Christian Marclay’s Telephones is a compilation of different telephone scenes from different movies/shows from different eras. Marclay was able to show the audience the emotions that each character portray with just a simple telephone scene. The video is divided into multiple segments. The first 2 minutes comprise of clips of people dialing the telephone. The characters were not even talking, but we can see that each of them show a bit of emotion. I believe Marclay used this to open his narrative, not just as a device to show a chronological structure, but to ready the audience for a flood of emotions that is about to happen. At the two-minute mark we can see this build up as the new characters anticipate to “receive” the phone call that the previous characters “sent”. At 2:27, we can see a woman showing nervousness before answering the phone. Some of the characters were hesitating, while some, could not wait to answer, and others, lifelessly pick it up . This reminds me of how I pick up my phone whenever someone texts or calls me. If I’m highly interested to the person, I would rush to pick my phone and if it’s just some random infomercial number I would act differently. As the video goes on, the “hellos” became more animated and the conversations longer. Even though these characters are totally unrelated, Marclay’s choice of transitions made it seem that they are talking to each other. The realism of it forces you to think that these emotions goes beyond the walls of the film and to the audience.This powerful build up is an essential part of Marclay’s intention that humans can elicit different emotions with just a simple facial expression, a simple word, an action/inaction or just by watching a bunch of telephone calls.
Cory Arcangel’s Paganini 5th Caprice, in a way, is similar to Marcla’s Telephones. Both videos are compilations of different clips from different videos. Arcangel’s video, however, is pieced together to create an actual music (Paginini’s 5th Caprice) from different guitar tutorials found on the internet (the songs used were not specified). Each note is a snippet from the guitar tutorials creating this mesmerizing and dizzying visual effect. I tried to watch with sound, no sound, and eyes closed and my experience was different from each. I felt dizzy when I watched it normally or no sound.(I think I have motion sickness) I felt like I was in a trance when I closed my eyes. Overall, I believe Arcangel used this kind of style to show that we can create music if we use our creativeness. Additionally, using at least 100 videos also show the amount of work in making this 3 minute video. The creativeness is outstanding, but sometimes we also need to put in the work to really show that creativity.