Scripting the invisible
A conversation between Norman M. Klein and Madeleine Aktypi
Madeleine AkTyPI: You have coined the very eloquent term of scripted spaces. In your last book on special effects and their history you put it quite clearly: “by scripted spaces, I mean primarily a mode of perception, a way of seeing*”. So, what could happen when there is nothing to see? When, on the contrary, the script of the space implies an invisible interface and an apparently empty space? How do you script absence as a special effect? Absence as something effective?
Norman M. Klein: An interface may seem invisible or absent, but the audience tends to fill in the blanks, so to speak. The scripting of absence is thus essential not only in architecture, but also in the novel, in cinema. The degree of absence I tend to call an aperture– wider or narrower.
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