The End of Medium Resistance
“Tacita Dean calls it ‘the resistance of the medium’, which is, if you’re sculpting in clay and the clay pushes back and speaks to your hands, it changes and affects the way you make the object. I’m talking about about dolly tracks and camera, and forcing yourself into particular modes of creativity. Those do become defining characteristics of the work””
In a continuation of the process vibe that seems to be lurking in my thoughts at the moment, I’d made a note of this quote from Christopher Nolan in the most recent issue of Sight and Sound.
Resistance of the medium is a lovely phrase.
The way things are made impacts how they look and feel and act.
The launch of Sora from Open AI last week was frankly mindblowing in terms of the video it will allow people to produce with a simple text prompt. Does this tool remove ‘resistance’ or merely change it? There is an immediate economic benefit to these types of tools - and I’m sure people who spend money on ‘production’ will be looking at this carefully as a means of cutting costs (and headcount). But will the use (and abuse) of these types of tools lead to a state in which everything just starts to look and feel and act in the same way? Leaving us with a world full of dull and homogenus stuff.
