Future Cinema

Holograms

I found this video and thought it was cool. Maybe I’ll make one someday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YWTtCsvgvg

- Oksana Unguryan

Reading Selection from First Person for October 28

The selections from First Person by Noah Wardrup-Fruin we will be discussing is “Game Design as Narrative Architecture” by Henry Jenkins. Most of the book can be fund online, and our particular selection can be found here:

https://methodsandresearch.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/jenkins_narrative_architecture.pdf
- Sarah Voisin

Dream Control

I meant to post this a few weeks ago, but when I was a kid I used to pride myself on my ability to control my dreams. To the extent where I was actually manipulating and changing circumstances in my dreams. Also, when I was kid, I saw a story on 20/20 after T.G.I.F. one night about a dream control mask. The mask somehow monitored your brain, or your eyes for REM, and then emitted a red light to signal your sleeping self that you were dreaming, and therefore should begin thinking about controlling your dream actions. As I’ve said, I’ve now lost this ability to fully control my dreams, but this scenario reminds me of true augmented or virtual reality. There are now numerous websites out there instructing people how to control their dreams, one of which can be seen here: http://www.dreamviews.com/dreamcontrol.php

Ian Bogost

In preparation for next week, Ian Bogost was mentioned in class and I said that I loved his work. Here’s a link to a blog post of his of which I am particularly fond. It discusses game studies and how messy video games can be to study. It’s pretty funny and worth a read.

http://bogost.com/writing/videogames_are_a_mess/

Enjoy!

-Sarah S.

Lev Manovich Soft Cinema

The following are two different video clips of Lev Manovich’s Soft Cinema (following our discussion on Database Cinema):

https://vimeo.com/44602928

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hn-AUJ2NnY

- Erica

Tags: Database Cinema

Summary: N. Kathryn Hayles, Timely Art: Hybridity in New Cinema and Electronic Poetry”

By Aly Edwards

Cinema and literature have a history of co-habitation, evidence of this is found in the multitude of adaptions, translations and transformations from literature to film and vice versa. The digital computer provides a platform for the two mediums to commingle, transforming literary and cinematic practices.

• Hayles expresses the uncertainty in categorizing this practice into the realms of ‘new cinema’ due to its hybridity but it is essential to explore in the context of new cinema theory and practice.

Electronic poetry as heterogeneous: “The aesthetic experiments now underway test a variety of strategies for combining word, image, animation, sound, color and form to provide satisfying artistic experiences in networked and programmable media.”

“The sea in which they all swim is time – time, that is, as it is constructed, programmed and delivered by the digital computer.”

Electronic poetry becomes the amalgamation of temporal cinematic practices (one-way progression through time) and non-interactive poetry redefines reading practices, which is similar to oral poetry, where the pace of poem is determined externally to the reader, i.e. the technology.

Incorporation of loops inscribes poetic writing within a different metaphysic. Technological restraints are also a part of the use of loops, conserving memory space and providing manageable file sizes; internet poses certain difficulties in terms of bandwidth

• demonstrates the outdated nature of this article, since internet technologies in 2015 greatly differ compared to 2003

Cinema versus print poetry:

• Cinema has frames, i.e camera shots.
• Print poetry makes divisions spatially rather than temporally (stanza, line breaks, etc)
  • Yet can poems also take a temporal aspects as well, what about sonnet sequences? Each poem can be comparable to a camera shot.
  • Flash works differently, a new semiotic system “with scenes defined by the beginning and end points of animation sequences that can be paced according to timing algorithm. Moreover, more than one animation sequence can be shown on a given screen, timed so that it overlaps and mingles with other animations.”
    • Necessitates new theoretical language of reader-text relationships as discussed in Morris.

Successful hybridity opposes the tendency of classifications into cinema or literature: “It shows the Flash poem becoming a medium in its own right with its own visual and verbal rhetoric, a production of networked and programmable media that could not be enacted the same way in another other medium.”

Works discussed:

Ingrid Ankerson, Sinking: (http://poemsthatgo.com/gallery/spring2000/sinking/sinkingmain.htm)  traditional poetic form transformed by cinematic techniques; programmed in Flash 4, images and sound act as enhancements to the text.

Hayles would argue that it does not maximize on integrating sound, image and text on equal footing – focuses more on the text enhancement than experimentation with cinematic practices. (Is that not putting limitations on how electronic poetics should be formed?)

Check out the others on the website poemsthatgo.com! Some of them are really fun to play around with.

Rita Raley (article on significance of loops in electronic writing): “Death is the end toward which linear (and multilinear) plots traditionally tend.”

Bruce Smith, Marc Stricklin, His Father in the Exhaust of Engines: strong narrative with evocative images and subtle animation.

(http://archive.bornmagazine.org/His-Father-in-the-Exhaust-of-Engines-2001-author-Bruce-Smith-artist)

Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries, DAKØTA: (www.yhchang.com)  focuses on sound, using cutting words and designing animations to match rhythm of jazz drum.

Stephanie Strickland and M.D. Coverley, Errand upon which we came

“Strickland and Coverley believe that the potential of networked and programmable media should be used to introduce interactivity into electronic literature, practicing a principled rejection of techniques that do not allow the user to determine at least in part, pacing and trajectory.”

John Cayley, riverisland: how cinematic techniques as navigational functionalities to interrogate the relationship between digital nature of language and digital operations of a computer.

“literal art”:  letters as units of meaning on the screen

Questions:

In comparison to last week and the idea of ‘aura’, how would you discuss this aesthetic issue in terms of electronic poetry?

Do you notice any serious gaps in her approach to the new form of poetics?

Do you consider this practice a phenomenon born out of the technological age of the twenty-first century or do you think this is merely a technological progression of previously established poetic practice?

Tags: digital poetry, electronic literature

CLASSROOM LOCATION CHANGING: 239 CFT

Hi everyone,
apologies for the short notice but as of TOMORROW, October 21st, the Future Cinema class will be meeting in the film dept. seminar, rm CFT 239.

For those of you who do not know the campus well, CFT is the building *attached* to our current building, GCFA. It’s a two minute walk. I’ll also post sign, but if you see a friend from our class, do give them the head’s up. thanks!

Thomas Elsaesser “The New Film History as Media Archaeology:

- Nanna Rebekka

Learning Programming

Here’s a link to the Computer Programming module on Khan Academy. Khan Academy uses animation to help students learn code:

https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-programming

Accounts are free! And here’s a link to a site Sarah mentioned to me called CodeAcademy, which teaches code through web design:

https://www.codecademy.com/

Both have courses in HTML,and Khan Academy can leaad you into Java and its derivatives.

~Sarah

Animated poetry and GIF comics

DAK0TA reminded me of fun animated short “Primiti Too Taa” by Ed Ackerman & Colin Morton (Canada, 1986):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuFRz18rMQk

“The film “Primiti Too Taa” is a playful sound poem, where the text jumps to life through animated typing on paper. Visually the film is a concrete poem in motion: choreography. Aurally the film is a sound poem with a printed text: typography. Constructivist poetry meets literal choreography. Primitive sounds meet their typed representation. The film is based on a 45-minute sound poem “Ur-sonate (Sonata for Primitive Sounds)” by Kurt Schwitters. The film is larva in memory of Kurt Schwitters (Artist Poet 1887-1948), under the influence of Norman McLaren.” (CFMDC)

—

And here’s the animated GIF comic I mentioned in class, by French artist Boulet:

Heavy Lights of January

–Alison