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Media Specificity
Definitions
• Medium: material or technical means of artistic
  expression.
• Media is the plural form of medium.
• The dictionary defines media as all the
  communication devices and channels of
  communication used to reach mass audiences.
• First use of media in 1927, perhaps abstracted from
  mass media (1923, a technical term in advertising),
  pl. of medium in particular when useed as an
  "intermediate agency," or a ‘carrier’ a sense first
  found c.1600.
What this lecture is about
•   The physical nature of any given thing and its relationship to its environment determines the way it works
    or operates. This lecture will give a brief reminder of what we are as a species and what are our physical
    and mental limitations. It will then propose that all human attempts to construct media are attempts to
    extend beyond our physical and mental limitations and that each media we develop has its own
    limitations and strengths, which we need to understand if we are to make the most of what each media
    offers.
•   This lecture takes as one of its central themes the borders and boundaries between media and will argue
    that any theoretical understanding of communication should include an investigation as to how and why
    particular media work in the way they do. It will introduce theories of medium specificity and will
    attempt to determine what traits define a media. It will ask what differentiates film, photography, games
    etc. from other existing modes of representation. How is photography distinct from painting? What are
    the defining traits of the cinematic? Are games narratives?
•   As we deal with these theories, this lecture will attempt to show how they each moved from descriptions
    of the properties of specific medium to prescriptions for what the aesthetics of these media should look
    like.
•   This medium-specific approach, will also explore how cross media narratives evolve and how comparison
    across media can be used to clarify the essence of any one particular media. Eisenstein, for example, rests
    his theory of the cinematic on analogies to text-based media, Bazin draws on notions of photography and
    theatre to talk about cinema.
•   The intersections between expressive media rather than the borders between them are now becoming far
    more important and in particular this lecture will explore how the human being as a specific physical and
    social construction is the driving force behind how each media is used.
•   Theories that celebrate hybridity and border crossing will also be introduced, and how the notion of
    medium specificity plays a central role in such formulations.
The media specific problem with this lecture   • Tufte argues that
                                                 PowerPoint’s design
                                                 inherently makes it
                                                 more difficult to
                                                 communicate with an
                                                 audience.
                                               • Instead of giving an
                                                 informative
                                                 presentation,
                                                 PowerPoint
                                                 encourages speakers
                                                 to create slides with
                                                 ultra-short,
                                                 incomplete thoughts
                                                 listed with bullets.
What are we?
•   Our medium specificity is that we are biological creatures. Organic in nature, we have a close genetic
    connection to the animal world.
•   We specifically have intensive development and differentiation of the cerebral cortex. We also have an
    erect posture, free upper extremities, adapted for using and making tools, and advanced development of
    the means of communication. However the need to maintain balance in the erect posture caused a certain
    curvature of the spinal column and a shift in the general centre of gravity. Since the upper extremities
    were no longer used for body support and walking, the skeleton of the lower extremities became stronger
    and their muscles developed, the feet became arched to act as springs. All the systems of the internal
    organs have adapted to the erect posture, the means of delivering blood from the lower extremities to the
    heart and the brain have become more complex. The diaphragm has shifted from a vertical to a horizontal
    position, the muscles of the abdomen have come to perform a much greater role in the act of breathing.
    At a certain level of anthropogenesis, under the influence of labour activity and communication, biological
    development became what is, in effect, the historical development of social systems.
•   The newborn child is not a "tabula rasa" (clean slate) on which the environment draws patterns. Heredity
    equips the child not only with instincts, s/he is from the very beginning the possessor of the ability to
    imitate adults, their actions, the noises they make. S/he's physiological make-up (the round shape of the
    head, the sophisticated structure of the hands, the shape of the lips and the whole facial structure, the
    erect posture, etc.) are products of the social way of life, the result of interaction with other people.
•   The basic aspects of our nature are physiological, psychological and sociological.
•   At a basic physical level, we are part of the natural interconnection of physical and chemical phenomena
    and obey the laws of necessity. However in spite of the limitations of this condition our highly developed
    cerebral cortex allows us to think our way out. If we cant reach it we pick up a stick and if we cant outfight
    it we sharpen a stone axe.
•   A human being is a biosocial being and the subject of social forms of life, communication and
    consciousness.
The Specificity of Homo Sapiens
                A large brain

                Most of the sense organs located at
                the top end and facing forwards

                Long throat, small mouth, flexible
                tongue and lips

                An upright stance that frees the arms
                from any walking duties and allows the
                eyes to see further
                                                         Bi-lateral
                Hands with mobile thumbs and fingers     Symmetry
                that allow for fine grip and rotation
                from the wrist
Tools as extensions of our   SIGHT
existing faculties




                             Marshall
                             McLuhan
SMELL and TOUCH

The human body is unable to sense many potentially harmful substances in the air we
breath. NASA has built an electronic nose to smell what the astronauts can’t. Inspired by the
human olfactory system, the electronic nose is endowed with ultra-responsive sensors and a
neural net to rapidly recognize any dangerous elements in the air.




Surgical workstations equipped with robotic arms can accurately perform motions as minute
as 20 to 30 millionths of a meter. Working by teleoperation, the physician uses a joystick-like
controller that scales down his hand motions, allowing for precision never before possible.
Pressure encountered by the robot arm is transferred back through the controller, allowing
the surgeon to feel what the robot encounters.
HEARING
New technologies tend to mimic old ones.
A definition
• Medium specificity is the view that the media
  associated with a given art form (both its
  material components and the processes by which
  they are exploited) entail specific possibilities for
  and constraints on representation and
  expression, and this provides a normative
  framework for what artists working in that art
  form ought to attempt.
• Noël Carroll 2008
   Normative
   Adjective: Establishing, relating to, or deriving from a standard or norm, esp. of
      behaviour: For example, in a prison negative sanctions my be introduced to
      enforce normative behaviour.
What is media specificity?
An artwork, in order to be successful, needs to adhere to the specific stylistic properties of its own
medium.
“Gotthold Ephraim Lessing 1776


Medium/media specificity is a term used in aesthetics and art criticism.

It is most closely associated with modernism, but it predates it. According to Clement Greenberg,,
medium specificity holds that "the unique and proper area of competence" for a form of art
corresponds with the ability of an artist to manipulate those features that are "unique to the
nature" of a particular medium.

Medium specificity and media specific analysis are ways to identify new media art forms,
such as Internet art.

Medium specificity can be used as an aesthetic judgement tool, it can be used to frame the
question, “ Does this work fulfil the promise contained in the medium used to bring the
artwork into existence?”

We now move from descriptions of the properties of specific medium to prescriptions
for what the aesthetics of these media should look like.
Media specificity is a pre-modernist idea that relates to the modernist concept ‘Truth to
materials’.
It can be seen as an idea directly in contrast to the phrase “ut pictura poesis” or
“as is painting, so is poetry,” taken from Horace’s Ars Poetica

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s 1766 essay, Laocošn argues that the media of painting and
poetry are inherently different, because while poetry unfolds in time, painting exists in
space. He states that these medias should not overstep their respective terrains.
Lessing contends that an artwork, in order to be successful, needs to adhere to the
specific stylistic properties of its own medium.

Clement Greenberg in Towards a Newer Laocoon 1940 states: Medium specificity
holds that "the unique and proper area of competence" for a form of art corresponds
with the ability of an artist to manipulate those features that are "unique to the
nature" of a particular medium.
Media Specificity in the fine art world
•     Michael Fried 1966 essay "Art and Objecthood" is an attack on minimalist art for
      producing effects that do not derive from within the work itself, but instead are
      dependent on the viewer's relationship with the object. This, he insists, "is now
      the negation of art" (Fried, 1967)
•     According to Fried, minimalists took Greenberg's plea for purity too far; instead of
      exploring the materiality of the media, all they do is present the materials for what
      they are.
•     Fried argues that this leads to an emphasis on the viewer's encounter with the
      object and its "objecthood," rather than with the formal qualities within the object
      itself. This interaction is theatrical because it exists within space and time, while
      Fried contends that visual art should instead aspire to absorption, which he casts
      as the opposite of theatricality. The work should present itself whole at every
      instant, and not depend on the viewer's relation to what is being seen.




    Frank Stella               John McCracken                Robert Mangold         Ad Reinhardt
• But
• In order for a medium to have characteristic qualities it must
  be grounded in a tradition that has established these qualities
  as intrinsic properties.
Media Specificity as Communication Theory
               Marshall McLuhan
• “The medium is the message"
• The central idea in his 1964 book: Understanding Media: The
  Extensions of Man
• McLuhan calls attention to the intrinsic effect of
  communications media and explains that it is not the content,
  it is the carrier that creates meaning.
• McLuhan expands our understanding of media.
• The medium becomes the media which is
  itself simply an extension of our own
  physical and mental limitations.
Reshaping ourselves
• If we are defined by our physical and mental limitations,
  by extending these we change the definition of ourselves.

• “Electronic technology is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social
  interdependence and every aspect of our personal lives”. MM

• “Print technology fostered a process of specialism and detachment”. MM

• Until writing was invented we lived in acoustic space. This was a world
  of emotion,… speech was the social chart of this bog. MM

•   MM - Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Massage 1967


• “The alphabet created forgetfulness” Socrates Phaedrus
Our social patterns shaped by media
Social extensions

• Social [knowledge] building as a creative process of knowing
  will be collectively extended to the whole of human society
  (McLuhan 1964) Mobile phone networks, Facebook, Twitter

• Electronic mass media collapse space and time barriers in
  human communication, enabling people to interact and live
  on a global scale (McLuhan; 1962 Gutenberg galaxy)

• "The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in
  the image of a global village." (McLuhan 1966)
What are we extending?
“Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously. As soon as
information is acquired, it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information.
Our electronically configured world has forced us to move from the habit of
data classification to the mode of pattern recognition.” MM

Perceptual grouping and binding is one of the main functions of ‘early vision’.
Ramachandran & Hirstein 1999

Technological development reflects existing human neurological as well as
physiological capacity.
Technology as Memory extensions

•   Footprints
•   Drawing, painting and symbol making
•   Writing
•   Printing
•   Photography
•   Sound recording
•   Silent Film
•   Technological convergence of Sound recording and Silent Film
•   TV
•   Computers (1940s)
•   Magnetic tape (Available to the public from 1940s)
•   Video tape (Available to the public from 1969)
•   Audio-cassettes replace reel-to-reel tape, video-cassettes replace home movies.
•   Digital convergence , the switch from analogue to digital, concentrated on reducing size and
    increasing speed and capacity. Today’s computers use miniature integrated-circuit technology in
    conjunction with rapid-access memory. Computers are desk-top, lap-top, palm-top and will soon
    be ‘embedded’ in other technologies and even in human beings. The next generation of computers
    is expected to use forms of ‘artificial intelligence’.
•   Information storage now includes ourselves. The Visible Human Project (VHP) has created
    anatomically detailed, three-dimensional representations of both the male and female bodies. The
    first ‘visible human’ was Joseph Paul Jernigan, a 39-year-old Texan convicted of murder and
    executed by lethal injection in 1993. Jernigan has been memorized or ‘reincarnated’ as a 15-
    gigabyte database.
Sound and media specificity
•   In the 1920's the 10-inch 78 rpm Shellac gramophone disc became the most
    popular recording medium.
•   A 10 inch disc rotating at 78 rpm limited the duration of recorded time on each
    side of a disc to around three minutes.
•   Songwriters and performers tailored their songs to fit. The 3-minute single
    remained the song recording standard until well into the 1960s when the
    availability of microgroove recording and improved mastering techniques enabled
    recording artists to increase the duration of their recordings. (In particular Bob
    Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone and the Beatles’ Hey Jude)
•   The 3 minute idea still persists and over 95% of all new popular hits still fit this
    format.
•   Radio airplay time or slots are now based on 3 minutes. Songs that are longer
    usually get a remix (often called a Radio Edit) to makes them shorter to fit.
•   What started out as an engineering limitation has been adopted and maintained
    by commercial interests.
•   In song writing terms this becomes: Verse - Chorus - Verse2 - Chorus2 - Bridge - Chorus3
A Short History of Vinyl

1932: The first stereo disc is recorded by Stokowski at Bell labs in Philadelphia using vinyl rather than
shellac. By the mid 1930s vinyls are sent to disc jockeys (a term earned through jockeying up the next
record) to avoid breakage of shellac copies in the mail.
1940: Mobile DJs become popular around the world as entertainers for military troops during WWII,
however they still only use a single record player.
1943: Jimmy Savile launches one of the world’s first DJ dance parties playing jazz records in an upstairs
function room in Leeds.
1947: One of the first people to use twin turntables for continuous play is Jimmy Saville who pays a
metalworker to weld two domestic record decks together for more continuous play at his dance parties in
Leeds. This style of ‘twin-deck’ DJing utilising a microphone for talk over becomes industry standard.
1947: The “Whiskey-A-Go-Go” opens in Paris playing popular records, this is considered by some to be
the very first disco.
1948: Columbia Records introduce the 12inch vinylite Long Play (LP) 33rpm record.
1949: RCA Victor release the first 45 rpm single, seven inches in diameter, with a large centre hole to
accommodate automatic play mechanisms. (Microgroove technology introduced)
1951: The first Jukebox that can play 7-inch 45 rpm records is introduced.
Photography
•       The concept of medium-specificity has had a profound impact on photography. In
        its early history, photography struggled to establish itself as a legitimate art form.
        Theorists devised a justification for the art of photography that positioned it
        against its competitor, painting. Art photographers such as Stieglitz, Weston, and
        Strand argued that in order for photography to be taken seriously, it must operate
        only according to its own capabilities: it must not aspire to imitate the aesthetics
        or materials of painting. The art of photography became defined on strictly
        medium-specific terms.

Pictorialism




    Stieglitz                             Weston                         Strand
The Photographic Tableau vivant

19th Century Photography mimics painting and theatre




                            Pictorialism as a response, is seen by early
                            20th century photographic critics as being more
                            media specific.
                            However pictorialism is ‘Like a Picture’
                            I.e. Its values derive from painting.
The Tableau Vivant is re-interpreted as being media specific in the
1980s in particular through the influence of Jean-Francois Chevrier’s essay The
Adventures of the Picture Form in the History of Photography (1989) and Jeff
Wall’s large scale constructed images. Pictorialism, according to Jeff Wall could
be seen as an attempt by photographers to unsuccessfully imitate painting.

"By divesting itself of the encumbrances and advantages inherited from older art
forms, reportage, or the spontaneous fleeting aspect of the photographic image
pushes toward a discovery of qualities apparently intrinsic to the medium,
qualities that must necessarily distinguish the medium from others and through
the self-examination of which it can emerge as a modernist art on a plane with
others” Jeff Wall




     Vanessa Beecroft                         Jeff Wall
The Lens as an extension of the faculty of sight
•   A camera lens can be seen as an extension of the eye. Kamps, (2011) explains the relationship between the eye and a
    camera and his explanation helps us understand the media specific nature of lens based media and also how we can
    understand the camera as an extension of our faculty of sight. He points to the fact that both eyes and lenses focus an
    inverted image onto a light sensitive surface, the retina and the film stock, as well as both being able to adjust the amount
    of light entering, using aperture change and iris dilation. More importantly he points out the differences, in particular the
    subjective nature of human sight and the way that a camera is “an absolute measurement device” . This means that a
    camera sensor does not have the intelligence of a brain associated with it and that “the signals recorded need to be
    adjusted to suit the colour temperature of the light illuminating the scene”. Therefore all the technological developments
    surrounding lens selection, aperture adjustment, film stock sensitivity, lighting equipment etc. etc. are all developments
    that are designed to help make the camera as sensitive as the eye. The camera operator of course being the ‘brain’ behind
    choices made in terms of the use of this technology.
•   The audience have grown up with their own ‘sight’ and the experiences associated with visual perception will be directly
    associated with the images produced by film technology. It is at this basic level that perhaps emotional empathy operates,
    a dark scene being associated with experiences of the dark in the ‘real world’, such as being in a cave or being out at night;
    bright light being associated with early visual experiences of a summer’s day or a spring morning.

                                                                                                        The eyeball camera lens

                                                                                                        “The tiny camera combines the best of
                                                                                                        both the human eye and an expensive
                                                                                                        single-lens reflex (SLR) camera with a
                                                                                                        zoom lens. It has the simple lens of the
                                                                                                        human eye, allowing the device to be
                                                                                                        small, and the zoom capability of the
                                                                                                        SLR camera without the bulk and weight
                                                                                                        of a complex lens. The key is that both
                                                                                                        the simple lens and photodetectors are
                                                                                                        on flexible substrates, and a hydraulic
                                                                                                        system can change the shape of the
                                                                                                        substrates appropriately, enabling a
                                                                                                        variable zoom.”
Film
Münsterberg was the first writer to establish the specific nature of film as an art form. In1916, he points to
flashbacks, close-ups, and edits as the techniques that are used in film to capture narratives and contrasts
these to the means available to theatrical productions.
“These devices (close-ups, edits etc.) are all objectifications of mental processes.” He points out that these
techniques are what distinguish film from theatre. In his writings he also introduced ideas relating to
audience reception. He started to ask questions as to how and why an audience might learn the conventions
of this new art form. He pointed to the fact that audiences did not get confused by large close ups in
comparison with medium format shots. They did not think for instance this meant people were getting bigger
or smaller.

Panofsky (1934) states that an audience’s enjoyment of film is not to do with subject matter, but to do with
“the sheer delight that things seemed to move.”

Perception Is Movement, Movement Is Perception
Salvatore Leonardi

Movement is an attention Getting Device:

External attention getting devices -
intensity and size
             contrast - unexpected stimuli (orienting response)
             repetition
             movement we naturally respond to movement (midbrain)

Internal attention getting devices
motives and emotions needs, interests
set or expectancy past experience tunes us primed
During cinema's history, a whole repertoire of techniques (lighting, editing, camera supports, the use of
different film stocks and lens, etc.) were developed to modify the basic record obtained by a film
apparatus.
Photography is coupled with a motor and a set of particular physical constraints were worked with that we
now understand as the media specificity of film.
Jean-Luc Godard defined cinema as: “Truth 24 frames per second“
Bazin introduces the idea of reality "captured" on film, which implied that cinema was about photographing
what existed before the camera, rather than "creating the 'never-was'" of special effects. Rear projection
and blue screen photography, matte paintings and glass shots, mirrors and miniatures, optical effects and
other techniques which allowed filmmakers to construct and alter the moving images, were seen as
suspicious by many early film critics.
The difficulty of modifying images once they were recorded was what gave cinema its value as a
document, and this was at the core of Bazin’s media specific film theory. He makes a distinction between
“those directors who put their faith in the image and those who put their faith in reality”
However other early theorists such as Eisenstein tended to mix up their theories and Eisenstein’s interest
in Montage directly contradicts Bazin.
However both use specific media contexts on which to build theory.

Bazin: the lens collects light and the film stock records it.
Eisenstein: Film must be cut and reassembled in order to create narrative.

Eisenstein describes five methods of montage in his introductory essay "Word and Image“, in it he
combines literary theory with film theory.
Metric - where the editing follows a specific number of frames (based purely on the physical nature of
time), cutting to the next shot no matter what is happening within the image.
Rhythmic - includes cutting based on continuity, creating visual continuity from edit to edit.
Tonal - a tonal montage uses the emotional meaning of the shots to elicit a reaction from the audience;
more complex than from the metric or rhythmic montage. For example, a sleeping baby would emote
calmness and relaxation.
Overtonal/Associational - the overtonal montage is the cumulation of metric, rhythmic, and tonal
montage to synthesize its effect on the audience for an even more abstract and complicated effect.
Bazin advocated the use of deep focus, wide shots and the "shot-in-depth", and preferred what he referred to as "true continuity" through mise en scène
over experiments in editing and visual effects. This placed him in opposition to film theory of the 1920s and 1930s which emphasized how the cinema can
manipulate reality. The famous staircase sequence from The Battleship Potemkin employs montage to create the illusion that the staircase is almost
endless, and intercuts shots of a stroller rolling down the steps with close-ups of horrified faces and dying people, thus destroying the reality of the actual
space and using metaphors and juxtaposition to create a specific response. Wells and Renoir use the lens to capture the totality of a situation so that the
audience have maximum information to allow them to read what is going on.




 Renoir On Purge Bébé

                                                                                                       Eisenstein Battleship Potemkin




 Wells Citizen Kane
Film Stock

•   The technical specifics of Velvia (Velvia, 2012) are that it is a type of daylight-balanced colour reversal film and has a
    smooth image structure, it also has extremely high levels of colour saturation and image quality. It was very fast, had a fine
    grain and an ISO of 50. Because of the high levels of colour saturation and image quality, Velvia’s main use in film making
    was for landscape shots and special-effects backgrounds. However one film in particular used Velvia as a chosen film stock,
    this was Vincent Ward directed film What Dreams May Come (1998) starring Robin Williams, where the action takes place
    inside an actual painting. In this case the choice of this highly saturated film stock was perfect. The Velvia film stock was
    used to create the feeling of being inside the world of the canvas, its saturated colours reflecting the fact that all the action
    was supposed to be taking place within a painter’s colour palette. When action takes place in the ‘real-world’ the film stock
    changes back into a normal standard Kodak film stock.
In The Wizard of Oz, (1939) the Kansas dust bowl appears in black-
and-white and the world of Oz in technicolor


Uses of film stock rely on an expected audience emotional reaction
to heighted colour.
Animation in Film
•   Twentieth century animation became a depository for nineteenth century
    moving image techniques left behind by cinema.
•   Before film stock a variety of handcrafted methods were used. Magic
    lantern slides were painted at least until the 1850s; so were the images
    used in the Phenakistiscope, the Thaumatrope, the Zootrope, the
    Praxinoscope, the Choreutoscope and other nineteenth century proto-
    cinematic devices.
•   Not only were the images created manually, they were also manually
    animated. In Robertson's Phantasmagoria, which premiered in 1799,
    magic lantern operators moved behind the screen in order to make
    projected images appear to advance and withdraw. Nineteenth century
    optical toys enjoyed in private homes also required manual action to
    create movement -- twirling the strings of the Thaumatrope, rotating the
    Zootrope's cylinder, turning the Viviscope's handle.
•   Film animation links the hand craft of drawing to the motor and film’s
    projection technology.
Norman McLaren “Animation is the art of movements that are drawn. What happens between each frame is much more
important than what exists on each frame. Animation is therefore the art of manipulating the invisible interstices that lie
between the frames.“
Comics




Scott McCloud
Understanding Comics




  •    Due to their media certain art forms are better at certain tasks than others.
  •    The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach
  •    From the chapter: Making Comics into Film p. 149
  •    By Aaron Meskin, Roy T. Cook, Warren Ellis To be released Feb. 2012
Comics
•   Between word and image
                                                  Pictorial narratives or
                                                  expositions in which
    Juxtaposed pictorial and
                                                  words usually
    other images in
                                                  contribute to the
    deliberate sequence,
                               The printed        meaning of the
    intended to convey
                               arrangement of     pictures and vice
    information and/or
                               art and balloons   versa
    produce an aesthetic
    response in the reader     in sequence
Media specificity level_5_lecture_final
We learn to read meaning into
physical properties because we
are used to doing that from an
early age.

Somewhere in the background of a
good communication is your
mum’s smile.
Comic specificity

Each page is segmented into panels (or frames), which have borders that
separate them from other panels.
Individual panels contain one part of a story (perhaps dialogue between
characters), or a character's inner thoughts (represented by speech and thought
balloons) that leads into the next panel.
Panels are routinely separated by blank areas called gutters.
Panels are set out to logically flow one to another, guiding the reader's eyes so
that they can take in the story in a sequential manner.
Comic books are often called sequential art -- a type of graphic storytelling.
Shaping the Maxx is the classic text examining how a complex comic book
could be transferred to TV. http://www2.gsu.edu/~jougms/Maxx.htm
Adaptation across media is necessarily a process of translation, you can’t
merely import forms from one medium to another. The work of adaptation
transforms the original content because the new medium cannot simply
duplicate the old.
Animation often translates wide frames in a comic into horizontal camera
movements. Camera movements also provide the translation for more complex
comics devices. Usually a change of comics frames signals a new spatial
perspective on the action, this might become a pan or slow zoom when it
translates into film.
Format
 •   In graphics format often rules                                     Format can be digital or material
 •   Software formats
 •   AI - Adobe Illustrator's metafile format.
 •   CGM - Computer Graphics Metafile: An International Standards Organization metafile format for images.
 •   GIF - Graphics Interchange Format
 •   JFIF - The JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) File Interchange Format. Where would you be without compression?
 •   PSD - Adobe Photoshop's native format, which stores all of its layer and selection and miscellaneous other image data.



Format represents the
physical point of contact
with the user; affecting
how we receive a
design's printed or online
information.
Format is derived from
the media specific
qualities of the material
used.                                                                        Material manufactured in thin sheets from the
                                                                             pulp of wood or other fibrous substances
Type formats live on as a memory of old technology.

The design grid is a ghost of Guttenberg from 1439

The Medium is the Massage is a typo
The Digital Age
•   The manual construction of images in digital cinema represents a return
    to nineteenth century pre-cinematic practices, when images were hand-
    painted and hand-animated. Using the computer as a tool to do this is
    simply using a very powerful extension.
•   Today, with the shift to digital media, the marginalized techniques of
    image manipulation (Rear projection and blue screen photography, matte
    paintings and glass shots, mirrors and miniatures etc.) move to the centre.
•   In effect digital technology merges disciplines. Film and animation
    become combined, CGI creating a world of hard to distinguish differences
    between live action and animation.
•   As differences between media disappear the concept of medium-
    specificity needs to change or it becomes redundant. Media can also be
    defined by the social or cultural context they are practiced within and this
    is perhaps a way into looking at convergent media.
Extending the social
•   In his 1977 book Marxism and Literature, Raymond Williams proposed a reading of medium-
    specificity where media are defined by the social or cultural context they are practiced in (“From
    Medium to Social Practice”).
•   Williams traces the evolution in art historical terminology from defining artworks according to
    “medium,” to defining them as “practice.” For instance students used to study ‘painting’ or
    ‘sculpture’ now they study ‘fine art practice’.

•   Post-modernism emphasises the conceptual rather than the material basis of practice.

•   Like Williams, Rosalind Krauss argues for a “different specificity” in what she deems “the post-
    medium condition,” A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition.
•   The Greenbergian notion of medium-specificity will not be located in materials or methods, but in
    the “essence of Art itself”. The successful art of this post-medium age will reflect on its own
    practice in relation to the past.

•   Are the old and the new media completely separate entities or are new media old media delivered
    with new technologies?

•   For Bolter and Grusin the specificity of new media, their “newness,” lies in the way they remediate
    older media. Building on McLuhan, they define remediation as “the representation of one medium
    in another.” This conceptualises the relationship between old and new media not as oppositional
    but as part of a media genealogy, focusing on their connections and affiliations instead.
•   Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. “Remediation.” Configurations 4.3 (1996): 311-358
Where are we going?
•   The convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and
    cognitive science is transforming global society. Technological convergence is
    beginning to define the way societies interact and organise themselves.

•   The new technologies that convergence produces have immense consequences
    for global security, communications, surveillance, health, ecosystems, biogenetics
    and the prolongation of life. And as with every new technology, new marginalised
    groups (the ‘have nots’) are being created.

•   In particular, cybernetics – the science of communications and automatic control
    systems in both machines and living things – is having a revolutionary impact on
    education and culture, on genetic research and evolving biotechnologies, on food
    production and the health of people. New applications are being developed that
    not only contest previous theories, but may also change the very nature of human
    self-understanding and the social relationships that sustain it.

•   Science fiction will become science fact, we may in future become an extension of
    the media itself.
Media specificity level_5_lecture_final
•   Adorno, Theodor (1975). “Culture Industry Reconsidered.” New German Critique 6: 12–19. [End Page 111]
•   Adorno, Theodor, and George Simpson (1941). “On Popular Music.” Studies in Philosophy and Social Sciences 9: 17–48.
•   Arnheim, Rudolph (1956). Film as Art. Berkeley: U of California P.
•   Arnott, Christopher (2007). “Behind the Eight Ball.” New Haven Advocate. http://www.newhavenadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=3262 .
•   Booth, Wayne C. (1988). The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction. Berkeley: U of California P.
•   Brown, Lee B. (2005). “Adorno’s Case against Popular Music.” Goldblatt and Brown 378–85.
•   Carrier, David (2000). The Aesthetics of Comics. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UP.
•   Carroll, Noël (1985). “The Power of Movies.” Daedalus 114: 79–103.
•   ——— (2008). The Philosophy of Motion Pictures. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
•   Caswell, Lucy Shelton, and David Filipi (2008). Jeff Smith: Bone and Beyond. Columbus, OH: Wexner Center for the Arts.
•   Crawford, Donald (1970). “The Uniqueness of the Medium.” Personalist 51: 447–69.
•   Cwiklik, Greg (1999). “Understanding the Real Problem.” Comics Journal 211: 62–66.
•   Eaton, Anne (2005). “Painting and Ethics.” Goldblatt and Brown 63–68.
•   Goldblatt, David, and Lee B. Brown, eds. (2005). Aesthetics: A Reader in Philosophy of the Arts. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.
•   Hajdu, David (2008). The Ten-Cent Plague. New York: Farrar.
•   Hayman, Greg, and Henry John Pratt (2005). “What Are Comics?” Goldblatt and Brown 419–24.
•   Herman, David (2004). “Toward a Transmedial Narratology.” Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. Ed. Marie-Laure Ryan. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. 47–75.
•   Lessing, Gotthold Ephriam (1910). Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry. Trans. Ellen Frothingham. Boston: Little, Brown.
•   McCloud, Scott (1993). Understanding Comics. New York: HarperCollins.
•   Nehamas, Alexander (1988). “Plato and the Mass Media.” Monist 71: 214–231.
•   Nussbaum, Martha (1990). Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. New York: Oxford UP.
•   Plato (1961). Collected Dialogues. Ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton: Princeton UP.
•   Pratt, Henry John (2009). “Narrative in Comics.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67: 107–17.
•   Rabinowitz, Peter J. (1977). “Truth in Fiction: A Re-examination of Audiences.” Critical Inquiry 4: 121–41.
•   Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith (1989). “How the Model Neglects the Medium: Linguistics, Language, and the Crisis of Narratology.” Journal of Narrative Technique 19: 157–66.
•   Robinson, Jerry (1974). The Comics: An Illustrated History of Comic Art. New York: Berkeley Windhover Books. [End Page 112]
•   Smith, Jeff (2004). Bone: The Complete Epic in One Volume. Columbus, OH: Cartoon Books.
•   Squier, Susan M. (2008). “So Long as They Grow Out of It: Comics, the Discourse of Developmental Normalcy, and Disability.” Journal of Medical Humanities 29: 71–88.
•   Wertham, Fredric (1954). Seduction of the Innocent. New York: Rinehart.
•   Wolff, Robert Paul (1970). In Defense of Anarchism. New York: Harper and Row.
•   Wright, Bradford W. (2001). Comic Book Nation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP.
•   Zunshine, Lisa (2006). Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP. [End Page 113]

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Media specificity level_5_lecture_final

  • 2. Definitions • Medium: material or technical means of artistic expression. • Media is the plural form of medium. • The dictionary defines media as all the communication devices and channels of communication used to reach mass audiences. • First use of media in 1927, perhaps abstracted from mass media (1923, a technical term in advertising), pl. of medium in particular when useed as an "intermediate agency," or a ‘carrier’ a sense first found c.1600.
  • 3. What this lecture is about • The physical nature of any given thing and its relationship to its environment determines the way it works or operates. This lecture will give a brief reminder of what we are as a species and what are our physical and mental limitations. It will then propose that all human attempts to construct media are attempts to extend beyond our physical and mental limitations and that each media we develop has its own limitations and strengths, which we need to understand if we are to make the most of what each media offers. • This lecture takes as one of its central themes the borders and boundaries between media and will argue that any theoretical understanding of communication should include an investigation as to how and why particular media work in the way they do. It will introduce theories of medium specificity and will attempt to determine what traits define a media. It will ask what differentiates film, photography, games etc. from other existing modes of representation. How is photography distinct from painting? What are the defining traits of the cinematic? Are games narratives? • As we deal with these theories, this lecture will attempt to show how they each moved from descriptions of the properties of specific medium to prescriptions for what the aesthetics of these media should look like. • This medium-specific approach, will also explore how cross media narratives evolve and how comparison across media can be used to clarify the essence of any one particular media. Eisenstein, for example, rests his theory of the cinematic on analogies to text-based media, Bazin draws on notions of photography and theatre to talk about cinema. • The intersections between expressive media rather than the borders between them are now becoming far more important and in particular this lecture will explore how the human being as a specific physical and social construction is the driving force behind how each media is used. • Theories that celebrate hybridity and border crossing will also be introduced, and how the notion of medium specificity plays a central role in such formulations.
  • 4. The media specific problem with this lecture • Tufte argues that PowerPoint’s design inherently makes it more difficult to communicate with an audience. • Instead of giving an informative presentation, PowerPoint encourages speakers to create slides with ultra-short, incomplete thoughts listed with bullets.
  • 5. What are we? • Our medium specificity is that we are biological creatures. Organic in nature, we have a close genetic connection to the animal world. • We specifically have intensive development and differentiation of the cerebral cortex. We also have an erect posture, free upper extremities, adapted for using and making tools, and advanced development of the means of communication. However the need to maintain balance in the erect posture caused a certain curvature of the spinal column and a shift in the general centre of gravity. Since the upper extremities were no longer used for body support and walking, the skeleton of the lower extremities became stronger and their muscles developed, the feet became arched to act as springs. All the systems of the internal organs have adapted to the erect posture, the means of delivering blood from the lower extremities to the heart and the brain have become more complex. The diaphragm has shifted from a vertical to a horizontal position, the muscles of the abdomen have come to perform a much greater role in the act of breathing. At a certain level of anthropogenesis, under the influence of labour activity and communication, biological development became what is, in effect, the historical development of social systems. • The newborn child is not a "tabula rasa" (clean slate) on which the environment draws patterns. Heredity equips the child not only with instincts, s/he is from the very beginning the possessor of the ability to imitate adults, their actions, the noises they make. S/he's physiological make-up (the round shape of the head, the sophisticated structure of the hands, the shape of the lips and the whole facial structure, the erect posture, etc.) are products of the social way of life, the result of interaction with other people. • The basic aspects of our nature are physiological, psychological and sociological. • At a basic physical level, we are part of the natural interconnection of physical and chemical phenomena and obey the laws of necessity. However in spite of the limitations of this condition our highly developed cerebral cortex allows us to think our way out. If we cant reach it we pick up a stick and if we cant outfight it we sharpen a stone axe. • A human being is a biosocial being and the subject of social forms of life, communication and consciousness.
  • 6. The Specificity of Homo Sapiens A large brain Most of the sense organs located at the top end and facing forwards Long throat, small mouth, flexible tongue and lips An upright stance that frees the arms from any walking duties and allows the eyes to see further Bi-lateral Hands with mobile thumbs and fingers Symmetry that allow for fine grip and rotation from the wrist
  • 7. Tools as extensions of our SIGHT existing faculties Marshall McLuhan
  • 8. SMELL and TOUCH The human body is unable to sense many potentially harmful substances in the air we breath. NASA has built an electronic nose to smell what the astronauts can’t. Inspired by the human olfactory system, the electronic nose is endowed with ultra-responsive sensors and a neural net to rapidly recognize any dangerous elements in the air. Surgical workstations equipped with robotic arms can accurately perform motions as minute as 20 to 30 millionths of a meter. Working by teleoperation, the physician uses a joystick-like controller that scales down his hand motions, allowing for precision never before possible. Pressure encountered by the robot arm is transferred back through the controller, allowing the surgeon to feel what the robot encounters.
  • 10. New technologies tend to mimic old ones.
  • 11. A definition • Medium specificity is the view that the media associated with a given art form (both its material components and the processes by which they are exploited) entail specific possibilities for and constraints on representation and expression, and this provides a normative framework for what artists working in that art form ought to attempt. • Noël Carroll 2008 Normative Adjective: Establishing, relating to, or deriving from a standard or norm, esp. of behaviour: For example, in a prison negative sanctions my be introduced to enforce normative behaviour.
  • 12. What is media specificity? An artwork, in order to be successful, needs to adhere to the specific stylistic properties of its own medium. “Gotthold Ephraim Lessing 1776 Medium/media specificity is a term used in aesthetics and art criticism. It is most closely associated with modernism, but it predates it. According to Clement Greenberg,, medium specificity holds that "the unique and proper area of competence" for a form of art corresponds with the ability of an artist to manipulate those features that are "unique to the nature" of a particular medium. Medium specificity and media specific analysis are ways to identify new media art forms, such as Internet art. Medium specificity can be used as an aesthetic judgement tool, it can be used to frame the question, “ Does this work fulfil the promise contained in the medium used to bring the artwork into existence?” We now move from descriptions of the properties of specific medium to prescriptions for what the aesthetics of these media should look like.
  • 13. Media specificity is a pre-modernist idea that relates to the modernist concept ‘Truth to materials’. It can be seen as an idea directly in contrast to the phrase “ut pictura poesis” or “as is painting, so is poetry,” taken from Horace’s Ars Poetica Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s 1766 essay, Laocošn argues that the media of painting and poetry are inherently different, because while poetry unfolds in time, painting exists in space. He states that these medias should not overstep their respective terrains. Lessing contends that an artwork, in order to be successful, needs to adhere to the specific stylistic properties of its own medium. Clement Greenberg in Towards a Newer Laocoon 1940 states: Medium specificity holds that "the unique and proper area of competence" for a form of art corresponds with the ability of an artist to manipulate those features that are "unique to the nature" of a particular medium.
  • 14. Media Specificity in the fine art world • Michael Fried 1966 essay "Art and Objecthood" is an attack on minimalist art for producing effects that do not derive from within the work itself, but instead are dependent on the viewer's relationship with the object. This, he insists, "is now the negation of art" (Fried, 1967) • According to Fried, minimalists took Greenberg's plea for purity too far; instead of exploring the materiality of the media, all they do is present the materials for what they are. • Fried argues that this leads to an emphasis on the viewer's encounter with the object and its "objecthood," rather than with the formal qualities within the object itself. This interaction is theatrical because it exists within space and time, while Fried contends that visual art should instead aspire to absorption, which he casts as the opposite of theatricality. The work should present itself whole at every instant, and not depend on the viewer's relation to what is being seen. Frank Stella John McCracken Robert Mangold Ad Reinhardt
  • 15. • But • In order for a medium to have characteristic qualities it must be grounded in a tradition that has established these qualities as intrinsic properties.
  • 16. Media Specificity as Communication Theory Marshall McLuhan • “The medium is the message" • The central idea in his 1964 book: Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man • McLuhan calls attention to the intrinsic effect of communications media and explains that it is not the content, it is the carrier that creates meaning. • McLuhan expands our understanding of media. • The medium becomes the media which is itself simply an extension of our own physical and mental limitations.
  • 17. Reshaping ourselves • If we are defined by our physical and mental limitations, by extending these we change the definition of ourselves. • “Electronic technology is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal lives”. MM • “Print technology fostered a process of specialism and detachment”. MM • Until writing was invented we lived in acoustic space. This was a world of emotion,… speech was the social chart of this bog. MM • MM - Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Massage 1967 • “The alphabet created forgetfulness” Socrates Phaedrus
  • 18. Our social patterns shaped by media
  • 19. Social extensions • Social [knowledge] building as a creative process of knowing will be collectively extended to the whole of human society (McLuhan 1964) Mobile phone networks, Facebook, Twitter • Electronic mass media collapse space and time barriers in human communication, enabling people to interact and live on a global scale (McLuhan; 1962 Gutenberg galaxy) • "The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village." (McLuhan 1966)
  • 20. What are we extending? “Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously. As soon as information is acquired, it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information. Our electronically configured world has forced us to move from the habit of data classification to the mode of pattern recognition.” MM Perceptual grouping and binding is one of the main functions of ‘early vision’. Ramachandran & Hirstein 1999 Technological development reflects existing human neurological as well as physiological capacity.
  • 21. Technology as Memory extensions • Footprints • Drawing, painting and symbol making • Writing • Printing • Photography • Sound recording • Silent Film • Technological convergence of Sound recording and Silent Film • TV • Computers (1940s) • Magnetic tape (Available to the public from 1940s) • Video tape (Available to the public from 1969) • Audio-cassettes replace reel-to-reel tape, video-cassettes replace home movies. • Digital convergence , the switch from analogue to digital, concentrated on reducing size and increasing speed and capacity. Today’s computers use miniature integrated-circuit technology in conjunction with rapid-access memory. Computers are desk-top, lap-top, palm-top and will soon be ‘embedded’ in other technologies and even in human beings. The next generation of computers is expected to use forms of ‘artificial intelligence’. • Information storage now includes ourselves. The Visible Human Project (VHP) has created anatomically detailed, three-dimensional representations of both the male and female bodies. The first ‘visible human’ was Joseph Paul Jernigan, a 39-year-old Texan convicted of murder and executed by lethal injection in 1993. Jernigan has been memorized or ‘reincarnated’ as a 15- gigabyte database.
  • 22. Sound and media specificity • In the 1920's the 10-inch 78 rpm Shellac gramophone disc became the most popular recording medium. • A 10 inch disc rotating at 78 rpm limited the duration of recorded time on each side of a disc to around three minutes. • Songwriters and performers tailored their songs to fit. The 3-minute single remained the song recording standard until well into the 1960s when the availability of microgroove recording and improved mastering techniques enabled recording artists to increase the duration of their recordings. (In particular Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone and the Beatles’ Hey Jude) • The 3 minute idea still persists and over 95% of all new popular hits still fit this format. • Radio airplay time or slots are now based on 3 minutes. Songs that are longer usually get a remix (often called a Radio Edit) to makes them shorter to fit. • What started out as an engineering limitation has been adopted and maintained by commercial interests. • In song writing terms this becomes: Verse - Chorus - Verse2 - Chorus2 - Bridge - Chorus3
  • 23. A Short History of Vinyl 1932: The first stereo disc is recorded by Stokowski at Bell labs in Philadelphia using vinyl rather than shellac. By the mid 1930s vinyls are sent to disc jockeys (a term earned through jockeying up the next record) to avoid breakage of shellac copies in the mail. 1940: Mobile DJs become popular around the world as entertainers for military troops during WWII, however they still only use a single record player. 1943: Jimmy Savile launches one of the world’s first DJ dance parties playing jazz records in an upstairs function room in Leeds. 1947: One of the first people to use twin turntables for continuous play is Jimmy Saville who pays a metalworker to weld two domestic record decks together for more continuous play at his dance parties in Leeds. This style of ‘twin-deck’ DJing utilising a microphone for talk over becomes industry standard. 1947: The “Whiskey-A-Go-Go” opens in Paris playing popular records, this is considered by some to be the very first disco. 1948: Columbia Records introduce the 12inch vinylite Long Play (LP) 33rpm record. 1949: RCA Victor release the first 45 rpm single, seven inches in diameter, with a large centre hole to accommodate automatic play mechanisms. (Microgroove technology introduced) 1951: The first Jukebox that can play 7-inch 45 rpm records is introduced.
  • 24. Photography • The concept of medium-specificity has had a profound impact on photography. In its early history, photography struggled to establish itself as a legitimate art form. Theorists devised a justification for the art of photography that positioned it against its competitor, painting. Art photographers such as Stieglitz, Weston, and Strand argued that in order for photography to be taken seriously, it must operate only according to its own capabilities: it must not aspire to imitate the aesthetics or materials of painting. The art of photography became defined on strictly medium-specific terms. Pictorialism Stieglitz Weston Strand
  • 25. The Photographic Tableau vivant 19th Century Photography mimics painting and theatre Pictorialism as a response, is seen by early 20th century photographic critics as being more media specific. However pictorialism is ‘Like a Picture’ I.e. Its values derive from painting.
  • 26. The Tableau Vivant is re-interpreted as being media specific in the 1980s in particular through the influence of Jean-Francois Chevrier’s essay The Adventures of the Picture Form in the History of Photography (1989) and Jeff Wall’s large scale constructed images. Pictorialism, according to Jeff Wall could be seen as an attempt by photographers to unsuccessfully imitate painting. "By divesting itself of the encumbrances and advantages inherited from older art forms, reportage, or the spontaneous fleeting aspect of the photographic image pushes toward a discovery of qualities apparently intrinsic to the medium, qualities that must necessarily distinguish the medium from others and through the self-examination of which it can emerge as a modernist art on a plane with others” Jeff Wall Vanessa Beecroft Jeff Wall
  • 27. The Lens as an extension of the faculty of sight • A camera lens can be seen as an extension of the eye. Kamps, (2011) explains the relationship between the eye and a camera and his explanation helps us understand the media specific nature of lens based media and also how we can understand the camera as an extension of our faculty of sight. He points to the fact that both eyes and lenses focus an inverted image onto a light sensitive surface, the retina and the film stock, as well as both being able to adjust the amount of light entering, using aperture change and iris dilation. More importantly he points out the differences, in particular the subjective nature of human sight and the way that a camera is “an absolute measurement device” . This means that a camera sensor does not have the intelligence of a brain associated with it and that “the signals recorded need to be adjusted to suit the colour temperature of the light illuminating the scene”. Therefore all the technological developments surrounding lens selection, aperture adjustment, film stock sensitivity, lighting equipment etc. etc. are all developments that are designed to help make the camera as sensitive as the eye. The camera operator of course being the ‘brain’ behind choices made in terms of the use of this technology. • The audience have grown up with their own ‘sight’ and the experiences associated with visual perception will be directly associated with the images produced by film technology. It is at this basic level that perhaps emotional empathy operates, a dark scene being associated with experiences of the dark in the ‘real world’, such as being in a cave or being out at night; bright light being associated with early visual experiences of a summer’s day or a spring morning. The eyeball camera lens “The tiny camera combines the best of both the human eye and an expensive single-lens reflex (SLR) camera with a zoom lens. It has the simple lens of the human eye, allowing the device to be small, and the zoom capability of the SLR camera without the bulk and weight of a complex lens. The key is that both the simple lens and photodetectors are on flexible substrates, and a hydraulic system can change the shape of the substrates appropriately, enabling a variable zoom.”
  • 28. Film Münsterberg was the first writer to establish the specific nature of film as an art form. In1916, he points to flashbacks, close-ups, and edits as the techniques that are used in film to capture narratives and contrasts these to the means available to theatrical productions. “These devices (close-ups, edits etc.) are all objectifications of mental processes.” He points out that these techniques are what distinguish film from theatre. In his writings he also introduced ideas relating to audience reception. He started to ask questions as to how and why an audience might learn the conventions of this new art form. He pointed to the fact that audiences did not get confused by large close ups in comparison with medium format shots. They did not think for instance this meant people were getting bigger or smaller. Panofsky (1934) states that an audience’s enjoyment of film is not to do with subject matter, but to do with “the sheer delight that things seemed to move.” Perception Is Movement, Movement Is Perception Salvatore Leonardi Movement is an attention Getting Device: External attention getting devices - intensity and size contrast - unexpected stimuli (orienting response) repetition movement we naturally respond to movement (midbrain) Internal attention getting devices motives and emotions needs, interests set or expectancy past experience tunes us primed
  • 29. During cinema's history, a whole repertoire of techniques (lighting, editing, camera supports, the use of different film stocks and lens, etc.) were developed to modify the basic record obtained by a film apparatus. Photography is coupled with a motor and a set of particular physical constraints were worked with that we now understand as the media specificity of film. Jean-Luc Godard defined cinema as: “Truth 24 frames per second“ Bazin introduces the idea of reality "captured" on film, which implied that cinema was about photographing what existed before the camera, rather than "creating the 'never-was'" of special effects. Rear projection and blue screen photography, matte paintings and glass shots, mirrors and miniatures, optical effects and other techniques which allowed filmmakers to construct and alter the moving images, were seen as suspicious by many early film critics. The difficulty of modifying images once they were recorded was what gave cinema its value as a document, and this was at the core of Bazin’s media specific film theory. He makes a distinction between “those directors who put their faith in the image and those who put their faith in reality” However other early theorists such as Eisenstein tended to mix up their theories and Eisenstein’s interest in Montage directly contradicts Bazin. However both use specific media contexts on which to build theory. Bazin: the lens collects light and the film stock records it. Eisenstein: Film must be cut and reassembled in order to create narrative. Eisenstein describes five methods of montage in his introductory essay "Word and Image“, in it he combines literary theory with film theory. Metric - where the editing follows a specific number of frames (based purely on the physical nature of time), cutting to the next shot no matter what is happening within the image. Rhythmic - includes cutting based on continuity, creating visual continuity from edit to edit. Tonal - a tonal montage uses the emotional meaning of the shots to elicit a reaction from the audience; more complex than from the metric or rhythmic montage. For example, a sleeping baby would emote calmness and relaxation. Overtonal/Associational - the overtonal montage is the cumulation of metric, rhythmic, and tonal montage to synthesize its effect on the audience for an even more abstract and complicated effect.
  • 30. Bazin advocated the use of deep focus, wide shots and the "shot-in-depth", and preferred what he referred to as "true continuity" through mise en scène over experiments in editing and visual effects. This placed him in opposition to film theory of the 1920s and 1930s which emphasized how the cinema can manipulate reality. The famous staircase sequence from The Battleship Potemkin employs montage to create the illusion that the staircase is almost endless, and intercuts shots of a stroller rolling down the steps with close-ups of horrified faces and dying people, thus destroying the reality of the actual space and using metaphors and juxtaposition to create a specific response. Wells and Renoir use the lens to capture the totality of a situation so that the audience have maximum information to allow them to read what is going on. Renoir On Purge Bébé Eisenstein Battleship Potemkin Wells Citizen Kane
  • 31. Film Stock • The technical specifics of Velvia (Velvia, 2012) are that it is a type of daylight-balanced colour reversal film and has a smooth image structure, it also has extremely high levels of colour saturation and image quality. It was very fast, had a fine grain and an ISO of 50. Because of the high levels of colour saturation and image quality, Velvia’s main use in film making was for landscape shots and special-effects backgrounds. However one film in particular used Velvia as a chosen film stock, this was Vincent Ward directed film What Dreams May Come (1998) starring Robin Williams, where the action takes place inside an actual painting. In this case the choice of this highly saturated film stock was perfect. The Velvia film stock was used to create the feeling of being inside the world of the canvas, its saturated colours reflecting the fact that all the action was supposed to be taking place within a painter’s colour palette. When action takes place in the ‘real-world’ the film stock changes back into a normal standard Kodak film stock.
  • 32. In The Wizard of Oz, (1939) the Kansas dust bowl appears in black- and-white and the world of Oz in technicolor Uses of film stock rely on an expected audience emotional reaction to heighted colour.
  • 33. Animation in Film • Twentieth century animation became a depository for nineteenth century moving image techniques left behind by cinema. • Before film stock a variety of handcrafted methods were used. Magic lantern slides were painted at least until the 1850s; so were the images used in the Phenakistiscope, the Thaumatrope, the Zootrope, the Praxinoscope, the Choreutoscope and other nineteenth century proto- cinematic devices. • Not only were the images created manually, they were also manually animated. In Robertson's Phantasmagoria, which premiered in 1799, magic lantern operators moved behind the screen in order to make projected images appear to advance and withdraw. Nineteenth century optical toys enjoyed in private homes also required manual action to create movement -- twirling the strings of the Thaumatrope, rotating the Zootrope's cylinder, turning the Viviscope's handle. • Film animation links the hand craft of drawing to the motor and film’s projection technology.
  • 34. Norman McLaren “Animation is the art of movements that are drawn. What happens between each frame is much more important than what exists on each frame. Animation is therefore the art of manipulating the invisible interstices that lie between the frames.“
  • 35. Comics Scott McCloud Understanding Comics • Due to their media certain art forms are better at certain tasks than others. • The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach • From the chapter: Making Comics into Film p. 149 • By Aaron Meskin, Roy T. Cook, Warren Ellis To be released Feb. 2012
  • 36. Comics • Between word and image Pictorial narratives or expositions in which Juxtaposed pictorial and words usually other images in contribute to the deliberate sequence, The printed meaning of the intended to convey arrangement of pictures and vice information and/or art and balloons versa produce an aesthetic response in the reader in sequence
  • 38. We learn to read meaning into physical properties because we are used to doing that from an early age. Somewhere in the background of a good communication is your mum’s smile.
  • 39. Comic specificity Each page is segmented into panels (or frames), which have borders that separate them from other panels. Individual panels contain one part of a story (perhaps dialogue between characters), or a character's inner thoughts (represented by speech and thought balloons) that leads into the next panel. Panels are routinely separated by blank areas called gutters. Panels are set out to logically flow one to another, guiding the reader's eyes so that they can take in the story in a sequential manner. Comic books are often called sequential art -- a type of graphic storytelling. Shaping the Maxx is the classic text examining how a complex comic book could be transferred to TV. http://www2.gsu.edu/~jougms/Maxx.htm Adaptation across media is necessarily a process of translation, you can’t merely import forms from one medium to another. The work of adaptation transforms the original content because the new medium cannot simply duplicate the old. Animation often translates wide frames in a comic into horizontal camera movements. Camera movements also provide the translation for more complex comics devices. Usually a change of comics frames signals a new spatial perspective on the action, this might become a pan or slow zoom when it translates into film.
  • 40. Format • In graphics format often rules Format can be digital or material • Software formats • AI - Adobe Illustrator's metafile format. • CGM - Computer Graphics Metafile: An International Standards Organization metafile format for images. • GIF - Graphics Interchange Format • JFIF - The JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) File Interchange Format. Where would you be without compression? • PSD - Adobe Photoshop's native format, which stores all of its layer and selection and miscellaneous other image data. Format represents the physical point of contact with the user; affecting how we receive a design's printed or online information. Format is derived from the media specific qualities of the material used. Material manufactured in thin sheets from the pulp of wood or other fibrous substances
  • 41. Type formats live on as a memory of old technology. The design grid is a ghost of Guttenberg from 1439 The Medium is the Massage is a typo
  • 42. The Digital Age • The manual construction of images in digital cinema represents a return to nineteenth century pre-cinematic practices, when images were hand- painted and hand-animated. Using the computer as a tool to do this is simply using a very powerful extension. • Today, with the shift to digital media, the marginalized techniques of image manipulation (Rear projection and blue screen photography, matte paintings and glass shots, mirrors and miniatures etc.) move to the centre. • In effect digital technology merges disciplines. Film and animation become combined, CGI creating a world of hard to distinguish differences between live action and animation. • As differences between media disappear the concept of medium- specificity needs to change or it becomes redundant. Media can also be defined by the social or cultural context they are practiced within and this is perhaps a way into looking at convergent media.
  • 43. Extending the social • In his 1977 book Marxism and Literature, Raymond Williams proposed a reading of medium- specificity where media are defined by the social or cultural context they are practiced in (“From Medium to Social Practice”). • Williams traces the evolution in art historical terminology from defining artworks according to “medium,” to defining them as “practice.” For instance students used to study ‘painting’ or ‘sculpture’ now they study ‘fine art practice’. • Post-modernism emphasises the conceptual rather than the material basis of practice. • Like Williams, Rosalind Krauss argues for a “different specificity” in what she deems “the post- medium condition,” A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition. • The Greenbergian notion of medium-specificity will not be located in materials or methods, but in the “essence of Art itself”. The successful art of this post-medium age will reflect on its own practice in relation to the past. • Are the old and the new media completely separate entities or are new media old media delivered with new technologies? • For Bolter and Grusin the specificity of new media, their “newness,” lies in the way they remediate older media. Building on McLuhan, they define remediation as “the representation of one medium in another.” This conceptualises the relationship between old and new media not as oppositional but as part of a media genealogy, focusing on their connections and affiliations instead. • Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. “Remediation.” Configurations 4.3 (1996): 311-358
  • 44. Where are we going? • The convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science is transforming global society. Technological convergence is beginning to define the way societies interact and organise themselves. • The new technologies that convergence produces have immense consequences for global security, communications, surveillance, health, ecosystems, biogenetics and the prolongation of life. And as with every new technology, new marginalised groups (the ‘have nots’) are being created. • In particular, cybernetics – the science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things – is having a revolutionary impact on education and culture, on genetic research and evolving biotechnologies, on food production and the health of people. New applications are being developed that not only contest previous theories, but may also change the very nature of human self-understanding and the social relationships that sustain it. • Science fiction will become science fact, we may in future become an extension of the media itself.
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