Nervous System and Nervous Magic Lantern - Text 2
The rapid alternation of two images very close to each other in the film gives rise, across the black interval, to a merging of stimuli in the viewer’s brain. The temporal gap between the two photograms acts as a spatial gap and heightens the binocular parallax – the difference in the angle of the images captured by each of our eyes. This arrangement thus gives rise to a stereoscopic effect, while manipulating the unfolding of the two film prints, by a few photograms ahead or behind, produces a strange undulating prolonged movement, endlessly “maintained” in infinitesimal continuities, which Jacobs calls “Eternalism.”
Other effects can be produced by varying the movement of the propeller, thereby varying the flicker, and by manipulating the projector itself, which is placed on a platform that Jacobs can pivot up or down and left or right, or move forward or backward. He runs the main projector, nicknamed Maurice, while his companion and collaborator Flo Jacobs runs the second projector, which remains in a fixed position. Their performances follow “scores,” prepared during rehearsals, and most performances include audio accompaniment, either music or a recycled recording.
