January 29, 2005
Jordan Crandall: Drive
It took me awhile to focus on one selection from our vast Future Cinema book, as the notion of narrative filmmaking for computational media still pulsates in my head. When I read an article, my mind wanders and I think of random or tangential ideas associated with the text. Maybe I have ADD. Anyway, one selection that seemed most disturbing and therefore stuck out most was Jordan Crandall’s Drive. It seemed to focus on the difference between motion pictures and tracking devices. He shows a series of 7 films that blend cinematographic conventions with military target-finding technology, tracking systems and pattern recognition programs. The article describes a section of the video (track 6, projectile/gaze) as being presented on two separate screens. One screen is a close up of a man’s eye as he gazes at his subject. The camera picks up on his blinks, in slow motion, and how the eye adjusts each time to what it is seeing. The other screen, which is projected opposite of the first, is found footage of military infrared shots, target lock-on systems, and computer images that are specialized in locating and classifying moving vehicles. The video suggests an increasing militarization of the human gaze. Our ways of seeing are constantly changing based on new technologies that capture images. What was created for the military is now being exposed to the civilian population in a growing demand.
This installation seemed to indicate a disturbing evolution where human beings are becoming more mechanical due to the advancement of technology. This theme is played out all across the arts for generations. It is not an original idea, but this presentation packs a powerful punch using multiple projections.
Posted by mwilliams at 7:26 PM | Comments (1)
January 28, 2005
The Intelligent Image: Neurocinema or Quantum Cinema? (Peter Weibel)
Weibel delineates the technical/perceptual evolution of the cinematic apparatus, making paradigmatic distinction between the ‘classical model’ of cinematography (“the writing of motion”)/external observer and opsigraphy (“the writing of seeing”)/internal observer. The spirit of the latter can be seen in its pre-formalized stage in the work of avant-gardists such as Vertov, who gave us the term “Kinoglaz”, the camera eye. With the advent of video [Latin: I see] it became possible to formalize ‘cyberspace’, where an observer is actually able to observe him/herself. This explosion of classical cinema opens a whole can of worms—Virtual Reality, the Indexical Image (nanotechnological, chemical, and molecular manipulation of the observer/environment relation), Neurocinema (the complete virtualization of perception), and Quantum Cinema (complete breakdown of the observer/environment divide by entangling multiple observers/authors in massive parallel virtual worlds with bi-directional, non-local, artificially intelligent interactivity)—which eventually, in theory, will be a “step toward liberating humanity from the natural prison of space and time.” Spooky.
Posted by ntanaka at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)
Lynn Hershman Leeson: Lorna Teknolust
After browsing through numerous articles in the Future cinema book, I personally found the “TeknoLust” by Lynn Hershman Leeson very interesting. Her experiments using interactivity for film making lets the user participate into her story and gives them choices to form their own narrative. She uses technology to realize her projects which opens a new door with each successive project in Interactive Filmmaking.
In 1979, her first interactive art videodisc called “Lorna” was the first experimentation towards interactive filmmaking to create an experience that uses moving images to defy conventional structure, whether this be the creation of alternate endings to the script and soundtracks. I believe her experimental film “Lorna” has given a new direction towards Interactive cinema with non linear form of story telling. Lorna involves interactive environment, videodisc, monitor, remote control interface; sound, video footage basically a mixed media based system. In this system users can interact and make choices for the videotaped character, Lorna, an agoraphobic woman who has difficulty making choices for her self. Every object in Lorna’s tiny apartment has a number. Pressing each object accesses video and sound information about Lorna’s fears and dreams as well as her history, personal conflicts and possible future. Some of these can be seen backwards, forwards, at increased or decreased speed, and from several perspectives though the footage is only of seventeen minutes.
Her other project called “Deep Contact” was also the first Interactive sexual fantasy videodisc. This piece invites participants to actually touch their “guide” Marion on any part of her body via a touch screen monitor. Adventures develop depending upon which body part is touched. I find such technical and artistic experimentation with installations very important for development of interactive filmmaking.
Posted by ptomar at 9:05 AM | Comments (0)
Future Cinema Spotlight: Marnix de Nijs
While perusing Future Cinema and thinking about our discussion last week about physical interfaces, the entry describing Marnix de Nijs' somewhat irreverently titled work Run Motherfucker Run caught my eye. This piece is an installation consisting of treadmill (physical interface), large video screen, computer controllers and speakers. The viewer runs on the treadmill, a faster pace yields quicker passage through cinematic environment and a brighter image; a slower pace yields a darker image. Immediately connections to horror, heist and thriller genres become apparent. What a fantastic interface for intensifying fear, anxiety and thrill by directly manipulating physiological parameters associated with those emotions (shortness of breath, elevated heart rate, perspiration, etc.)
Much of de Nijs' work “explores the dynamic clash between bodies, machines and other media.” What I find most interesting about de Nijs' use of the viewer's own body as an interface/control device in Run Motherfucker Run is its capacity (here only loosely appropriated) to affect both stylistic and narrative components of the piece. As described in Future Cinema, only two things change with speed on the treadmill: pace through the landscape/environment and brightness of image. Conceivably, parameters could be introduced to affect the timeline of a plot (affecting the meetings of various characters), as well as embedding markers in the film that would control changes in the speed or angle of the treadmill, contesting the viewer's ability to exercise control.
Posted by sruston at 12:41 AM | Comments (1)
January 27, 2005
Speaking today : Dayton Taylor
Dayton Taylor, inventor of the Timetrack camera array, has kindly accepted to come and talk to us today (Friday 28 Jan) after class about some of his secrets and techniques in mutiple-camera visual effects.
Dayton could be called the new Muybridge, as he is one of the leading inventors of camera array based image capture and processing technology. As a master of camera-based visual effects, he will brainstorm with us on how his technologies could be used in the context of interactive media.
Dayton has used his camera arrays with directors such as Michel Gondry, Chris Cunningham, Tony Kaye, and for corporate clients such as Sony, BMW, CBS, AT&T to name just a few; or more recently for the opening sequence of the Olympic Games. His camera sytem has been featured in American Cinematographer, Scientific American, Siggraph.
Dayton has also produced several multimedia pieces for New York based theater director John Jesurun. He has assistant directed and production managed many independent features, documentaries, TV commercials, and music videos. Some of his short films are part of the permanent film collection at the Museum of Modern Art.
Dayton is president of Movia and DigitalAir.
Posted by mlew at 8:29 PM | Comments (0)
January 25, 2005
Future Cinema: The Kinder-Manovich debate
A long section of Future Cinema is devoted to work by USC’s Labyrinth Project, with a theoretical overview by Marsha Kinder and shorter essays on each of the projects included in the show. In her essay, Kinder contrasts her work with Laybrinth to that of Lev Manovich, another theorist-turned-practitioner, whose Soft Cinema project came about in the course of writing his book The Language of New Media. Kinder quotes Manovich as saying that databases exist in opposition to narrative – new media, he argues, are “the new battlefield for the competition between database and narrative.” In contrast, Kinder claims that virtually all stories – like language itself – derive from combinations of narrative elements within a given set of parameters, which is very much in keeping with the way databases function. “Database narrative refers to narratives whose structure exposes or thematizes the dual processes of selection and combination that lie at the heart of all stories…particular data (characters, images, sounds, events) are selected from a series of databases or paradigms, which are then combined to generate specific tales.”
For his part, Manovich claims that the logic of the computer has become the logic of culture at large, arguing that the database should be accorded the stature of a symbolic form on the order of cinema or the novel. For Manovich, there is something more at stake in creating database art than mere narrative. In particular, his work with Soft Cinema attempts – not entirely successfully – to question the ways computers can be used to represent contemporary subjectivity. Manovich argues that this is necessary because of the dissolution of boundaries between the psychological interior and social exterior of today’s distributed subjects. With our “selves” continually scattered across multiple government and corporate databases and surveillance systems, he views the networked computer as a much more powerful metaphor for understanding contemporary identity than the cinematic narrative.
Ultimately, I think they are both right and I would suggest that the debate may be a false one, with both arguments hindered by the overinscription of film history in their respective positions. Where Manovich bears an unhealthy attachment to Vertov’s Man With a Movie Camera as the ur-text of new media, Kinder claims to find examples of database narratives throughout cinema history, while clearly drawing her primary inspiration from European modernists such as Bunuel and Marker. As a lover of cinema myself, I am similarly tempted to use film and video as a way of thinking about new media – but I sometimes wonder if, when doing so, we gain certain kinds of insight at the expense of others and ultimately risk anchoring ourselves to the critical frameworks of the previous century.
Posted by sanderson at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
January 21, 2005
Zbig Rybczynski
Zbigniew Rybczynski [RIB-CHIN-SKI] is a precursor of computational film, an avant-garde Polish version of Michel Gondry. His experimentations from the 70s/80s (I recommend volume I) are out of this world and should be great inspiration for your final projects - his ideas can be readily applied to computational filmmaking. Oscar-winning Tango is a masterpiece. The ninefold split-screen New Book was a precursor of Mike Figgis' Timecode (and is much more successful).
Posted by mlew at 10:35 PM | Comments (0)
Peter Greenaway's Cinema Militans
I recommend you read Peter Greenaway's Cinema Militans lecture. It summarizes a lot of the issues he usually deals with during his talks.
His current project is the Tulse Luper Suitcase, which takes the form of 3 feature films premiered last October in Montréal, an installation, a collection of web sites, online games, books and multiple DVDs.
Posted by mlew at 10:19 PM | Comments (0)
Welcome to this blog
Welcome to the blog of the Narrative filmmaking for computational media class.
Posted by mlew at 10:16 PM | Comments (0)