'Infinite Jest (V?)': the auto-wobble neonatal lens — the optics-to-auteur arc culminates; the archival crux

pivotal · YTSDB (2004)

• When: YTSDB (2004); some archivists file it under YTMP as completion of IJ(IV) — as printed; JOI's death "during its post-production"
• What: The oeuvre's terminus, and its optics literally coming home. Per Joelle's account of the shoot, the camera was fitted with a lens "Jim called I think an auto-wobble" — an eye-stalk-like, ball-and-socket-jointed lens he made himself ("He made all his own"), which she has "no doubt... was supposed to reproduce an infantile visual field" (178, hedged as her recollection); the filmography's own trace of the same fact is West-Coast archivists citing "radical experiments in viewers' optical perspective and context" as IJ(V?)'s distinctive feature. The lens-maker of event 1 ends on the ultimate lens. Sole credit "'Madame Psychosis'; no other definitive data." Two Cartridge Quarterly East essays call it "extraordinary" and his "most entertaining and compelling work"; the archival record splits — completed and privately willed (Tête-Bêche) vs unfinished/unseen/destroyed, its Master "either destroyed or vaulted sui testator" (and see event 20). Which cartridge is "the" Entertainment (IJ(IV) vs (V?)) and whether it was ever finished are the thread's central open cruxes. See Joelle's timeline (event 28) (the filming), event 32 (the sole credit); the samizdat thread (the buried Master).