David Blair:The Telepathic Place-The Telepathic Machine

Using a variety of screens, speakers, and moving/static objects, the Manchu Edison Film Corporation presents a form of the Telepathic Cinema, as a telepathic film which includes a history of its own invention. This will include the strangely multinational Phenakistoscope of 1832 [literal translation, "deceitful wheel"], and other geometric animation machines designed by the blind color theorist Joseph Plateau.

Using a variety of screens, speakers, and moving/static objects, the Manchu Edison Film Corporation presents a form of the Telepathic Cinema, as a telepathic film which includes a history of its own invention. This will include the strangely multinational Phenakistoscope of 1832 [literal translation, "deceitful wheel"], and other geometric animation machines designed by the blind color theorist Joseph Plateau. But that is only a beginning, and we will not forget, in the best way possible, the contributions of the colonial Manchurian cinema to these advancements. Ethical stories included.

This project at Harvestworks follows the logic of a 5 room “Telepathic Place” installation created last year for MuHKA, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp. In the Project Room, I, and the Manchu Edison Film Corporation, will present a installation which evokes elements of the alternate history. This happens by a first person “movietalker” presentation, which is both a film, and evocation of the more general mechanisms of this imaginary telepathy, in a place where things are ideas, are spoken, and coincidence appears.

This presentation is in preparation for a larger production planned for the 2015 New York Electronic Arts Festival, which will represent the history of the Telepathic Cinema in the New York region, as a mental miniature of the world.