Learning outcomes

We live in a society rich in images and visual content. These images convey messages, nurturing and changing our outlook on the world and on ourselves.
They do this both through composition and through the content of what they represent, be it paintings, a YouTube video or a film.
Since the birth of the study of composition, together with the recent studies of visual culture, we have begun to ask questions that not only concern the aesthetics of the images, but also ethics: who looks at these images? What do they represent and how are they read by others?
Knowing how to compose - and therefore how to read - an image is the way to understand how we see the world and how we see ourselves.

Program

In the first part we will work starting from the observation and reading of some paintings, their composition, their structure and their representation, from Kandinskij to Caravaggio, passing through De Chirico and Paolo Uccello. From these we will draw a line, a union, between the essential unity of the paintings to that of the audiovisual and cinema: the image, the frame.
In particular, we will work on the concept of composition, of the construction of spatial relationships, of a supporting structure: lasting images, which are able to resist the gaze of those who live and read them.
Thus we will see that a large part of the aesthetic composition is not only built on lines or geometries. But above all on the internal movements of the images, movements given by the gestures of the characters and the breath of their bodies. These gestures, both in paintings and in cinema, are generators of an internal tension.

Second part - Ethics
What do we mean by ethics when we talk about film framing? The ethics of the gaze is necessarily based on the relationship with the viewer. It refers to society, culture, the history of the beholder and of those who built that image: there are multiple ethics, just as there are multiple spectators.
Building an ethical relationship with the viewer, with those who look at us, means giving the viewer freedom of choice, letting his eye space freely within the frame. Do not try to represent reality, but look for one's own reality in what we represent.
And when one image is placed next to another, what role does ethics play? Can we consider film editing in a frame with a tension between several characters ethical?


When we create an image that is both ethical and aesthetic, we create a potentially infinite image, within which everyone can be free and free to roam, to navigate with their gaze in search of their own truth.

Examination Methods

Contextual processing of the skills acquired during the workshop