Monday, November 12, 2012

Mise en abyme

Setu, who knows many languages and all kinds of amazing things, and also hails from sardine country himself, has filled another gap in my knowledge: the device whereby the lady on the sardine tin is holding a sardine tin with her own image on it, presumably, if one could see, holding a sardine tin with her image on it etc, is known as mise en abyme.  According to Wiki (the link given), it is used to describe 'the visual experience of standing between two mirrors, seeing an infinite reproduction of one's image' as in the painting Las Meninas by Velasquez, but it originally came from heraldry, when a coat of arms contained another coat of arms within it.  It's acquired currency in modern critical theory, and can be used to describe plays within plays, representations of buildings contained within the same buildings themselves - there's one of these in the stained glass in the church in Moncontour - films within films, dreams within dreams even.  It's long been used in packaging and marketing and children are particularly taken with it, and of course it's also related to the theory of fractals.

Setu's own first awareness of it was on the Vache-qui-Rit box, where said Laughing Cow is wearing ear-rings of boxes of cheese with the same image on. My favourite instance of it was in the model village at Bourton-on-the-Water in the English Cotswolds, which was a perfect replica of the actual village at the time, and contained a model of the model village, which in turn contained a model of the model of the model village... not sure if there was a recognisable one within that.

Considering the prevalence of the device and of the term for it, and the importance and interest in it in all manner of circles, I'm rather ashamed not to have known about it before, but I love learning new things (as long as they're nice ones, of course...), and will look out for it now.  It's also brought it yet further to the front of my consciousness that I want to read Borges, whose stories of rooms within rooms, libraries within libraries, reflections of reflections, Setu  said his early diet of La Vache qui Rit prepared him for well !  My sister sent me a copy of The Other Tiger a while back, and lately I've been fascinated by Zoe Blue's strange and beautiful paintings and reflections inspired in part by his work.

Anyway, I wondered how I might try to produce something in the mise en abyme line myself. I was pointing the camera around in the kitchen, particularly at different coloured circular objects with shiny surfaces, thinking I might just do a collage, and it occurred to me one could do a collage within a collage...

I took it to the power of six, so there are five collages contained within the final one. It becomes rather compelling, not least because Picasa will automatically shuffle the images each time, and one has to keep recreating the order, only substituting the last collage made each time in the final space.  I exported and posted it full size, so if you can embiggen it (there's an expression one doesn't hear so much now!) sufficiently, you can perhaps see what I mean.



Rouchswalwe said...

That is just too cool for words!

the polish chick said...

there really is something fractally fanciful about the mise en abyme. thank you for a funky new term with which i can dazzle my fellow cocktail party guests. now if i only had a cocktail party to go to...

Jean said...

Completely love the new term, and your collage!

Natalie d'Arbeloff said...

Yes wonderful,Lucy! Love your collage.

I didn't know that there was a name for it but have always been fascinated by the phenomenon and mise en abyme is the perfect definition. Now I think I might do something with it.
A description of infinity?

As a child I used to stare endlessly at the image on a cereal packet which was of a child holding the cereal packet which....etc.etc.
And the mirror reflections which never end...fantastique!

Lucy said...

Thanks people.

So glad I wasn't the only one who hadn't heard of it, especially with such a polyglot, cosmopolitan and arty readership as I have!

Natalie - so glad you picked it up, and please do something with it, it would suit you down to the ground I reckon! The cereal packet one was hovering in my memory but I couldn't quite remember which cereal it was.

Lucy said...

Actually, meant to say, it would be better with a simpler, four part composition, you'd see more of the disappearing pattern into pattern bit.