The Fourth Factor

I’m walking through an unfamiliar urban area. It’s fairly busy traffic-wise, but there are some young men kicking a soccer ball around in the streets. Occasionally, someone has to run out into the street and bring it back before a car gets to it. This strikes me as a little dangerous.

Eventually, I find myself walking down into a large lecture hall, mainly white with light-colored wooden seats on either side of a central aisle. There’s a projection screen down in front, and everybody is watching a movie on it. The front area looks mostly full, but there are entire rows of empty seats closer to the back, so I sit down in a row on the left side.

It seems I have the option to select how I want the movie rendered—it’s a little like a menu popping up on a computer, but more abstract. There are three options. In the first option, I would only perceive those aspects of it that are capable of being represented in the available medium. In the second option, the basic narrative pattern of the story would be preserved, but with the unrepresentable parts of it translated into a form that the medium can handle. That's the option I choose. I can’t remember what the third one was.

As I watch, it quickly becomes apparent that the movie is something provisional rather than a finished creation. The screen shows static pictures representing the characters on a white background as their dialogue is spoken. I notice, however, that the acoustics in this room are incredible. It’s a high-ceilinged room, and the sound just fills it. I can feel a shift in my awareness, as it it’s expanding to fill the room as well.

29.4.18