#seancubitt

[millenniumfilmjnl]

Millennium Film Journal No. 34 “The Digital” (1999). #viviansobchack #seancubitt #lauramarks #levmanovich #andydeck #mfjbackissue #digitalfilm #flipbook https://www.instagram.com/p/BuMK6NKFAeI/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1b8xcrdpaugzc

[i-am-tiff-january]

Response Project 3

Sean Cubitt Response Since the beginning of time projection of all forms have evolved to the many art forms we see and anticipate today.  From the paint spattered handprint on the wall of a cave, to a candlelit silhouette traced by a charcoal stick, to images drawn from reflections in bodies of water, we can no longer limit these visual representations of projection to the two forms of light and shadow without exploring the other senses. Nowadays (amongst others) light, psyche, sensuality and empathy are represented and projected in installations in galleries worldwide. Human interactions within these realms can create relationships within the unknown, to others we will never meet.  This separation of subject and object in its many forms are very common these days.  What binds these all together is the projection of light.  However, what’s widely accepted through the multiple ways we communicate is absent presence.

Video Art Response From hauling around weighty video equipment in the 60’s and 70’s to todays digital technology, video art dominates the international art world to such a degree we forget the beginning of it’s days on the radical fringes of society. In it’s early beginnings video captured self-portraiture, landscape, painting and sculpture, until it slowly it morphed into a channel for self-expression as audiences began to reject physical art objects and materials found in institutions of fine art. Artists were looking for ways to record their work, and not just in a series of frozen moments that photography offered.  They began experimenting with video as a direct encounter between the artist and the viewer telling a more elaborate story. The prominence of the moving image has secured its place in history, and as our experiences with video reign prevalent in all areas of society, we can establish that video has now become the default medium of the 21st century.

[fantasticthefox-blog]

hugely significan metaphor in the ways we understand our relationships with the world and with each other

Sean Cubitt

This reading was great, the way it related light and darkness projections to so many aspects of life. I’ve always believed everyone has an inner light and when evil is present it is a lack of an inner light. Light from the sun and moon  has always been used for guidance and direction in the most literal way, but also the inner light or conscious guides our decisions and helps us present ourselves in what we believe is the best. Our inner light connects us to others and wards us from the darkness.

[emafrankfurt-blog]

Role of the archive in EMA

The role of the archive is a very central one in the concept (if one can even say there is such a thing as a concept rather than a constant development of ideas, experiments and theories) of experimental media archaelogy. Strauven (2013), p.68 points this very fact out and refers to the archives of the FIAF (Brighton Project), closely related to the early cinema movement and the idea of the “digital archive”, developed by Wolfgang Ernst as important subjects. 

The importance of the archive for experimental media archaeology comes from the very subjects that it analyzes and experiments with. As seen in the course that lead to this particular project getting started, temporality, materiality and art are central points, all of which are closely related to the subject of the archive. The key points here seem to be the temporality and the materiality, especially if one wants to see how it would play out on social media. There is a certain linearity at the core of social media which in most cases heavily relies on news and constant renewal to stay relevant and create interest. However, especially when looking at microblogging sites such as Twitter and Tumblr that give their users the possibility to retweet or reblog the content, this linearity gets broken up completely. Just like that the linearity can get changed completely and a medium (e.g. a video) can be put in a new context of time and sometimes even of space if it gets reposted to another social media site where the audience is a completely different one.  The materiality of the content of social media also is a very important factor in experimenting with it. As Cubitt (2013), p.6 puts it, the “material specificity of every instance of a photograph or film” is one of the most important parts that one has to look at when analyzing a medium or trying to put it in a (oftentimes historical, which refers back to the temporality of the concept of experimental media archaeology) context. This specificity changes which each time and each person looking at it. Seeing as Tumblr has millions of users, so sometimes hundreds of thousands of people look at, like or reblog a certain e.g. image it could thusly be said that social media completey redefines this specificity. This does not only go for the outer appearance of the medium, in this case the image, which can look different depending on which computer, at which time of day and with what eyesight people look at it. It also is as relevant for the inner appearance, meaning the text and all implications that come with it.