Bolas · department of dramaturgical crash testing
132 vignettes for three dummies (Bola, Shim and little Dot) in a measured bay. Each one is a small piece of drama and a crash test: a letter opened, a hand on a shoulder, a hug, a heavy door, a trip on the stairs. The last 32 are the Acting Arena challenges, each run as a complete acted situation. The instruments report what a camera would miss: where the weight is, whether planted feet slide or face the wrong way, whether a hand actually lands where it was sent, and whether one body passes through another. Green triangles mark a body resting on something other than its feet. A second film, CINEOSIS, performs the 45 signs of Deleuze's cinema books, after David Deamer's taxonomy, over 59 more measured worlds (the Cineosis filter); each sign is its own shot list of cameras, cuts, mirrors and time maps over those worlds.
How the checks work. Weight: the centre of mass (including anything heavy being carried) is dropped to the floor and must sit inside the polygon of everything holding the body up: heel, ball and toe points on the floor or on a seat, step or crate, plus knees, hands, elbows and a seated pelvis resting on a surface, and hands braced on furniture or another body. While walking the polygon is taken over a short window, because a walk is a controlled fall. Hanging by the hands counts as supported. Feet: a planted heel or ball may not move more than 0.6 cm in a frame; the left foot must stay on the left; a planted foot may not face more than 65 degrees away from the hips; a leg that cannot reach its foot is flagged. Hands: a hand sent to a body or a prop handle must arrive within 2 cm; it may not sit inside a torso it was not sent to; forearms may not pass through each other; an arm may stretch to 1.12 times its length and no further. A hand never follows what it is carrying: it holds still against the chest instead. Bodies: two torsos or two heads may not overlap, and no body part may enter a prop marked solid (a wall, a door, a beam, a crate). Props: a prop changing hands is taken where it is and may not jump; a full cup may not be jerked harder than 0.45 cm per frame squared or tipped past 20 degrees. A test can declare a flag it means to cause, like the slide in a skid, and that flag is then reported as information.