Cut-up Charlton Heston video: "The Future has Already Been Written"

An excerpt from transmedia artist Anthony Discenza's "Charlton Heston: The Future has Already Been Written," that "fuses Planet of the Apes, Omega Man, and Soylent Green. The 3 films (in their entirety) are visually alternated with each other every 1/10 of a second, while the soundtracks are layered simultaneously." Nope, I didn't watch the whole thing. Couldn't do it. But I might try again. Later.

• [Anonymous]

  I watched the whole excerpt. Not sure if I could do the whole thing, but it appeared to me that the clips had the exact same pacing – each story seemed to fade into drama/action, then quietness at around the same time.

• [fxq]

  DO NOT WANT

• [Robbo]

  “You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”

  Actually, it’s sort of how I already watch TV – just wish my thumb on the remote worked as fast.

• [Anonymous]

  How about a seizure warning before posting something like this.

• [slida]

  So this is the second posting this weekend where the embedded video on the main page was a video about using CSS instead of what was being described. I just thought it was some weird BB thing. ;) It’s the right video now on the comments page, but I thought I’d mention it. It could of course be some local machine goofiness on my part.

  Oh, and I thought this was brilliant but I couldn’t watch much of it.

• [drukqs]

  For better (or worse), the only thing that I can think of when viewing this is “Planet of the Apes, the Musical”.

  I hate every ape I see,
  From chimpan-a to chimpan-zee,
  No, you’ll never make a monkey out of me.

  Oh my God, I was wrong,
  It was Earth all along!
  You finally made a monkey,
  (Yes, we finally made a monkey)
  Yes, you finally made a monkey out of meeeeee!

  I love you Dr. Zaius!
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vb9fyyzxI4

• [RabidFox]

  Oh hell. 23 seconds. That’s all I ccould hack. If it’s art, it’s not art I appreciate.

  If I want to provoke a seizure, I’ll watch anime, thank you very much.

• [dagfooyo]

  After about 20 seconds I started to get the distinct feeling that Charlton Heston was being implanted into my subconscious. Suddenly I’m a big fan of the NRA.

• [Anonymous]

  My eyeballs started to melt, about 90 seconds in. I like all three movies but this was a little too much..

• [subhan]

  I think this is ‘art’ in the same way that handing out straight pins to your audience and asking them to repeatedly stab themselves in the forearm for 90 minutes is art, just a little less bloody.

• [rhc]

  Watched the whole thing and enjoyed the experience. I’m familiar with all three movies – probably seen each 3 or more times. At first I was disoriented as components of my mind were trying desperately to lock onto something. After a two or so minutes I found myself fully engaged in watching three movies simultaneously. I find no problem calling it art.

• [Anonymous]

  This was remarkable. I watched the entire excerpt without any “ill effects”. In fact, I found it fascinating and possibly this is the future of media presentations. It’s amazing how the mind sews everything together as a flow. For some, it must have induced a kind of motion sickness, but for me, I didn’t experience any disorientation at all, rather the opposite.

• [Shawn Wolfe]

  Stop mashing shit up already.

  Having said that, this would’ve been better with brass fittings and hoses and victorian doo dads on it. And in IMAX 3D.

• [PaamayimNekudotayim]

  @anon #16 – Yes, and also your comment have been just a teensy bit better if you had a registered account, hmnyeah, see…?

• [jimkirk]

  Where’s the MPAA when you need them? :-)

  Reminds me of David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth.

• [RevEng]

  So, if this is “art”, what is it’s message? I, like most commenters, experienced headache and disorientation within seconds of watching this mess. The human brain certainly isn’t meant to images changing that drastically that quickly, nor is it particularly good at following multiple, overlapping experiences (try listening to two conversations at once in a crowded room; we are good at filtering out the noise, but not at dividing our attention).

  If it was supposed to be a comment on our future of being overwhelmed with media, then I can relate. But if that was a message, I wouldn’t say this was effective at conveying that message. The execution made it so difficult to observe that one can’t actually watch it.

  I often think “high art” relates to the producer being intoxicated while producing it.

• [Anonymous]

  Call me a nerd, but my first thought was “wait, 1/10 isn’t a multiple of 1/24!” (film frame rate)

• [VJ]

  i like it, but didn’t see it till the end, but that’s maybe cause i’m tired.

• [Muse]

  Aaah! I could not watch for more than 30 seconds. I imagine this is the kind of thing prisoners would be forced to watch in abu ghraib, blaring at full volume, after being forced to stay awake for 72 hours.

  I think I need to go watch some adorable kitten videos now.

• [Anonymous]

  I just threw up a little in my mouth…

• [PARONYMOUS RICH]

  Weird. This is how I see the world.

• [sapere_aude]

  Wow. That was weird.

  On the positive side, after watching the entire thing I’m pretty sure that I don’t have any risk for epilepsy; because, if I did, that would almost certainly have triggered a seizure.

  Actually made it through the whole thing. (Don’t really know why I tried.) Kinda hypnotic.

  I found myself tuning certain parts in and tuning other parts out. Occasionally I would be able to follow two of the three movies at the same time as they alternated; but I don’t think I was ever able to follow all three at the same time, even for a few seconds – I always ended up tuning out at least one of them. It was easy to tune in scenes that showed closeups of human faces and bright colors. I tended to tune out scenes that were dimly lit or featured lots of indistinct movement.

  I’m actually surprised that I was able to follow it as well as I did, or even to tolerate watching the whole thing. But I definitely don’t want to even try watching it again.

• [Anonymous]

  Epileptic fit alert!

• [Itsumishi]

  I watched about a minute. It made me feel quite disorientated and kind of sick. Interesting though.

• [Ceronomus]

  Ugh, that was a motion sickness inducing visual cacophony. I think I made it 10 seconds or so? I concur with Muse, I too can picture prisoners, strapped down and eyes pried open “Clockwork Orange” style, forced to watch hours of that until they gnaw off their own tongues to mercifully choke on their own blood and severed tongue.

  Yup…didn’t care for it.

• [holtt]

  Was just watching Fringe – guy who couldn’t help but read minds. I think I know what he felt now.

• [Jack]

  I watched about 30-45 seconds and got an instant headache YOU DAMNED DIRTY BLOGGER!

• [Johnny Cat]

  Neil Degrasse Tyson says there is 1% difference in the DNA structure between humans and apes, and that if the 1% difference was pointed the other direction… well, wouldn’t that brain power be able to simultaneously watch and enjoy all three movies at once?

  Of course, this posit assumes one with that kind of brain power would actually enjoy these movies.

• [Anonymous]

  It’s a madhouse! A MADHOUSE!

• [Anonymous]

  I knew there was something missing in the world.

• [Anonymous]

  I made it all the way through – must have been all those drugs I imagined taking in the 60s. Totally wonderful, made my week!

• [BicycleRepairMan]

  I knew there was something missing in the world.

• [treepour]

  Wow. I made it through most of it. Incredibly hypnotic and disorienting. Very much like those times you start dreaming before you’re fully asleep.

  It’s shit like this, BoingBoing, that makes me love you.

• [Methusedalot]

  What the hell is a transmedia artist? My guess is that it is a talentless hack who believes deep down they were really meant to be an artist, but that can be right, can it?

• [gths]

  Well, this is the sort of thing one might go to a modern art gallery to rub your chin at I guess.

  Reminds me of that guy who took The Jungle Book and dubbed each character with dialogue from different language versions, ie. Mowgli gets the Spanish dub, Shere Khan gets voiced in Danish, Baloo in Cantonese, etc.

• [Rob Gehrke]

  I like it, as a psychological experiment. Don’t know if it needs to be called “Art”, but who cares anyway? It’s interesting to see if one of the three narratives (films) becomes dominant, and why. The other two become like background noise.

  For me, it was the scenes which contained the largest actor profiles, visually (closer up on the screen).

• [Anonymous]

  Wouldn’t “Soylent Green” have been just a teensy bit better if it had contained a scene where Edward G. Robinson looked at Heston and, in his classic “Little Caesar” voice, said “Soylent Green? It’s PEOPLE, see? Hmnyeah, see? It’s takin’ over this town, see? Hmnyeah! You’re finished, see?”

• [PMcGorrill]

  So, I really enjoyed this.
  Is that a symptom of anything?

• [enkiv2]

  http://vimeo.com/9819387 is the direct link, if anyone wants to see it on vimeo. [Pet peeve: embeds with no links to the original posting, especially with video hosting systems that don't have a 'like' or 'go to video' feature in the embed]

• [defacebook]

  I like it, though I’m not sure I could take it for more than a few minutes. It’s makes me feel a little dizzy, but I appreciate the technique and the content is killer. I’d be curious to see other content given the same treatment. It reminds me vaguely of a Butthole Surfers concert I went to in the ’80s when they were screening Charlie’s Angels TV show next to gory surgery footage. It also reminds me of Brion Gysin’s “dream machine” which was supposed to put you in an altered state through the use of flickered light, I think. Never tried it, so I don’t know if it was like this or not.

• [webmonkees]

  at first, I was omg, uh.. man.

  They did it, they cued it up. cam 2, cam 2 altered gel!

  let the pause off, the thirty syncing tapes.

  Sal Mineo in green is ape people!

• [GuyInMilwaukee]

  This reminds me of the William Burroughs saying about cut up technique that “If you cut into the present, the future leaks out”.
  I’m glad that Charlton Heston is part of our past.