Some Notes on High Definition with apologies to M.

Blanchot / Ed Atkins

High Definition as essentially banal. An oxymoronic loop where the

image becomes so frighteningly, impressively proximate to the subject
that it replaces it. Or is consumed by it. Or, in some well-documented
cases, consumes it. Nevertheless: a murderous act in clockwise or
anticlockwise, in a puff of smoke or a sleight of hand. High Definition
(HD) has surpassed what we tamely imagined to be the zenith of
representational affectivity within the moving image, presenting us with
lucid, liquid images that are at once both preposterously life-like and
utterly dead. The escape such images might offer is perverse: back to
reality. And only those ambivalent parentheses and an indescribable
odour provide the cues to comprehend our actual location...

n Public Enemies (Michael Manns biopic of the depression-era bank robber John
Dillinger), Johnny Depp looks admirably real. His face in close-up is a country of pores, dry
skin, chapped lips, wrinkles, pubescent scarring and irregular hair growth. Which is not to say
that he looks remarkably ugly but that he looks authentically, unremarkably human. These
are the convincing facets of any human face. Those blemishes and foibles give credence to an
idea, half entertained, that Johnny Depp is discernibly human; that he is constituted of the very
same stuff as us (grotesque flesh, grotesque bone, grotesque cartilage, grotesque fat, etc.); that
he has, over time, aged; that, like all of us, he will not materially last forever. In the context of
the movie, this is a disconcerting empathy to conjure. It has very little bearing on our feelings
towards the character John Dillinger, but rather in some inadvertent Brechtian convolution
it serves to emphasise the theatricality of the performance to camera and the moving but
banal humanity of the actor beneath. And this innocent trope does not just affect Mr. Depps
appearance, it seeps in to every aspect of the movie. Tommy guns rattle off bullets with the
hollow snap and muzzle flash of meagre firecrackers and cap guns; wounds and makeup sit
heavy and thick, blatant, on the skin of the actors; physical intimacies are exposed for the effects,
props and costumes they are while the contemporaneity of each and every actor in the film is
so oddly conspicuous their live humanity beating dully beneath that thin cinematic pall as
to completely undermine any period pseudo-naturalism that might have been wrought. The
overall effect is that of a making-of documentary: we are made privy to the workings of an
illusion. Though in this case there is nothing so generically discernible as outtakes, scurrying
crewmembers and green-screens to indicate that we are not, in fact, watching the main feature
but an expository DVD extra. Here, the image itself is reflexively expository. The HD image,
detailing a death of cinematic delusion, exposes the reality of each and every subject of the
cameras gaze as deathly, as crucially deathly, brimming with death a deathliness for the sake of
representation, wherein the surrogacy of representation approaches a pinnacle of such accuracy
that it no longer represents but simply is the subject. This substitution of representation for
subject, or image for reality (though perhaps thats a confusion) is the resolution of a paradox
of there being more than one original. For the representation to fully realise its object it must
murder its subject. Picture the Bodysnatchers mysterious comatosing of its subject while it
develops, hidden inside its amniotic pod, from foetal indeterminacy to definitive maturity
ultimately replacing its subject and consigning it to obsolescence (a process not dissimilar to
that of capitalist technological progress). The crime is almost completely invisible, though the
process is intractable: the representation will always be such and will always herald a death. In
HD moving imagery, this is maintained through a banality an amateurism, a conviction for

the convincing, for the aspirationally accurate; a seeming whos mistakes, acne, glances and
coughs achieve an extraordinary level of representational cogency, all the while serving to
underline the fact that this is, nevertheless, a hollow representation, eternally distanced from
life, from Being.

echnologically speaking, the evolution of industrial cinema has always been incumbent
upon an approach to representational realism. The quality of the film stock, its size, the lens of
the camera, the mechanism within, the projector, the microphone, the editing facilities these
have all changed inexorably over the past century, and almost exclusively within the realm of
improving definition and cogency of representation.This technological race has no obvious goal
its only transparent objective being to consistently support the industrys (and capitalisms)
hegemony (its bleak, murky destination something like a suicide) describing progress for the
sake of both the economy and for progress itself, where a partially abstracted notion of progress
describes the schism that maintains capitalism in this form: a counter movement, a parallelism is
perpetually enacted, with progressive innovation at the vanguard and obsoleteness collapsing in
the rear. As exemplified by HD, however, this indefinite movement (without finitude, certainly)
must be arrested in the instant, in the here and now enacted by whatever holds that novel
station right now. The term High Definition both apprehends this progress and helps it on its
way. Its ambiguous yet minted enough to be understood as both transitory (how high is High?)
and specific (Definition). In other words, it lies within the zeitgeist and under that rubric, it
is replaceable, it will be replaced. It must be noted, however, that the non-technical idiom the
term lies within might also allow High Definition to have been applied contemporaneously to
any other previous progression within the industry. Its a term defined in relation: one need only
notice the appearance overnight of the term Standard Definition, sprung up like a mushroom
from the rotting cadaver of its objects condemnation as anachronism. High Definition, like all
progressions, defines itself in relation to its precursor, adopting its lexicon, its boundaries, and
its movement. This is the convention of progress. Delimited by the word, progress can only
progress what already exists. Uprooting, destroying, overthrowing, instigating, founding are
not within its temperament. Necessarily then, High Definition has so far been understood and
critiqued within the confines of its predecessors criteria, whether this is correct or not.

igh Definition is very different to its predecessors within the history of the moving
image. There are the reasons sketched out above: the proximity to the real that determines
the deathliness of the representation, the banality of the moving image as a difference but
there is also its specific digital medium. HD is only possible in the fantasies and dreams of the
immaterial. The index of the HD image and of truly contemporary digital data in general
is impalpable. There is no body to inscribe, no document to consign to history. The HD
index is always provisional; it can be erased and reformed without leaving the tiniest trace of
what was there before. Today, a video can be shot, edited, produced and displayed without
ever once resolving into a physical form. (And if it did, what sleek alien shape might it take?)
The essentially immaterial aspect of HD is concomitant to its promise of hyperreality of

previously unimaginable levels of sharpness, lucidity, believability, etc., transcending the material
world to present some sort of divine insight. Though of course, HDs occasion is entirely based
upon the fantastic representation of the material and only the material. Its definitional abilities
cannot improve representations of Being, only its tawdry housing. As with Mr. Depp in Public
Enemies, HD renders material of paramount importance, with skin, hair and saliva taking
precedence over language, character and emotion as the humanity within a movie. Humanity is
pulped to a state of abject corporeality: I recognise Mr. Depp as dying really dying and in so
doing finally becoming the perfect representation of himself. In this summation, representation
is characteristically devoid of Being instead focussing on appearance on seeming to be, rather
than to be. The idea is one of illusion, however apparently purposeful.

The Material has a habit of returning, however deeply buried, however

apparently dissolved. Avenging its immaterial existence, the HD video
constructs a body within its image. A paradox of extreme, sensuous
materiality within an immaterial medium. There is no analogue for
this; no ghost or zombie, but an entirely new manifestation: a vision
of death that ultimate representation that is entirely unapproachable,
unequivocal, impossible.

Literature rears up, an outraged progenitor: Certain words High

Definitional words, if you like congeal in the mouth, sit heavily on the
tongue, exciting some previously cloaked papillae, scouring, spanning
the vocal chords and the epiglottis Words becoming representations
of themselves (corpses!) for a fraction of a second, supplanting their
semiotic being suiciding their symbolic selves to be tasted, finally
(tongued!); Amoeboid forms to be swallowed. Ingested, processed
and stored like so much dead flesh, rotten, secreting hallucinogenic
mould. The immaterial made material. (A pursuable thought: High
Definition moving images becoming literature.)