art, like science, is a means of assimilating the world, an instrument for knowing it in the course of man’s journey towards what is called ‘absolute truth’.

Little by little that awareness led me to carry out my wish to make a feature film about a man whose dependence upon others brings him to independence, and for whom love is at once ultimate thrall and ultimate freedom. And the more clearly I discerned the stamp of materialism on the face of our planet (irrespective of whether I was observing the West or the East), the more I came up against unhappy people, saw the victims of psychoses symptomatic of an inability or unwillingness to see why life had lost all delight and all value, why it had become oppressive, the more committed I felt to this film as the most important thing in my life. It seems to me that the individual stands today at a crossroads, faced with the choice of whether to pursue the existence of a blind consumer, subject to the implacable march of new technology and the endless multiplication of material goods, or whether to seek out a way that will lead to spiritual responsibility, which ultimately might mean not only his personal salvation but also the saving of society at large: in other words, to turn to God. He has to solve this dilemma for himself, for only he can discover his own sane spiritual life. Solving it may take him closer to the state in which he can be responsible for society. That is the step which becomes a sacrifice, in the Christian sense of self-sacrifice. He evolved from planning the details of the scene to approaching it with a general idea due to reality being richer than imagination and allowing serendipity. He finds meticulous plans abstract and restricting on the imagination so one should merely approach the scene with an open mind. Such a “direct observation of life” can be regarded as “the key to poetry” not only in cinema. ​47​ Many sonic artworks, in a similar fashion, aestheticize sound without dramatizing it in the context of a performance on musical instruments. Some instead frame everyday listening in public spaces by minimalistic architectural or graphical interventions. In Peter Ablinger’s Listening Piece in Four Parts (2001), rows of chairs set up in an urban parking lot, a desert wind farm, or on an ocean beach remain the sole reference to the concert hall and otherwise stand by themselves as an invitation to remain and listen. In Akio Suzuki’s oto-date (1996), stencil markers on the pavement simultaneously resemble the shape of feet (as a suggestion to stand in this place) as well as a pair of ears (as an encouragement to listen). ​48​ The Sonic Meditations by Pauline Oliveros achieve a similar goal by simple textual instructions. ​49​ I am interested above all in the character who is capable of sacrificing himself and his way of life—regardless of whether that sacrifice is made in the name of spiritual values, or for the sake of someone else, or of his own salvation, or of all these things together. Such behaviour precludes, by its very nature, all of those selfish interests that make up a ‘normal’ rationale for action; it refutes the laws of a materialistic world view. It is often absurd and unpractical. And yet—or indeed for that very reason—the man who acts in that way brings about fundamental changes to people’s lives and to the course of history. The space he lives in becomes a rare, distinctive point of contrast to the empirical concepts of our experience, an area where reality is all the more strongly present. To what degree Tarkovsky himself was aware of these parallels is a question that his own writing provides only few hints on, even though it does include detailed reflections on cinema’s relation to literature, theater, and also music. While he evidently discusses the latter from a perspective of tender passion, he does not reflect in much detail on concurrent developments in experimental or electronic music – perhaps due to boundaries between disciplines (film; music), geographic-political contexts (East; West), and professional roles (director; composer; sound designer). Looking beyond Tarkovsky’s oeuvre, it appears to me that more often than not, aesthetic discourses in music and film follow separate trajectories with surprisingly little overlap. ​4​ For example, Tarkovsky’s text has, to my knowledge, not been widely discussed in the field of electroacoustic music composition – even though its notion of sculpting in time seems particularly relevant in such a context.

Interesting books

At the time I was simply a sunburnt young boy, entirely unknown, son of the distinguished poet Arseniy Tarkovsky: a nobody, merely a son. It was the first and last time I saw Landau, a single, chance meeting; hence such candour on the part of the Soviet Nobel Prize winner. The basic element of cinema is rhythm. The director brings his own rhythm to a picture, as do the subjects photographed as well as the editing imposed upon the footage. We could define it as sculpting in time. Just as a sculptor takes a lump of marble, and, inwardly conscious of the features of his finished piece, removes everything that is not part of it—so the film-maker, from a ‘lump of time’ made up of an enormous, solid cluster of living facts, cuts off and discards whatever he does not need, leaving only what is to be an element of the finished film, what will prove to be integral to the cinematic image. Por otro lado, este libro es una especie de compendio de su experiencia como director en la creación de sus películas, escrito no linealmente, en un largo espacio de tiempo. Por estas páginas corren sus reflexiones y decisiones profesionales en películas como La infancia de Iván, Solaris, Stalker, El espejo (la más íntima de sus películas, ya que trata sobre sus recuerdos de niñez y juventud), Nostalgia (en la que se mezcla su propia experiencia de nostalgia, pues cuando la rodó, ya había salido de la URSS) y Sacrificio, en la que se da un hecho insólito, cuya explicación gráfica engloba el summum de su pensamiento, aunque no ahonda mucho más y lo deja sujeto a interpretación. Tal como en sus películas. Y respecto a ello, a lo material, al materialismo (visto desde la filosofía, y desde la cultura de masas y el consumismo), Tarkovski, que salió de la URSS en 1983, se sitúa en un espacio cuasi paria al criticar a ambos sistemas, aunque no los nombre. No nombra al Capitalismo y al Comunismo, pero sí habla de Occidente y su materialismo (lo cierto es que también critica a ese cine comprometido y político de la URSS con el que no quería tener nada que ver), y cree que la materia amenaza con devorar el espíritu del hombre. También equipara el avance de la tecnología con esa pérdida de espíritu (de ahí que esté relacionado con la introducción de este texto, en el que hablo de la entrada de la tecnología en los dosmiles, cosa que de alguna manera Tarkovski predijo, pese a que murió en los aún analógicos ochentas). Para Tarkovski el cine comercial no tiene valor alguno más que como fuente de generación de dinero y según su idea, el artista no está ahí por enriquecerse. Su visión del arte es totalizadora y metafísica (en el sentido no-místico, sino de trascendencia de lo humano): el arte es lo que salva al hombre de la pérdida de su espíritu. "Y por eso, quizá realmente consista el sentido de la existencia humana en la creación de obras de arte, en el acto artístico, ya que este no posee una meta y es desinteresado".

Musical sound is too limited in its variety of timbres. The most complicated orchestras can be reduced to four or five classes of instruments different in timbres of sound: bowed instruments, metal winds, wood winds, and percussion. Thus, modern music flounders within this tiny circle, vainly striving to create new varieties of timbre. We must break out of this limited circle of sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds. Para el cineasta, lo que define el montaje ya lo contiene cada escena rodada. El tiempo que transcurre en cada una de ellas determina el tiempo general de la estructura total de escenas en el montaje. Si ambos tiempos no coinciden, la película no funcionará. Esto lo ilustra con una película de Eisenstein, en la que éste quiso reproducir el propio tiempo dinámico de una batalla, pero lo hizo cortando escenas y editándolas una tras otra con velocidad. Según Tarkovski, ello es un fallo, ya que no dejó que cada escena contenga en sí misma el ritmo de la batalla y lo que hizo resultó artificioso y sin sentido. Para él, la escena debe rodarse ya con la intención del montaje y no buscarlo después, más bien, debe hallarse el espíritu de la escena. Cinema, as its core, is the capture of reality over time. At its heart is careful observation of reality. The artist brings his own unique reality and worldview to a film, creating a prism through which objective reality is filtered. The artist must depend on his own experience, feelings, and thoughts in crafting a cinematic work. In the beginning was the Word, but you’re as silent as a dumb salmon,’ says Alexander to his son early in the film. The boy is recovering from a throat operation and is not allowed to talk. He listens in silence as his father tells him the story of the barren tree. Later, horrified at the news of impending disaster, Alexander himself takes a vow of silence: ‘… I shall be mute, I shall never utter another word to anyone, I shall give up everything that ties me to my life. Lord, help me to fulfil this vow.’ For the first time in the history of the arts, in the history of culture, man found the means to take an impression of time.

Kollar's numerous recording projects, both as a solo artist and as a collaborator, are milestones of contemporary European experimental music sphere and each of those discloses another facet of his complex and constantly developing musical identity and his artistic personality.

Time, printed in its factual forms and manifestations: such is the supreme idea of cinema as an art, leading us to think about the wealth of untapped resources in film, about its colossal future. He believes editing and assembly disturb the passage of time and gives it something new, thus distorting time can give it a rhythmical expression (Sculpting in time).

Reflections on the Cinema

Tarkovsky for me is the greatest (director), the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream,” said the acclaimed Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) of the legendary Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky. Born in 1932 in the village of Zavrazhye in western Russia to poet Arseny Tarkovsky and his wife Maria, Andrei Tarkovsky attended the State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. He made a total of seven feature films: Ivan’s Childhood (1962), Andrei Rublev (1966), Solaris (1972), The Mirror (1975), Stalker (1979), Nostalghia(1983) and The Sacrifice (1986) – the last two being produced in Italy and Sweden, respectively. Tarkovsky died in Paris in December 1986 at the age of 54. Tarkovsky’s discussion of sound, not surprisingly, begins with its relationship to the cinematic image: “But music is not just an appendage . . . It must be an essential element of the realisation of the concept as a whole . . . it must be so completely one with the visual image that if it were to be removed from a particular episode, the visual image would not just be weaker in its idea and impact, it would be qualitatively different” (158). As is often the case when one attempts to write about music (who said it’s like “dancing about architecture”?), Tarkovsky slips more noticeably here into poetic (rather than hard, practical) language. It makes for wonderful reading, but I’m still unsure about his exact approach: “Above all,” he writes, “I feel that the sounds of this world are so beautiful in themselves that if only we could learn to listen to them properly, cinema would have no need of music at all” (162). The overall effect of these events was to be not only a parable about sacrifice, but also the story of how one individual is saved. And what I hope is that Alexander—like the hero of the film finally made in Sweden in 1985—is healed in a more significant sense; it is not only a question of being cured of a physical (and, moreover, fatal) disease; it is also a spiritual regeneration expressed in the image of a woman. Por otro lado, otro error que Tarkovski considera en el cine, es el intento de hacer literatura. Para él, el cine no tiene nada que ver con ésta, a diferencia del teatro que sí es cercano a la literatura porque sus diálogos son lo más importante en la dramaturgia y estos pueden ser completamente literarios. Mientras que, según T. en el cine son apenas un elemento más, por lo que, a su criterio, si se trata de hacer literatura con diálogos en el cine, se está errando nuevamente. Lo mismo con la actuación. En el teatro el actor debe entender racional y esquemáticamente a su personaje porque esa es la base de su construcción, en el cine no. T. estaría más cerca de la idea del "actor natural" que al del actor que profundiza en su personaje a través de la técnica. Por eso, también rechaza el método de Stanislavski y prefiere que el actor no sepa nada del derrotero de su personaje, tal como una persona sabe nada sobre el futuro y lo que acontecerá en su propia vida. Esa incertidumbre de la realidad es la que busca reproducir Tarkovski en su cine.