pre present

credits for twin-cameras experiments... (test)

2/4/2007 kloud; special thx: sevenchan
2/3/2007 tcming

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p.s.
45sec to 90sec per clip

• Aleft Aright
• Afront Arear

just some notes from the language of new media, lev manovich

[...]

• prologue: vertov's dataset
• what new media is not
• the myth of interactivity
• database and narrative
• kino-eye and simulators
• the new temporality: the loop as a narrative engine

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what new media is not

[...]

1. new media is analog media converted to a digital representation. in contrast to analog media, which is continuous, digitally encoded media is discrete.
2. all digital media (texts, still images, visual or audio time data, shapes, 3-d spaces) share the same digital code. this allows different media types to be displayed using one machine -- a computer -- which acts as a multimedia display device.
3. new media allows for random access. in contrast to film or videotape, which store data sequentially, computer storage devices make it possible to access any data element equally fast.
4. digitization inevitably involves loss of information. in contrast to an analog representation, a digitally encoded representation contains a fixed amount of information.
5. in contrast to analog media where each successive copy loses quality, digitally encoded media can be copied endlessly with degradation.
6. new media is interactive. in contrast to old media where the order of presentation is fixed, the user can now interact with a media object. in the process of interaction the user can choose which elements to display or which paths to follow, thus generating a unique work. in this way the user becomes the co-author of the work.

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the myth of interactivity

[...]

when we use the concept of "interactive media" exclusively in relation to computer-based media, there is the danger that we will interpret "interaction" literally, equating it with physical interaction between a suer and a media object (pressing a button, choosing a link, moving the body), at the expense of psychological interaction. the psychological processes of filling-in, hypothesis formation, recall, and identification, which are required for us to comprehend any text or image at all, are mistakenly identified with an objectively existing structure of interactive links.

[...]

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database and narrative

as a cultural form, the database represents the world as a list of items, and it refuses to order this list. in contrast, a narrative creates a cause-and-effect trajectory of seemingly unordered items (events). therefore, database and narrative are natural enemies. competing for the same territory of human culture, each claims an exclusive right to make meaning out of the world.

[...]

in summary, database and narrative do not have the same status in computer culture. in the database/narrative pair, database is the unmarked term. regardless of whether new media obejcts present themselves as linear narratives, interactive narractives, databases, or something else, underneath, on the level of material orgainzation, they are all databases. in new media, the database supprots a variety of clutural forms that range from direct translation (i.e., a databasestays a database) to a form whose logic is the opposite of the logic of the material form itself --- narrative. more precisely, a datbase can support narrative, but there is nothing in the logic of the medium itself that would foster its generation. it is not surprising, then, that databases occupy a significant, if not the largest, territory of the new media landscape. what is more surprising is why the other end of the spectrum --- narratives --- still exist in new media.

[...]

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kino-eye and simulators

[...]thus, one of the most common forms of navigation used today in computer culture --- flying through spatialized data --- can be traced back to 1970s military simulators. from baudelaire's flaneur strolling through physical streets, we move to vertov's camera mounted on a moving car and then to the virtual camera of a simulator that represents the viewpoint of a military pilot.[...]

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the new temporality: the loop as a narrative engine

[...]can the loop be a new narrative form appropriate for the computer age? it is relevant to recall that the loop gave birth not only to cinema but also to computer programming. programming involves altering the linear flow of data through control structures, such as "if/then" and "repeat/while"; the loop is the most elementary of these control structures. most computer programs are based on repetitions of a set number of steps; this repetition is controlled by the program's main loop. so if we strip the computer from its usual interface and follow the execution of a typical computer program, the computer will reveal itself to be another version of ford's factory, with the loop as its conveyer belt.[...]

抄書 vol.6: the society of the spectacle, guy debord

[...]

3. the spectacle appears at once as society itself, as a part of society and as a means of unification. as a part of society, it is that sector where all attention, all consciousness, converges. being isolated -- and precisely for that reason -- this sector is the locus of illusion and false consciousness; the unity it imposes is merely the official language of generalized separation.

4. the spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.

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[...]

23. at the root of the spectacle lies that oldest of all social divisions of labor, the specialization of power. the specialized role played by the spectacle is that of spokesman for all other activities, a sort of diplomatic representative of hierarchical society at its own court, and the source of the only discourse which that society allows itself to hear. thus the most modern aspect of the spectacle is also at bottom the most archaic.

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[...]

128. the social appropriation of time and the production of man by means of human labor were developments that awaited the advent of a society divided into classes. the power that built itself up on the basis of the penury of the society of cyclical time -- the power, in other words, of the class which organized social labor therein and appropriated the limited surplus value to be extracted, also appropriated the temporal surplus value that resulted from its organization of social time; this class thus had sole possession of the irreversible time of the living. [...] for ordinary men, therefore, history sprang forth as an alien factor, as something they had not sought and against whose occurrence they had thought themselves secure. yet this turning point also made possible the return of that negative human restlessness which had been at the origin of the whole (temporarily arrested) development.

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[...]

147. the time of production, time-as-commodity, is an infinite accumulation of equivalent intervals. it is irreversible time made abstract: each segment must demonstrate by the clock its purely quantitative equality with all other segments. this time manifests nothing in its effective reality aside from its exchangeability. it is under the rule of time-as-commodity that "time is everything, man is nothing; he is at the most time's carcass" (the poverty of philosophy). this is time devalued --- the complete inversion of time as "the sphere of human development."

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[...]

150. pseudo-cyclical time typifies the consumption of modern economic survival --- of that augmented survival in which daily lived experience embodies no free choices and is subject, no longer to the natural order, but to a pseudo-nature constructed by means of alienated labor. it is therefore quite "natural" that pseudo-cyclical time should echo the old cyclical rhythms that governed survival in pre-industrial societies. it builds, in fact, on the natural vestiges of cyclical time, while also using these as models on which to base new but homologous variants: day and night, weekly work and weekly rest, the cycle of vacations and so on.

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[...]

169. a society that molds its entire surroundings has necessarily evolved its own techniques for working on the material basis of this set of tasks. that material basis is the society's actual territory. urbanism is the mode of appropriation of the natural and human environment by capitalism, which, true to its logical development toward absolute domination, can (and now must) refashion the totality of space into its own peculiar decor.

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[...]

174.we already live in the era of the self-destruction of the urban environment. the explosion of cities into the countryside, covering it with what Mumford calls "formless masses" of urban debris, is presided over in unmediated fashion by the requirments of comsumption. [...] the technical organization of consumption is thus merely the herald of that general process of dissolution which brings the city to the point where it consumes itself.

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[...]

215. the spectacle is the acme of ideology, for in its full flower it exposes and manifests the essence of all ideological systems: the impoverishment, enslavement and negation of real life. materially, the spectacle is "the expression of estrangement, of alienation between man and man." the "new potentiality of fraud" concentrated within it has its basis in that form of production whereby "with the mass of objects grows the mass of alien powers to which man is subjected." this is the supreme stage of an expansion that has turned need against life. "the need for money is for that reason the real need created by the modern economic system, and the only need it creates" (economic and philosophical manuscripts). the principle which Hegel enunciated in the jenenser realphilosophie as that of money --- "the life, moving of itself, of that which is dead" --- has now been extended by the spectacle to the entirety of social life.

抄書 vol.5: the production of space, henri lefebvre

1. spatial practice
2. representations of space
3. representational spaces

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plan of the present work
XX

'change life!' 'change society!' these precepts mean nothing without the production of an appropriate space. [...]

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spatial architectonics

[...]for our present purposes, we need to consider and elaborate upon a number of relationships usually treated as 'psychic' (i.e. relating to the psyche). we shall treat them, however, as material, because they arise in connection with the (material) body/subject and the (material) mirror/object; at the same time we shall look upon them as particular instances of a 'deeper' and more general relationship which we shall be coming back to later in our discussion -- that between repetition and differentiation. the relationships in question are the following.

1. symmetry (planes and axes): duplication, reflection -- also asymmetry as correlated with symmetry.
2. mirages and mirage effects: reflections, surface versus depth, the revealed versus the concealed, the opaque versus the transparent.
3. language as 'reflection', with its familiar pairs of opposites: connoting versus connoted, or what confers values versus what has value conferred upon it; and refraction through discourse.
4. consciousness of oneself and of the other, of the body and of the abstract realm of otherness and of becoming-other (alienation).
5. time, the immediate (directly experienced, hence blind and 'unconscious') link between repetition and differentiation.
6. lastly, space, with its double determinants: imaginary/real, produced/producing, material/social, immediate/mediated (milieu/transition), connection/separation, and so on. [...]
   

[...] the balance of forces between monuments and buildings has shifted. buildings are to monuments as everyday life is to festival, products to works, lived experience to the merely preceived, concrete to stone, and so on. what we are seeing here is a new dialectical process, but one just as vast as its predecessors. [...]

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from absolute space to abstract space

[...]'our' space thus remains qualified (and qualifying) beneath the sediments left behind by history, by accumulation, by quantification. the qualities in question are qualities of space, not (as latter-day representation suggests) qualities embedded in space. to say that such qualities constitute a 'culture', or 'cultural models', adds very little to our understanding of the matter. [...]

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openings and conclusions
XI

these thoughts offer a partial response to the first and last question: 'how does the theory of space relate to the revolutionary movement as it exists today?' [...]

just some notes from "new screen media(bfi)"

• multiple screen/narrative
• expanded cinema
• multiple monitors/projections
• multi-perspective narration

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• loop as narrative
• spatial montage and macrocinema

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• video as time-based object in a virtual world
• video as potential media-element in a non-logocentric mixed-semiotic space
• video as qualified by virtually adjacent text, image and sound

抄書 vol.4: the fourth dimension in cinema, sergei eisenstein

[...]

1. metric montage: the basic criterion is the absolute length of the shots. [...]
   
2. rhythmic montage: here the content within the shot is an equivalent element in determining the actual lengths of the shots. [...]
3. tonal montage [...] the concept of movement embraces all sorts of vibrations that derive from the shot. [...]
   
4. overtonal montage [...] it distinguishes itself by taking full account of all the stimulants in the shot. [....]
   

抄書 vol.3: kino-eye, dziga vertov

the work of kino-eye

[...]themes for initial observation can be split into roughly three categories:

1. observation of a place [...]
2. observation of a person or object in motion [...]
3. observation of a theme irrespective of particular persons or places [...]

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the kinoks and editing

[...]the kinoks distinguish among:

1. editing during observation --- orienting the unaided eye at any place, any time.
   
2. editing after observation --- mentally organizing what has been seen, according to characteristic features.
3. editing during filming --- orienting the aided eye of the movie camera in the place inspected in step 1. adjusting for the somewhat changed conditions of filming.
4. editing after filming --- roughly organizing the footage according to characteristic features. looking for the montage fragments that are lacking.
5. gauging by sight (hunting for montage fragments) --- instantaneous orienting in any visual environment so as to capture the essential link shots. exceptional attentiveness. a military rule: gauging by sight, speed, attack.
6. the final editing --- revealing minor, concealed themes together with the major ones. reorganizing all the footage into the best sequence. bringing out the corte of the film-object. coordinating similar elements, and finally, numerically calculating the montage groupings.

moviez/videoz for reference (edited 27/2/2007)

1. Man with a Movie Camera//Dziga Vertov
2. Berlin, Symphony of a Big City//Walter Ruttmann
3. In Youth, Beside the Lonely Sea//artist unknown
4. Hôtel Monterey//Chantal Akerman
5. Metropolis//Fritz Lang
6. Two or Three Things I Know About Her //Jean-Luc Godard
7. Star City// Videotage
8. Because// Graw Böckler

抄書 vol.2: the practice of everyday life, michel de certeau

general introduction

[...]2. the tactics of practice

in the course of our research, the scheme, rather too neatly dichotomized, of the relations between consumers and the mechanisms of production has been diversified in relation to three kinds of concerns: the search for a problematics that could articulate the material collected; the description of a limited number of practices (reading, talking, walking, dwelling, cooking, etc.) considered to be particularly significant; and the extension of the analysis of these everyday operations to scientific fields apparently governed by another kind of logic. through the presentation of our investigation along these three lines, the overly schematic character of the general statement can be somewhat nuanced. [...]

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popular cultures: ordinary language

[...]tales and legends seem to have the same role. they are deployed, like games, in a space outside of and isolated from daily competition, that of the past, the marvelous, the original. in that space can thus be revealed, dressed as gods or heroes, the models of good or bad ruses that can be used every day. moves, not truths, are recounted. [...]

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the scriptural economy

[...]what is writing, then? i designate as "writing" the concrete activity that consists in constructing on its own, blank space (un espace propre) --- the page ---a text that has power over the exteriority from which it has first been isolated. at this elementary level, three elements are decisive. [...]

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reading as poaching

[...]a misunderstood activity: reading

reading is only one aspect of consumption, but a fundamental one.[...]

photo set 03

photo set 02

抄書 vol.1: one-way street, walter benjamin

for men

to convince is to conquer without conception.

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imperial panorama

[...]2. a curious paradox: people have only the narrowest private interest in mind when they act, yet they are at the same time more than ever determined in their behavior by the instincts of the mass.[...]

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post no bills

[...]2. talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo. if this regime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the end a motor for completion.[...]

[...]11. do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. you would not find the neccessary courage there.

12. stages of composition: idea---style---writing. the value of the fair copy is that in producing it you confine attention to calligraphy. the idea kills inspiratoion, style fetters the idea, writing pays off style.

13. the work is the death mask of its conception.

~synthesis~

production of space
psychogeography
vertov (kino eye)
benjamin
max/msp

readingzzzz... again

Kino-eye : the writings of Dziga Vertov / edited and with an introduction by Annette Michelson ; translated by Kevin O'Brien. PN1995.9.D6 V4413 1984

The Dramaturgy of Film Form (The Dialectical Approach to Film Form) (1929) [from The Eisenstein reader / edited by Richard Taylor ; translated by Richard Taylor and William Powell.] PN1995.9.P7 E385 1998