Francis Pienaar

Cinematographer

[Francis Pienaar @francispienaar]

Practice art to experience becoming.

[Jay Alto @theJayAlto]

kurt vonnegut's letter to a bunch of high school students explaining the importance of creating things

[Francis Pienaar @francispienaar]

@kimmonismus What educational contexts are you imagining where a student has to translate primary source material, but does not have to be able to do it themselves, and would not be evaluated accordingly?

[Francis Pienaar @francispienaar]

@Seltaa_ Every tool in every medium leaves its mark on your work.

Frank Gehry said that he could walk through a city and know which software was used to design each building, which is why he used pencil and paper.

The watermark is no more imposed or artificial than the LLM itself.

[Francis Pienaar @francispienaar]

@k_peter78511 @BenDenny @Seltaa_ @pangram Nietzsche's work doesn't exist outside of its original German. Translation is an endeavour that involves interpretation of context and intent. Mechanistically translating any literature results in a subpar result. It may not become "garbage", but much of the intent is lost.

[Francis Pienaar @francispienaar]

@k_peter78511 @BenDenny @Seltaa_ @pangram "If it wasn't worth your time to write, it's not worth my time to read."

Translation of literature isn't a mechanistic task. It involves a huge amount of contextual interpretation. If you're willing to spend the effort on it, it indicates the value you attribute to the material.

[Francis Pienaar @francispienaar]

Beauty is found not by correcting and subduing our animal instincts, but by embracing them, and regarding them with wonder and gratitude.

[Nahel Belgherze @WxNB_]

TOTALITY.

Castrojeriz, Burgos, Spain minutes ago.

[Francis Pienaar @francispienaar]

David Lynch, on desire:

[Francis Pienaar @francispienaar]

“Ratings are asynchronous consensus mechanisms for people with no skin in the game. People who weren't there, and lust for authority from consuming the documentation.”

[matdryhurst @matdryhurst]

I haven't read a single rationalist taste essay that makes reference to an exhibition, concert or gathering attended in the past decade. "Contemporary art" is a Hirst shark or Emin bed caricature divorced from it's context, "beauty" is some kitsch reference to Michaelangelo absent any concession of centuries of narrative conditioning.

The rate-your-music/food/film conception of taste was always a lossy imposition. The map is not the territory. There is no "best" taco. Food tastes better when you have company. Clothes feel better when you feel it means something to wear them. Music sounds better when a room full of people feel its important to be there.

To frame this as a cheap trick, to suggest there is some objective metric of quality of experience, is an irrational disavowal of how culture and aesthetics emerge between people. The isolated, asynchronous, individual aesthetic experience is impoverished. Context is everything. Trying to disavow that is cope.

No matter how much you try to create an objective metric for taste or beauty, a room full of people (physical or virtual) synchronously hyping themselves up to confound it will produce more rooms of people believing the same, and frustrate any desire for a precision that doesn't exist.

Even a solitary experience with art is a construction. Your choice is between lonely delusions vs shared ones. If what you actually want is some consensus mechanism to make sense of this chaos, welcome to the contemporary art world people love to dismiss. The media is not the art. Ratings are asynchronous consensus mechanisms for people with no skin in the game. People who weren't there, and lust for authority from consuming the documentation.

Now we can generate anything to taste, alone, the solitary aesthetic experience trends to zero and rooms and narrative win even harder.

[Francis Pienaar @francispienaar]

I want to witness what emerges from our humanity, not because it is the “best”, but because it is human, and I am human, and one wants more of what one is in love with.

[Sharif Shameem @sharifshameem]

I've been wondering what a "clean" source of ambition looks like and I think it's this: a deep love for your species.

[Francis Pienaar @francispienaar]

@jrostopovich The iPhone has less range than most professional colour negative film. Digital overall only gained a whole stop of dynamic range over film about four years ago. This is just the iPhone's automatic post-processing built for consumers that can't be bothered to process their images.

[Francis Pienaar @francispienaar]

@bryan_johnson All of these myths are tales of the necessity of passing through the inevitable. They are not stories of injustice, but parables of existential acceptance.

Jesus was resurrected precisely because he died. The triumph over death is about transformation rather than preservation.

[Francis Pienaar @francispienaar]

@Codename_LEON https://t.co/UUnV5REUY6

[Francis Pienaar @francispienaar]

The narrative that filmmaking is reserved for those with privilege and money is a contrived and uniquely American one that we've been trained to believe by years of Marvel. The myth that you need $100m and a crew of 400 to make a film is cope for a lack of purpose and vision.

[Francis Pienaar @francispienaar]

@c_valenzuelab The workflow and pipeline that you describe still ultimately result in a near 1:1 representation of what you point the camera at. In terms of result, it is no less intuitive or direct than the analog method. Nowhere does this synthetically simulate the image reproduction process.

[Francis Pienaar @francispienaar]

There are filmmakers all over the world who will stop at nothing to make a film, regardless of their circumstances, so why argue that the only circumstances under which you yourself would make one, is if someone handed you millions of dollars and a crew of hundreds?

[Francis Pienaar @francispienaar]

The narrative that filmmaking is reserved for those with privilege and money is a contrived and uniquely American one that we've been trained to believe by years of Marvel. The myth that you need $100m and a crew of 400 to make a film is cope for a lack of purpose and vision.

[Francis Pienaar @francispienaar]

There are countless people for whom lack of privilege, fortune, or a safety net, fails to impede or dull the importance of making films. The purpose is to tell stories, and stories must always be told.

[Francis Pienaar @francispienaar]

@hissingchoir From Kurt Vonnegut:

[Francis Pienaar @francispienaar]

@L0m3z In what way do you think the film says that people like this "must" live this way, rather than it simply saying, as you pointed out, that *some* people "do" live this way ?