M. C. Escher and David Lynch

... some very weird similarities...

A drawing of M.S. Escher


I was searching the net for topological spaces, and I ended up looking at M. S. Escher's site. He is a dutch graphic artist curiously interested in incorporating mathematical concepts in his drawings. Upon hitting one of his works, i was immediately disoriented by its form and one filmmaker popped into my mind: David Lynch, or specifically, Inland Empire (2006) which still fascinates me up to this day because of its complex and subjective language. Disorientation is what David Lynch's famous for. The forms of his films are odd and most of its logic are not intact, often loose and distorted. This condition, a surrealist stance they say, is highly manifested in M. S. Escher's works, and one example is the picture above. Whereas David Lynch's surrealist works on alternate universe are continuously transforming, it does not actually have a 'loose' form. It acquires a certain form similar to the drawing above. It is bounded, framed and fixed. It has a certain length, a certain cut, a certain camera movement, and a certain mise-en-scene. In Inland Empire, repetitions were observed as much as were the overlaps in terms of mise-en-scene. Superimposed characters are either one location at a different time or at the same time. This concept of superimposition is, of course, a primary concern of pure mathematics especially in the higher realms of topology where multiple dimensions can be described abstractly. Anyway, have you seen Inland Empire? I recommend you watched it first before clicking the following videos below.

Presenting, David Lynch's Rabbits, a surreal series re-used in Inland Empire (2006) famous for its asynchronous use of sound and image and mysterious narrative.


Episode 1


Episode 2


Episode 3



Ciao!
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