35 mm, 7' 1971
Test I is a non-camera film made by directly manipulating film stock. The artist took a length of overexposed film and manually punctured several dozen holes in it. Shining through the holes, the light of the projector produces strong concentric outbursts of light on the screen, at an accelerating pace, and is further enhanced by the acoustic impact of the soundtrack, which was made by scratching sound spots directly onto the film stock.
In the film, which attacked the viewers with sharp light, testing their perceptual habits, Robakowski explored both the rudimentary, material/technological conditions of the filmic medium as well as the physiological dependencies of perceptual mechanisms. He was informed by the optical phenomenon of afterimages as described by one of the leaders of the Polish pre-war avant-garde, Władysław Strzemiński, in his Theory of Vision. In Test I, employing the explosive energy of light, the phenomenon of afterimage perception connected the relationships of the reception of ‘pure film form’ with physiological rather than psychological factors.
In the 1970s, screenings of Test I were often accompanied by performances where Robakowski used mirrors to direct projector light back towards the audience. During the 5th Experimental Film Festival in Knokke-Heist in 1974, he set up a ladder in front of the screen and reflected projector light in various directions from it using a mirror. Provoked by his visual ‘assault’, audience members shot back with camera flashes.
