须要革新，报纸、新闻，只是前现代的思维，我们不能用前现代的自然去翻耕后现代的土地，因为土壤的性质已经发生了微妙的变化。抱歉，我用了“宣传”两个字，但这次影像的主题不是宣传，而是感受，是基于技术学和生物学融合的神圣感受，媒介必须牢牢掌握在自由人的手中。
印刷术曾经削弱了威权结构和行会生态，现在视频这种后照相术时代的串流媒体也会像印刷术，以至于会像新兴信息市场的加密方法一样，以液态的无声形式渗入到互联网这个流动市场中，并与其达成协议。乔治·佩雷克在《人生拼图版》里讲了电影和拼图的某种类似性，而让-吕克·戈达尔的《电影史》和皮埃尔·保罗·帕索里尼的《狂暴》实践的就是这种相似性，他们从蒙太奇里面发现了这种相似性，任何人在这两部蒙太奇电影里都能发现大量诗歌、炼金术、精神分析、战争学、辩证图像的内容。所以，影像又回到了上面的文集和图集，这就是艺术与技术古老的协定，不管什么类型，它们都是同类，也都是兄弟。
计划
下面是我对于内容创作的简单设计。
影像类型
融合生物学、文学、图像学，与协议有关的互联网外在应用与内在感受（不是普及类的纪录片）
影像风格
诗影像或论文影像
影像组成
系列影像，首先分为四部分，每部分15分钟，60分钟
- 第一部分：区块链—游牧的乌托邦共同体
- 第二部分：代币化—从字节到可编程人文
- 第三部分：数字公共物品—告别坐标
- 第四部分：智能合约—数据之海
