Future Cinema

Questions about the Digital Baroque…

A key difference between human (i.e. personal) memory and the “memory” of an archival mediatic object is that personal memory is fully furnished with context, whereas mediatic memory is almost always denuded of its original context (e.g. this). What are the various possibilities and dangers of this ahistorical and, arguably, superficial mediatic memory?

Does the Baroque characteristic of “pil[ing] up fragments ceaselessly, without any strict idea of a goal” (Benjamin, quoted in Murray 2008, 7) imply that certain fragments will be buried and lost forever (the amnesia of the Baroque)? What happens in the event of a landslide of these fragments—what would that look like, and what would the consequences be?

Films shot in 1st-person POV…

A couple of trailers for your perusal:

The Lady in the Lake (1947)

Hardore Henry (2016)

Would you rather…

This is a fun question, but I think somewhat pertinent, and might open some personal thoughts on your views about VR.

In the article “8 classic films to learn from now that virtual reality is real,” most of the films have a sense of ‘dystopianness’. And yet, they might nevertheless be fun to live in!
So, my question is, which one would you choose? The manipulatable ‘Matrix’? The ability to experience the “physical and visual memories of others” in ‘Strange Days?’ Or perhaps the body modification-as-plug in from ‘eXistenZ’?

2167 virtual reality works

http://www.imaginenative.org/2167/

imagineNATIVE Film & Media Arts Festival

2167

IMAGINENATIVE INVITES YOU TO EXPERIENCE THE FUTURE

imagineNATIVE, in partnership with TIFF, Pinnguaq and the Initiative for Indigenous Futures (IIF), present 2167, an innovative virtual reality and immersive media project. Five Indigenous filmmakers and artists have been commissioned to create five VR works in 2017, with each artist asked to set their work 150 years in the future.

The idea for this project was born out of a love of science fiction and alternate realities. Often Indigenous people are seen as stuck in the past; the 2167 project takes a very deliberate leap forward in time and we get to see artistic visions about Indigenous place in the future. In a year that in many ways commemorates a very complex history for Indigenous people, this project celebrates the decades to come and our role in shaping a new future for Canada.

Award-winning filmmaker Danis Goulet, Indigenous Canadian artists Kent Monkman and Scott Benesiinaabandan and the interdisciplinary arts collective Postcommodity bring their own vision of the future in two- to six-minute virtual reality experiences.

Three works premiered at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in June 2017, and the two remaining during imagineNATIVE in October 2017 (also at TIFF Bell Lightbox), as part of TIFF’s sesquicentennial initiative called Canada on Screen. The 2167 project in partnership with TIFF and with support of Ontario 150 and Heritage Canada will reach audiences across the country with a travelling tour until the end of 2017.

EXHIBITION DETAILS
Location: TIFF Bell Light Box Atrium, 350 King Street West

Festival Hours: October 17, 10am – 6pm | October 18–21, 9:00am – 9:30pm | October 22, 9:00am – 7:00pm

DROP-IN VIEWING
October 23 – December 31, 2017 | 12pm-3pm and 4pm-8pm Thursday-Saturday | 12pm-3pm and 3:30pm-6pm on Sunday

FREE
2167 | NATIONAL TOUR: OCT 25 – DEC 21
EXPERIENCES
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EACH BRANCH DETERMINED
POSTCOMMODITY
Imagining northern New Mexico 150 years in the future, where American Indian and Xicano pueblos work collaboratively to exercise communal and regional self-determination, Each Branch Determined echoes sci-fi conventions of an apocalyptic future that gradually reveal themselves to be a series of managed processes intended to restore and manage the land and its resources, as well as community ceremonies seeking to culturally and socially actuate past, present and future. 6 min.
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Postcommodity is an interdisciplinary arts collective based in the Southwestern United States and comprised of Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez and Kade L. Twist. The collective operates through a shared Indigenous lens that engages the assaultive manifestations of the global market. Through Indigenous narratives of cultural self-determination, Postcommodity braces against the ever-increasing velocities and complex forms of violence that have colonized the 21st century.
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BLUEBERRY PIE UNDER THE MARTIAN SKY
SCOTT BENESIINAABANDAN
Bringing to life a prophetic Anishinabe legend about a young boy who travels through a wormhole back to his people’s place of origin, Blueberry Pie Under the Martian Sky also addresses concerns about the revitalization, growth and evolution of the Anishinabe language. 5 min.
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Scott Benesiinaabandan is an Anishinabe intermedia artist that works primarily in photography, video, audio and printmaking. He has completed international residencies at Parramatta Artist Studios in Australia, Context Gallery in Derry, North of Ireland, and University Lethbridge/Royal Institute of Technology iAIR residency, along with international collaborative projects in both the United Kingdom and Ireland. Scott is currently based in Montreal.

THE HUNT
DANIS GOULET
The Hunt imagines a postwar North America in 2167 that lies in ruin, where the law is enforced by a fleet of automated orbs that patrol the skies. When an orb interferes with a man and his son on a goose hunt on sovereign Mohawk territory, it forces an altercation. 6 min.
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Danis Goulet is an award-winning filmmaker whose short films have screened at festivals around the world, including the Toronto International Film Festival, Sundance, Aspen Shortsfest, imagineNATIVE and Berlin International Film Festival. In 2013, her film Barefoot was recognized with a Special Mention from the Berlin International Film Festival Generation 14plus international jury and her film Wakening screened before the Opening Night Gala at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. She is an alumnus of the National Screen Institute’s Drama Prize Program and TIFF Talent Lab.
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HONOUR DANCE
KENT MONKMAN
Honour Dance is a virtual reality experience based on a 2008 five-channel video installation by Kent Monkman, Dance to the Berdashe. Set in a verdant meadow at magic hour, Honour Dance offers a contemporary re-interpretation of a traditional Indigenous ritual featuring the “Berdashe”, a gender-bending figure whose behaviour and very existence astonished and appalled European explorers of North America.

Virile Dandies from the four directions invigorate the Berdashe with the vitality of their honour dance. Through this reciprocal and performative rite, the Dandies and Berdashe renew each other’s spirits, thereby refuting their obfuscation by colonial forces and Primitivism’s reductive pillaging of Indigenous cultures. 5 min.
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Kent Monkman is a Canadian artist of Cree ancestry who is well known for his provocative reinterpretations of romantic North American landscapes. Themes of colonization, sexuality, loss and resilience – the complexities of historic and contemporary Indigenous experience – are explored in a variety of mediums, including painting, film/video, performance and installation.

INFO@IMAGINENATIVE.ORG
WWW.IMAGINENATIVE.ORG

(C) 2016 imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival

Question for class, Oct. 25

In his writing on cinema in the age of the digital baroque, Murray sees digital aesthetics as promising an “enhanced zone of interactivity through which the users’ entry into the circuit of artistic presentation simulates or projects their own associations, fantasies, and memories in consort with the artwork” (98). Is this result of inhabiting “the fold” unique to the new type of new digital art explored in the book, or do traditional artworks (especially cinema) also invite and encourage this kind of active engagement from/with their viewers?

And what do you make of his use of the term “user” for those who view these works?

Tags: digital aesthetics, Murray

Chris Marker’s “Immemory” CD-ROM

Get it while it’s hot! The file is .NRG format, for the old Windows-based burning application Nero. There are various ways, though, to convert it to more current formats, including .ISO—just do a quick online search and you’ll find a solution!

Digital Baorque Part III and IV / Summary & Questions

Behind the complexity that is the digital baroque, and past Murray’s use of historical, cultural, and philosophical jargon, Digital Baroque is an explanation and examination of new media arts, temporal folds, and the past, present and future potential of cinema. Murray writes “The digital Baroque will be discussed as enfolding the user in the energetic present, as articulated in relation to the analog past while bearing on the digital future” (7). In my interpretation of Murray’s text, he provides an in-depth analysis of digital art and its takings from the Baroque period. From Part III to Part IV, Murray traces the transformation of the cinema, from its claimed death to its return in a very different, more philosophical and interactive form.

In Part III Murray discusses the claim that many have had about the death of cinema. Murray, taking the opposing side, highlights the possibility of the return of the cinema with new possibilities and potential. In this part, Murray discusses melancholy of the baroque period and its appearance in experimental art through the themes of loss, trauma, and mourning.

In chapter 5, Murray discusses the cinematic concept of code and craft. He writes “might the promise of digital art dwell somewhere in the in-between, in the interstitial zone between the binaries that are shared by our cinematic, critical, and digital heritages: code and craft” (141). He situates digital baroque as always in between, between two things because it does not fully belong to either binary. After many rhetorical questions about the cinema, its demise and return, Murray implies the continuation and potential of the cinema as it carries on the code in the digital realm through baroque-esk themes. Through a review of various projects of digital art, Murray explores melancholy as illustrated through new media and expresses his contention for interactive media.

Murray discusses Keith Piper’s works by explaining that, instead of viewing Piper’s CD-ROM as a diminished piece of art, it must be viewed by its relevance to new media. Murray writes “it is within the journey of interactivity that the user of Piper’s CD-ROM is situated in ‘the in between’ in the toggle effect, between the history of colonialism and its mime, between the object of technological interface and the subject representing racial, cultural, and national specificity and difference” (152). Murray makes the point of highlighting this potential of new media, to frame issues of social and cultural importance as often unrepresented in other forms of passive media.

Murray progresses with his discussion of trauma and loss represented in new media, with a look into Chris Marker’ Level 5 and the ability of new media arts to represent history in a way that is generally not shown. Marker’s inclusion of a personal narrative, that of Laura’s, within a historically significant context, promotes Murrays’ hope of digital arts to fold the viewer within the layers of the project while providing a more realistic approach to illustrating history.  Murray applauds Marker’s film for representing trauma in the kind of “in-between” that is the digital baroque, and additionally, a form that colludes the fictional with the historical and social. The blur of fiction and reality somehow allows the viewer to experience the story from a new perspective.

In chapter 7 and 8, Murray elaborates on his proposal of a “psychophilosophical” approach to art in the digital age and his theory of the folding of past, present and the future. Through explorations of digital installations, CD-ROMS, and other digital arts, Murray discusses the theme of becoming and the interactivity of new media.

In part IV Murray explores the future of cinema for new media arts. Murray discusses further, the different temporal states in which cinema and new media exist. Murray writes “Deleuze’s approach to cinema is guided by his rather simple formula of cinematic time, or time’s subjectivity: ‘it is in the present that we make a memory, in order to make use of it in the future when the present will be past” (240). This simple formula guided traditional cinematic code that new media tends to distance itself from. Murray continues by claiming “the body or shape of time, the event within which we find ourselves, is itself something of a phantom oscillating between the not yet and no longer, virtual but graspable in the actual. Deleuze insists that this phantom has been fundamental to cinema, haunting it and its spectators, until the arrival, that is, of “modern cinema” which has given form to the virtual image of time.” (240). Here, Murray refers to the cinema’s approach to preserving memory and projecting the “present past,” while also referring to the idea of digital media being capable of passing this temporal bound. In terms of time, Murray prioritizes the ability of digital media to manipulate time and thus manipulate the way users interact with such media.

Murray concludes by explaining the ability of digital media art to violate the traditions of the formal screen, and make possible a different, less restricted screen (243). Murray explores various digital art to support his claims of the future of cinema. Murray speaks of Jill Scott’s interactive series Frontiers of Utopia by saying “Scott’s complex new media events call on the sites of history, the projects of science, and the various possibilities of multimedia to solicit the users to participate collectively in her new media environments” (249). Participation is key in new media art and the ability of the user to fold themselves within the complexity of architectural layers adds a profound dimension to the viewing of cinema. The breaking of the traditional screen and the space for interactivity opens up the door for virtual reality and other forms of digital technology to change the way the viewer experiences narrative. Murray’s text is a complex exploration of temporal folds that inevitably alter the way we view cinema.

Questions for discussion:

1. Murray writes “In an interesting way, Deleuze positions new media at the interval of cinematic time, as the carrier of both cinema’s passing and its future” (241). Do you believe cinema and new media art can coexist? Is it possible for cinema to still exist as a form of expression, even with the rise of digital technology? What conditions must be met/kept for cinema to still hold ground in the digital age?

2. While discussing the shift of art to the digital realm, does this tend to lose its significance in translation? Can art still hold its meaning when transcribed and portrayed through technology?

From the Guardian: “Empathy – the latest gadget Silicon Valley wants to sell you”

An interesting, critical take on the current push to frame VR as the “ultimate empathy machine” (Cf. Chris Milk).

“Tech needs the myth of the empathy machine for two related reasons: to enhance VR’s reputation, and to expand its audience.”

Questions for discussion: Digital Baroque

1.) Does the constant production and consumption of the digital age enhance culture or detract from it?
2.) How can Murray’s concept of the digital baroque enlighten future cinema production such as virtual reality?
3.) How does digital, which is binary by nature, have folds?

Presentation on Digital Baroque: New Media Art and Cinematic Folds – Preface to Part II

In the rich and complicated Digital Baroque: New Media Art and Cinematic Folds, Timothy Murray conjoins paradoxical terms — digital and baroque — and suggests they are intricately linked. These terms represent artistic genres or categories, as well as periods of time: digital as current, often interactive, and electronic; and baroque as historical, ornate, and sculptural, often suggesting movement through dramatic effects. As with any genre, these terms frame audience expectations and the we way in which the work is interpreted. By considering the ways in which these two styles overlap, Murray encourages a ‘panoramatic’ interpretation of new media art which he describes as characteristic of the Baroque, encouraging both visual and spatial engagement with the work (Murray, 2008: 10).
Interested in “the extent of the interface between recent projects in the electronic arts and the public memory of early modern art, culture, and philosophy” (Murray, 2008: x), Murray explores several digital artworks — digital films, video installations, and interactive media — and considers the ways our interpretation of these works could be enriched if read as Baroque. Offering philosophical insight into new media art and its dialogue with baroque art, Murray proposes a shift toward a new paradigm for viewing and interpreting digital art that reflects the Deleuzian concept of the fold as developed in The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (Deleuze, 1993: 6):
A flexible or an elastic body [that] still has cohering parts that form a fold, such that they are not separated into parts of parts but are rather divided to infinity in smaller and smaller folds that always retain a certain cohesion. Thus a continuous labyrinth is not a line dissolving into independent points, as flowing sand might dissolve into grains, but resembles a sheet of paper divided into infinite folds or separated into bending movements, each one determined by the consistent or conspiring surroundings.
The notion that insides and outsides are not separate, but rather are part of the same fabric, provides an interesting entry point to analyzing phenomena, particularly in the multifaceted digital arts. Applying this Deleuzian psychophilosophical approach of the fold to digital art, Murray steers us away from linear models of projection and readings to a nonlinear, temporal approach he describes as intrinsic to the digital form. Although Deleuze speaks of the fold as it applies to Baroque art, Murray argues that the interactive nature of digital art provides particularly prime conditions for the fold — where meaning accumulates through the active participation of the audience.
Understanding the concept of the fold to suggest that projection (of art) is not the end point but rather, that meaning is generated through the in-between space the fold provides, Murray discusses the digital baroque as “enfolding the user in the energetic present, as articulated in relation to the analog past while bearing on the digital future” (Murray, 2008: 7). Shifting the paradigm through which new media art is viewed, Murray encourages a folded structure in which the artist and audience touch on past, present, and future in their interaction with the work. An audience experiences the work in the present, while the artist’s work is both influenced by and influences understanding of the past, as well as has an effect on the future.
This interest in temporal, nonlinear modes is reflected in the four defined parts of the book: From Video Black to Digital Baroque; Digital Deleuze: Baroque Folds of Shakespearean Passage; Present Past: Digitality, Psychoanalysis, and the Memory of Cinema; and Scanning the Future. These parts do not address time or temporal space as mutually exclusive, and the book itself ultimately embodies or performs the fold in its structure. Encouraging a teleological reading, Murray states that the book must be “folded and unfolded in the process of reading” (Murray, 2008: 26). At times repeating lines of text and referring both backward and forward, Murray mirrors his commentary on the archive and proposed “shift away from centered subjectivity to energized information relay” (Murray, 2008: 46). Throughout these four parts, Murray provides thorough analysis of numerous digital artworks to which he applies his theory of the digital baroque.
In Part I: From Video Black to Digital Baroque, Murray examines video installations as manifestations of the archive — demonstrating an accumulation of, and interaction with, visual and digital information. In Chapter 1, Viola’s large-scale sound and video installation The Crossing (1996) is discussed in great detail, as an example of the power of reference to past and future in digital representations or the “dissonant multiplicity of representation” (Murray, 2008: 49). The Crossing projects two videos of a man side-by-side on a large screen, and works within a common theme for Viola — transcendence. The man appears from a darkened background and walks forward until he fills the screen. He then stands still and on either side of the screen, one man is engulfed by fire while the other is saturated by water. Once the fire and water subside, the videos return to darkness again and the cycle repeats.
Murray points to the many connections he sees between this work and the concept of the digital baroque, describing in particular the role of the viewer, who must move around the space in order to see both video images in the installation. Through this movement, the viewer is “positioned in the undulating fold of the in-between” (Murray, 2008: 55) — in a temporal place of becoming. And again in the theme of cycles, Murray examines Kuntzel’s digital video installation The Four Seasons (Plus or Minus One) (1993), inspired by Poussin’s series of paintings. Kuntzel’s installation makes use of play with light and body to situate viewers between scenes in a place where they “act out and embody the interval between narrative and affect” (Murray, 2008: 70). What are the potentials of this powerful middle space in terms of immersive cinema?
Murray links Deleuze and Shakespeare in Part II: Digital Deleuze: Baroque Folds of Shakespearean Passage, specifically looking at how the concept of the fold can frame and further enhance works by filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard and Peter Greenaway. Murray argues that Godard’s King Lear (1987) shifts audience perspective by throwing them into a gap between the classic and modern versions. The repositioning of the text disrupts the audience point-of-view. Moreover, Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books (1991) — the story of The Tempest — considers the baroque concept of the archive and how our sharing of memories from this archive provides an endless return in what Murray describes as the “baroque crisis of property in the social field” (Murray, 2008: 28). This relates back to Murray’s earlier discussion around cycles which, along with serialization are symptomatic of digital culture.
By amplifying the connections between the baroque and the digital, and encouraging an enfolded approach to interpreting new media art, Murray offers interesting pathways toward understanding and conceptualizing future cinemas. His approach is supported by Munster’s comments on the digital and the baroque, which also apply Deleuze’s theory of the baroque fold to enhance interpretation of the digital. As she explains, “thinking through the baroque as an unfolding ongoing event allows us to see its virtual and actual relations to computational culture and therefore to understand culture according to new modalities” (Munster, 2011: 41). This perception complements Murray’s and further emphasizes the benefits of a paradigm shift toward understanding new media through the concept of the fold.

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