Duration 1.50

"Bewick Fallcaster, pivotal figure for the Fallcaster family, provides the opportunity to consider the effects of the VUE on a family as opposed to an individual. Bewick himself has gone missing and is built up out of hearsay, rumour and official report. His disappearance cements the rest of the extended family and clues to his whereabouts provide an opportunity to project a series of slides whose identity seems associated with a list of bird-conscious song-titles. The projection of slides is a recurring convention - one of the slide images throws up a figure whom the VUE Commission appear to use as one of ten pseudonymous identities offered to VUE victims sensitive to the use of his or her own identity in public. The identity also appears to be that of Appropinquo Fallcatti, an unsuccessful bird-image manipulator who thought to ingratiate Tulse Luper by flattery. Bewick (Swan) Fallcaster introduces a glancing reference to the classic man-into-bird metamorphosis through divine intervention - the Leda and the Swan, Castor and Pollux born-in-an-egg mythology. Suffering from a characteristic VUE tinnitus, Bewick is seen to be instrumental in the manufacture of the VUE anthem, for he is obliged to mask the tinnitus insistence by a composition of ninety-two parts." - Peter Greenaway, The New Social Function of Cinema, BFI, 1981

Bewick Fallcaster is a name of convenience for which the Directory Commissioners are responsible, only knowing at the time of the first edition the maiden name of his wife. Since there have been no objections from himself or his family, the name has been ratified and is legal.

Seven days after the VUE, Bewick registered himself as a VUE victim at Zagreb. He was suffering from intermittent amnesia, a singing migraine, ravenous appetite and decalcification of the teeth. Fouteen days after the VUE, Bewick was in Budapest, where he described an incipient VUE tinnitus to a radio-engineer who attempted to convey the nature of the condition with a tape recording. To mask the insistent repetitious sound which never left him, Bewick composed ninety-two variations on his tinnitus theme and at night, to help him sleep, he played them back to himself through headphones. Bewick sent his family money, fragments of taped music and slides. The money was in different currencies and the music was always recorded in the neutral spaces of a studio, so it was to the photographic slides that Bewick's family turned to search for clues of Bewick's whereabouts and state of mental and physical health.

When asked why Bewick didn't return to his family, Bewick's wife had four possible answers. A change in name obliterated a sense of place. Bewick Fallcaster is dead and the money, taped music and slides are sent by an imposter - perhaps on behalf of the FOX. Tinnitus might be contagious. Bewick Fallcaster was busy collecting music for an extensive and encyclopaedic work of biography.