Digital Cinema

The Gap Between 1 and O: Digital Video and the Omissions of Film History

by Jan-Christopher Horak

Shakespearean Heritage and the Preposterous “Contemporary Jacobean” Film: Mike Figgis’s Hotel

by Pascale Aebischer

Continuity in Technological Change: A Political Economic Analysis of Digital Film Exhibition

by Benjamin Birkinbine

Datamoshing and the emergence of digital complexity from digital chaos

by William Brown

Co-authored with Meetali Kutty, published in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 18:2 (May 2012), pp. 165-176.

In this essay, we explore the aesthetic possibilities that are opened up by datamoshing, a practice whereby... more In this essay, we explore the aesthetic possibilities that are opened up by datamoshing, a practice whereby audiovisual artists actively downgrade the quality of digital images in order to render a more ‘raw’ aesthetic on screen. We follow this up by exploring the ways in which datamoshing as a practice (together with ‘glitch art’ more generally) highlights the decay that digital images undergo over time. Because it takes place through the deliberate compression of images, we here argue that the aforementioned loss of quality is an ‘artistic’ form of entropy, which leads us to the possibility for a theory of ‘digital chaos’. However, since the loss of data is reworked by artists in order to create new forms, we argue that this is a form of digital ‘emergence’ of ‘order out of chaos’, or ‘digital complexity’.

Joe Swanberg, Intimacy and the Digital Aesthetic

by Aymar Jean Christian

'LOL' (Joe Swanberg, 2006) is a product of Internet and early twenty-first-century cultures. Responding to its time,... more 'LOL' (Joe Swanberg, 2006) is a product of Internet and early twenty-first-century cultures. Responding to its time, the film posits a distinct vision and artistic practice, one espousing a digital aesthetic intended to create a radical sense of intimacy.

Bergson’s Challenge: Theorizing a "Non-Cinematographic" Cinema

by Jeremy Heilman

MA Thesis

Fedeltà al dispositivo, tensione al supporto - La bassa definizione digitale sul grande schermo

by yu. la.

Gli spettatori sanno oggi riconoscere tanti standard qualitativi di un'immagine quanti sono i mezzi in grado di... more Gli spettatori sanno oggi riconoscere tanti standard qualitativi di un'immagine quanti sono i mezzi in grado di acquisirle e trasmetterle. La bassa definizione digitale è oggi caratterizzata da alcune tensioni interne, coerenti con un momento in cui la scelta del digitale si integra ed investe tutte le fasi del film. Il saggio tenta di fissare alcuni punti sull'estetica LD/lo-fi -specificatamente nel cinema concepito per il grande schermo- e alla sua "promessa di realtà" in particolare riferimento ai mezzi portatili di registrazione e di video-sorveglianza.

Per un abstract sullo speciale "LD - Estetiche della Bassa definizione" cui il saggio fa parte rimando a
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.segnocinema.it%2Farchivio%2FSegnoSpeciale172.pdf

Native Images: (De-)Othering Animated Bodies

by Adam Davis

Hollywood&s film wars with France

by Jens Ulff-Moller

Remediation and Cineliteracy: An Approach to Recent Popular Film

by David Surman

Surman, D. 2003. "Remediation and Cineliteracy: An Approach to Recent Popular Film", CILECT Conference proceedings, Cardiff, UK.

Notes on the developing aesthetics of digital technology and its effects on transmedial disciplines

by Terry Flaxton

This paper was given at the World University Network Symposium, Technologies of Transmediality, held by the University of Bristol between thursday 6th and Saturday 8th January 2011, organised by Professors Street and Jones of University of Bristol.

In the center of the is paper there is a short clip from delivered at TED by Blaise Aguera y Arcas which can be accessed here where you can find the ful presentation (in this paper only 3 minutes were used). The full TED talk is 7.33 and well worth a view.

http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photosynth.html

I will try to upload a video version of this paper shortly.

The conference discussed ideas of transmediality and Intermediality and the final session approached the concept that the digital realm could be thought of, using a quantum metaphor, as having both particle and wave functions - that what it can be described as is dependent on which of its properties you want to know, and from where you, the observer, are positioned.

This paper draws upon the realms of both myth and neuro-science to investigate how developing digital technologies... more This paper draws upon the realms of both myth and neuro-science to investigate how developing digital technologies affect cross-disciplinary and transmedial practice. I examine current scientific arguments around the energy of the gaze and the concept of entrainment (the property that enables pendulum clocks to automatically swing together in synchronicity). I then examine if it is within the boundary between the two ideas whether the transmedial qualities of each might render something new of each-other or whether in fact the concept of a ‘boundary’ has become inappropriate in the post-digital age. As the audience observe together, they like Echo and Narcissus are caught in feedback-loops which raises issues concerning the fragility of exchange and entrainment between the maker and audience.

HD Aesthetics

by Terry Flaxton

Published in Convergence Magazine, 2011

Professional expertise derived from developing and handling higher resolution technologies now challenges academic... more Professional expertise derived from developing and handling higher resolution technologies now challenges academic convention by seeking to reinscribe digital image making as a material process. In this article and an accompanying online resource, I propose to examine the technology behind High Definition (HD), identifying key areas of understanding to enable an enquiry into those aesthetics that might derive from the technical imperatives within the medium. (This article is accompanied by a series of online interviews entitled A Verbatim History of the Aesthetics, Technology and Techniques of Digital Cinematography. To access this please go to http://www.flaxton.btinternet.co.uk/KTV.htm This resource seeks to circumscribe and circumlocute the wide variety of interests and usages of incoming digital media with specific relation to the effects of increased definition being offered by incoming digital technologies). Having discussed the aesthetics of HD I will then proceed to look at the consequent artistic and cultural implications. The article con- cludes by challenging the current academic position of the digital as being inherently immaterial.

The Creation of Digital Art in a Post Digital World

by Terry Flaxton

Given at the Athens Conference for Mass Communication, May 2011

As far back as the introduction of the Greek myths – and specifically that of Echo and Narcissus (where Echo is Sound... more As far back as the introduction of the Greek myths – and specifically that of Echo and Narcissus (where Echo is Sound and Narcissus is image) appreciation of the nature of art has been derived from archaic and classical values that promote the idea of interpretation as a meaningful metric of the value of an idea or an object. In his ‘Poetics’, Aristotle posited that diegesis (Echo) is the reporting or narration of events, contrasted with mimesis (Narcissus) which is the imitative representation of them: the distinction is often cast as that between ‘showing’ and ‘telling’. Together with discrimination and comprehension, both of these functions are part of the mechanism of interpretation. When Gutenburg created the printing press which enabled the beginnings of the mass production of text, the concept of reading and interpreting gained even greater historical purchase due to the encoding of meaning in actual objects: books. ‘Interpretation’ was given even greater power within the rise of modernism with the intervention of the Frankfurt School, which fore-grounded the idea of the ‘interpretation’ of art as meaningful and significant. Walter Benjamin reframed and reinterpreted the medieval belief of the power of the relic of the Saint in his famous question: Can the aura of the original be found within its replica? This question is even more pertinent now when art is created within the digital realm and must be reframed once again: Can the aura of the original exist at all, given there is no difference between the original and its copies? By examining new ideas of ‘entrainment’, where immersivity, resonance, synchronicity and direct response become the factors that reveal the potency of art, In this paper I re-examine how art or media events can function without dependence on the idea of interpretation.

High Definition Imaging: The Paradox of Creativity Within the Academy

by Terry Flaxton

Given at 'Postdigital Encounters, creativity and improvisation' held at the Watershed Media Center 24th June 2011 a symposium held by the Journal of Media Practice

Terry Flaxton, Senior Research Fellow, University of Bristol

In this paper I will examine the creative... more Terry Flaxton, Senior Research Fellow, University of Bristol

In this paper I will examine the creative tension that requires academic research to generate creative acts and vice versa, when research requires a methodology and creativity more often requires spontaneous and intuitive behavior. I will do this by reflecting on the outcome of my 3 year AHRC Creative Research Fellowship through the experience of both creating and exhibiting the series of research works, as a combined creative, theoretical and research gesture, within the moment when some argue that the time is becoming ‘postdigital’.

My core research question was arguably couched within the digital: “How will High Definition Imaging affect the nature of art and entertainment from the point of view of both practitioners and audiences?” When I proposed my fellowship it was on the basis that the argument I would be making would exist within the work itself as opposed to within theoretical writing about the subject (which I would accomplish later with critical reflection). However, a deep question that pervaded my research process was implicit in the feeling that I was creating work with the wrong goal in mind and I struggled with that feeling until I felt I’d managed to balance the twin agendas of research and creativity.

The key to finding that balance resided within a re-reading of Georgia O’Keefe who had said on becoming blind in later life: “creativity is like an abyss and it is only when you have dived into the darkness that your fear might turn into wings.” This understanding of the creative gesture was framed within the analogue and stimulated me to remain spontaneous when everything that academic practice seemed to demand was to replace the spontaneous with contrivance – as a scientist might construct a hypothesis only to then go on to find the proof for that hypothesis.

In this paper I will describe my journey, show some of the work, describe the exhibition process and reveal the extent to which the spontaneous and the intuitive aided me in search of the creative gesture that enabled me to balance the creative act with academic practice.

The Developing Language of Digital Cinematography

by Terry Flaxton

I've found the system to have papers or articles published to be far too slow to cope with developing evolution of this subject area, so I humbly submit this work here and welcome emails and anonymous peer-review. I hope academia.edu develops this function very shortly. So the 1st publication moment is actually right here, right now.

This article is concerned with the developing language and idea trends used by data and digital cinematographers to... more This article is concerned with the developing language and idea trends used by data and digital cinematographers to discuss the topography of the post-digital landscape with reference to continuous changes in imaging technologies - which they are of course at the forefront of.

What they discuss and have had to invent new language for is constantly changing to accommodate rapid technological developments and actually, new ideas and new innovations are derived from the very discussions of what the subject area is and what it consists of. The language that is being developed is reflexive with those ideas and in some cases, idea affects generation of language, and in others, language affects new ideas. In the end this will inflect upon discussions amongst people involved in media theory. I say this in relation to the disarray that can be seen within pedagogy in relation to the teaching of moving image technique, craft, aesthetics and theory.

Capturing the Hyper Real: The Cinematographers Eye

by Terry Flaxton

Given on 9th December 2011 to the Bristol Vision Institute and a variation of this given at University of York, February 29th 2012

In this presentation I discuss what it is that a cinematographer sees when he or she looks into the luminous frame. I... more In this presentation I discuss what it is that a cinematographer sees when he or she looks into the luminous frame. I shall do this by pointing out that language, myth and meaning surround the idea of communicating experience, of how todays understanding of what matters in art is governed by ideas derived from a remediation of the image, that requires interpretive thinking rather than direct experience. I compare ideas from both neuro-science and myth and discuss why ideas created some three and a half thousand years ago may have greater veracity than ideas created in the last twenty years. I also show short examples of my recent works which explore these issues, created whilst on two consecutive AHRC Fellowships in the Moving Image. All works are linked in this paper for internet access

Vídeo-Arte e Cinema: O Digital como aproximação de linguagens

by Raquel Carrilho

2008 - Seminário Universidade de Aveiro; published in "Jornal MAC", Coimbra

El eco de la fotografía de Barthes: la nueva cámara lúcida. Notas sobre el cine digital

by Arnau Vilaró i Moncasí

"Ghosts in the Machine: The Body in Digital Animation" in Popular Ghosts: The Haunted Spaces of Everyday Culture, Ed. Esther Pereen and Maria Del Pilar Blanco (Continuum Press, 2010)

by Alla Gadassik

"...Alla Gadassik continues the focus on new technologies, moving beyond discussing CGI's function in bringing... more "...Alla Gadassik continues the focus on new technologies, moving beyond discussing CGI's function in bringing the ghost to (nonorganic) life to explore the way animation is itself, to an ever greater degree, a ghostly technique that threatens to erase or spectralize the bodily presence of the animator" (editor's introduction)

Catching up with digital: 3D drives the rollout south of the border

by Roque Gonzalez

Article about Digital Cinema in Latin America published in Film Journal, 14oct11