Douglas Kahn

Douglas Kahn is the Technocultural Studies at the University of California. Everything he works with and studies has to do with sounds. Mostly sound of art. His studies has a wide range of historical sounds of art to the Avant Garde to modern works. He delivers general speeches to schools about his sound arts. He has recently has written a book entitled; Noise Water Heat: A History of Sound in the Arts. However, from my research, i believe he focuses mainly on the art of sounds and soundtracks. The point of his practice starts with his point that sound/art has been around and together for ages, and now he would like to see where it is going and take it to a new level.

The Shape Shifter

The film Natural Features screened in class had many subjects that appeared and were heard in the film.To me the film was not only about what was visible but what was seamless. I don't to say that the film was about the color black, but it was about what the color black can do.
We saw paintbrushes come and manipulate what was on screen. We saw credits roll through out the film. We even heard sounds that the visual film could have been about. Men and women screamed on the track of this film at different volumes, and in no particular order.
The style of this film is so arbitrary that the meaning will differ from viewer to viewer. Personally, I feel that this film was about the editing power of black. Black is like the editing form of shape shifting. Shapes and spaces on screen will flip, run, move, bleed, anything that you can imagine, yet when it slides to black anything else can come out of the other side of this edit. You can use black to stop one shot and begin another. The colors of this film were predominantly black. It was in frame at all times surrounding words, and being painted on to the canvas of the screen.
All features of this film help you understand it. i argue that no one will come out of this film thinking the exact same thing. The idea and hypothesis that are in no two persons brain could possibly be the same after seeing such an erratic filmstrip. The diverse qualities of "Natural Features" do help you figure what the film is about, but your perspective of the film will differ from person to person.