Herzog lecture

I saw Werner Herzog give a talk today at Amherst which was truly brilliant. He's such a charismatic fellow. He filled my head with thoughts and I hope I can get some of them down for processing and perhaps editing into a Div III of sorts.

Most potent: The way Herzog shifts the focuses of his movies and riffs off tangents which truly isolate the "reality" of his films. He showed a clip from The White Diamond, which I haven't seen, in which the camera moves from the scientist to the local man who is formally uneducated but really quite wise. For me, this sort of work goes to show the ways in which narratives can fragment themselves in search of what Herzog referred to as a "truth". He distinguished fact from truth, asserting that truth was something more profound and emphemeral than a solid fact. Information, particularly the new realms of information brought on by digitality, present ways in which tangential elements can form a more individualized space and what is actually taken from "an exploration" is quite unique. This is obviously related to my hypertext project from the collector. Perhaps I could use his films as a catalyst to re-explore some of the themes I was trying to articulate through hypertexts.



I'm in the midst of passing my Division II. I hope to be able to work out some of the groundwork for my Division III in this space.