Moving in Place: The Question of Distributed Social Cinema
SPECFLIC is an ongoing creative research project directed by Adriene Jenik (2003 – present) in a new storytelling form called The Distributed Social Cinema.
I believe that Jenik has taken the notion of the Russian formalist verfremdungseffekt which, commonly translates as alienation effect, which also has been coined by playwrite Bertolt Brecht which prevents the audience from losing itself passively and completely in the character created by the actor, and which consequently leads the audience to be a consciously critical observer.”[1] Brecht’s term describes the aesthetics of his epic theatre.
As Jenik explain, in a performance or cinema experience, the audience is confined to follow certain rules and expositions. For example, not speaking with one another, or having their mobile phones turned off or to silent mode so and incoming calls does not disrupt the show. Conversely however, Jenik, is quite interested in fusing all of these gadgets together with like tele-matic performance, pre-recorded media elements street performers, and more importantly the audiences social ability to actively be apart of the multi-modal story experience.
Majority of her projects are held in an iconic public space and is free and open to the public. Jenik SPECFLIC focus stories in the near future year of 2030 designed to explore the intersection of digital media, books and reading. It is performed over time and space in layers of media forms. Live performative media and pre-recorded video were projected on multiple surfaces of the library, and the public provided some of the content—via camera phones, text messaging and interaction with performers. [2]
Jenik’s research experiment was a New Form of Cinema Promoted by UC San Diego New-Media Artist at The Martin Luther King Jr. Public Library in San Jose , CA in August of 2006.
The idea of a global infosphere is to take an overwhelming existing amount of information and to be able to share it amongst public by the infospherians who exist to assist in locating the bits of knowledge they need.
The usage of modern technology, which is consumed within the everyday public, comes into play and transforms the usual storytelling from a spectatorship to participation module. Therefore for example, the notion of mobile is a key component in conveying the story via sms (sending and receiving text messages). Thus allowing to further the notion of socially connecting participants with each other. This also alludes to the overwhelming scenario that lays with technology today – an examination of changing dynamics in our relationship with technology.
1 ^ Brecht on Theatre, ed. and trans. John Willett (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964) 91.
2 http://www.calit2.net/newsroom/article.php?id=926