The new Digital Cinematography Research Centre at the University of the West of England (original) (raw)
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Research in Film and Video: Artists Using Their Bodies in Cinematic Experiments
STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI DRAMATICA, 2019
The aim of this article is to study the relationship between author and camera, the different aspects of this subtle relationship with technology. From the whole cinema history, many artists and film directors played different roles in front of the camera. Whether they interpret a scenario character, in case of fiction films, or use their body in search of cinematic effects, for video art, they choose to be in both parts of the camcorder at the same time. Why does this “video eye” sometimes turns towards the artist? Is it only meant to explore the outside world of the artist? Or is it a mirror which is sometimes inviting you to take a glance at yourself? The term used was first introduced by Gene Youngblood “The video eye” as it is a subtle metaphor for the main function of the camera. Why do so many artists use the camera with the purpose of showing themselves or their bodies into video experiments? Is it an expression of narcissism or is it a self‐exploring tool? To find the answers for all these questions, the research looks into the playful role that the “video eye” has in experimental films and videos. This role was revealed by examining different kinds of esthetic results in comparison with the artist’s intention. For example, the body mirrored or reflected, seen in its choreography or as a performer in non‐narrative films, are aspects which could draw a conclusion bout the self‐representation aesthetics.
Addressing the question of aesthetics in relation to videography – as the title of this presentation does – might seem regressive, as the medium of video – at least in its radical forms – has precisely gained its legitimacy within the art institution as a practice which signals a departure from aesthetics towards conceptual and culturally engaged concerns. But – as I want to bring forward here – video has contributed profoundly to a redefinition of the artwork and its aesthetic parameters, and the somewhat banal question underlying this presentation therefore is, whether videography – in spite of its diversity – could be envisioned as an aesthetics? And whether such an approach to videography might help evaluate the consequences of video for the general discourse of art.
Roundtable on Digital Experimental Filmmaking
October, 2011
Malcolm Turvey: We are here to discuss the various ways digital technologies have, and have not, impacted experimental filmmaking. There was a time, in the mid-1990s, if not before, when some people argued that digital technologies were revolutionary and that they would fundamentally change filmmaking. Now that the dust has settled, or at least started to settle, and we can look back over the last fifteen or twenty years, the "digital revolution" might not seem like a revolution at all. We want to talk about both what has stayed the same and what has changed in experimental filmmaking thanks to the advent of digital technologies. Ken Jacobs: I think those people were right, but they were premature. They first made that argument about analogue video. But analogue video was not the way. There were people, like myself, who saw it as a great but transient medium. We saw good things being done, but now those things have gone. Turvey: Are you talking about video art? Ken Jacobs: Yes. Federico Windhausen: When video art emerged, was it being discussed as something that experimental filmmakers would have to address? I have always had the sense that experimental filmmakers in the era of analogue video art felt that they could keep their distance from it pretty easily. Flo Jacobs: That's because the film-developing labs were still functioning. Windhausen: So it wasn't a threat? It was something you could easily avoid? Ken Jacobs: That's right. Windhausen: Do others recall the situation in the same way? Mark Street: I remember the discussion about who was a video artist and who was a filmmaker, and how they had different purviews. You said the advent of analogue video art-so you're talking about the early 1960s? Windhausen: The moment of wider dissemination of the technology in the late 1960s and '70s. Street: In the 1980s, when I went to film school, there was still that distinction, but it started to mean less. People were making choices about shooting on analogue video based on economics, not based on content or aesthetics. When I
PARC INTERNATIONAL INTERDISCIPLINARITY in the ARTS SYMPOSIUMS I: Cinema / Photography, 2017
The history of virtual reality (VR) is as old as the birth of humanity. Our first dreams are the archetypes of VR. Every new work in science and art intended to reproduce reality is a step towards VR. Being one of the most recent products of technology, VR is also a new form of narrative. However as in the early days of cinema itself, contemporary VR films lack a language of their own. The research aims to determine the basic features and capabilities of VR in order to contribute to the development of its language. Comparing realist and formalist film theories on a literary basis, the case study research method is used. The analyzed case studies are comprised of three VR films: "The Fight for Falluja" (Dir. Ben C. Solomon), "I, Philip" (Dir. Pierre Zandrowicz), and "In the Eyes of the Animal" (Dir. Marshmallow Laser Feast). According to the research findings the essence of VR is "presence" and this sense is created through the combination of elements of surround and continuous sound, subjective viewpoint, frameless, deep focus and continuous image. On the other hand, realism is not an obligation for VR narrative.
Film Stills Methodologies: A Pedagogical Assignment
Cinema Journal, 2001
This essay describes an innovative film studies assignment in which students explore still photography and Hollywood cinema. The author and his freshman cinema studies students learned by doing-they created their own film stills after Cindy Sherman, employing frame analysis, semiotics, and Barthes's concept of the "third meaning" along the way. Barry J. Mauer received his doctorate from the University of Florida, where he designed the film stills project for an undergraduate course entitled Writing through Media. He now teaches English at the University of Central Florida. 92 Cinema Journal 41, No. 1, Fall 2001
From Recording to Creation. Video in Current Art
Media, including video, were mainly perceived as means of recording other manifestations of visual creation. Only after some time, it has been discovered that they themselves had some inherent artistic potential. This discovery to a large degree was due to the art of avant-garde formations -of the avant-garde and neo-avant-garde. A credit should go to those art formations for the fact that the photographic, film, and video pictures were included for good in the artistic practice. Within this formation, media were subject to a thorough theoretical analysis and to a practical test. Another merit of avant-garde is that it made media equal to other creation instruments. Contemporary art owes much to the avant-garde formation, one can even hazard a guess that without that experience media might have never crossed the border between recording and creation.