Final Presentation: Texas- Lev Manovich

Name of the artwork:
Texas (from GUI series)

Artist:
Lev Manovich (narrative, videography, animation, editing rules)
&
Andreas Kratky (Soft Cinema Software)

Released Date:
November 15, 2002

Introduction

Texas is one of the short stories from GUI series (Globl series Interface) which tries to a kind of visual language to reveal the contemporary "global" identity. The whole GUI series aims at representing the subjective experience of different people in a informative global world nowadays in a visualized way.                                       (http://www.softcinema.net/gui.htm).  This 12-minutes film is about a woman's happy childhood memories in Sweden was evoked by mixing her drink: Sprite? Coke? 7-up? The woman is finished and  sit comfortable to see the movement of people around her. Her confusion of the world remains a question and annoyance, driving her to move around in the world.

Detailed description 

Texas was made by Soft Cinema, which is a dynamic computer-driven media installation. The programme decided what, where and when to show in the screen and what music will be played according to the author's rules. I found it very interesting because the moving images and music is different every time you see. The programme contains randomness to the film and make it unique to other traditional films.

One of the unique part of Lev Manovich's film is that the screen is cut into different segment, which make the whole screen comprised of two to six windows. Different segment contains different content like moving graphics, animations, real camera.  

Software also selects which video clips and animations will play in these windows and in what order. This process is repeated for each part of the narrative. Following the same modular logic, different voices are used for different parts of each story. (http://www.softcinema.net/gui.htm)

The appearance of different segment is randomly assigned by the software, which means you can see different combination of segments every time. 

Each video clip in the database follows Dogma 95 rules: it was shot in continuous takes without edits using a hand-held camera. Some of the clips are simulated - i.e. a still image was animated to look like a video shot on location.

Each story takes place in a different location: Texas, Hamburg, Kiev, Mongolia, etc. (In writing the short stories, I tried to follow the principle that they can only take place in locations that I have never visited.) (http://www.softcinema.net/gui.htm)

From the quotations, the lens under Texas is unique, which is taken from different video clips without any edits. The angle of the camera make audience feel like you are watching from the eyes of the protagonist. Like the above screenshots, the camera is switched to the front of the woman- her table. It is clear that we are also see her forks, spoons and napkin. Later, she shown her movement of stiring her drink on the table clearly. The whole video clip is realistic that make people put themselves into the movie.

Narrative texts are being used in the film. They are description of the plot. Some of them are describing the mood of the protagonist. Some of them are describing the story development. Some of them are also appeared in the animations in the movie.

Animation and digital moving graphics are appeared in the movie. It is appear at the same time with the real camera. When the delighted childhood memories of the woman in Sweden comes, animations is used. Most of the time animations appears, it represents the thoughts or old memories, which is not existed in the present world or even real world. The animation also come along with words, texts that synchronizes with the narrative sound. Further, the moving graphics are used to describe the mood of the woman. When the woman is calm, the moving graphics varies less frequently. It is aesthetical that a 12 minutes film can contain such plenty of effects but it still remain harmony without mess up all the elements together. 

Evaluation of the work

There are some similarities and difference between Texas(Lev Manovich) and earlier pre-digital films.

Similarities:

1. Texas is based on a story- a confused woman who is struggling from the real world, global identity and childhood memories in Sweden. Its narrative nature is similar to the earlier pre-digital films. It tells a story but not any abstract ideas or ideology.

2. Animation is included in the film. Animation is the predecessor of cinema.  Everything that characterized moving pictures before the twentieth century-the manual construction of images, loop actions, the discrete nature of space and movement- was delegated to cinema's bastard relative, its supplement; its shadow: animation. (Lev Manovich, 1999)It is obvious that animation was a key element to cinema and provide an essential shadow to pre-digital film. Texas integrates the elements of animation (including moving graphics) with the len-based camera. Most of the segment are still based on reality, filmed by a real camera.

So far, we can see that Texas is a continuation of earlier kinds of film making.

Difference:

1. The Manifestation way of the film

 The screen is cut into different segment. Lev Manovich called this effect as Marco-cinema. In Soft Cinema, the generation of each video begins with the computer program semi-randomly breaking the screen into a number of square regions of different dimensions.(http://www.manovich.net/cinema_future/toc.htm)As I mentioned on the above, each segment or dimensions contains different contents. It is a new representing way in history of digital cinema. 

2. The Randomness of the dimensions

The image, video clip, graphics and music are randomly shown in the film according to the idea of "narrative database". In Soft Cinema, The media elements are selected from a database of a few hundred video clips to construct a potentially unlimited number of different short films. It is different from traditional film. Every time the audience watch, it becomes a different short films, providing fresh images and different feelings.

3. Texts 

Different words and texts are randomly appeared in the different segment, in a small column or in the animations. It is one of the difference compared with traditional films. Although the traditional films are a narrative story, they never use words to express the feelings or to tell the story. 

4. Creating a "multi-media cinema"

Different media is applied in the film . For example: 2D animation, motion graphics (i.e. animated text), stills, 3D scenes (as in computer games), diagrams, etc.

(http://www.manovich.net/cinema_future/toc.htm)

It provides a dramatic effects to the film and make it more diversified with different media. Traditional films and pre-digital films seldom use such many of multi media to narrate a story. 

Conclusion

Texas is a continued film of earlier pre-digital film because it is still narrative-based. But what I would describe Texas: It is more than just a film. It includes innovations like combining texts, animations, len-based videos together. Further, its randomness, which is programme-edited instead of human-edited, creates a new image of film and provides a fresh image to viewers.

References:

Manovich Lev, What Is Digital Cinema?, Peter Lunenfeld (ed.) The Digital Dialectic, Boston: MIT Press, 1999, Lev Manovich 178-192 (esp. 178-183)

Stelarc- "Ping Body"

I found Stelarc's art project most interesting. He have done a lot of technologised changes to his body, such as putting a cell-cultivated ear on his left arm, making his arm into a robotic arm. What most interests me is the project he did in 1996, Ping Body. A remote audience could access, look at and actuate the body of Stelarc via a computer-based muscle-stimulation system (as shown in the second pictures). In Novermber 1995,  Paris (the Pompidou Centre), Helsinki (The Media Lab) and Amsterdam (for the Doors of Perception Conference were connected electronically in the internet through this system. 

"This stimulation was triggered by Internet traffic itself- the flow of data." ( quoted from Christiane Paul). This artist's body was stimulated by internet interaction and activity. It is entirely based on Interent. If no-one entered any information or order anything to the artist, this artwork cannot moved and presented to people. It shows the power of internet, which helped the creation and communication of people. 

Further, The body is controlled by the computer but actually it is controlled by real people. In Today's society, the interfluve between technology and human are becoming blurred. We can see different avatars in the internet but we will never doubt whether they are created by a real people. Stelarc presented to us that Man can also be technologised and controlled by machine (which literally is the intention of real human beings).  The internet is not only a collective network, but also a system and transmission tool to change the physical bodies. 

Digital Cinema

What is new or different about digital cinema compared to traditional filmmaking?

"Mission to Earth"is an example of digital cinema. Compared to traditional filmmaking, it is quite different. Firstly, the storyline is special. It is about a girl (Inga) from ALPHA-1 who was sent to the earth to finish her mission. ALPHA is a place which was twenty years behind the earth in both cultural and techonologically. Inga is a immigrant from other place; she therefore had a complicated feelings of her hybridized identity. In fact, this film reflects the psychrological ill feelings of people towards "identity" in modern and global cities in the actual world. Throughout the whole movie, a male narrator was the only person who tells the story. There is no conversation. Only the male marrator. It makes people feel calm but sad because of  his a peaceful, flat, quiet tone. The main character Inga did not speak anything in the film, which create a cold, helpless image of her. Usually in the traditional film,

For the structure of the film the presentation of the moving images is unique and rarely used by the traditional filmmaking. The movie includes three different scene playing in the same time. Although they are different, they are somehow connected. For example, when it rains, one of the scene contains visual images is playing some graphic images in linear flow, which represents the anxious and heavyhearted mood of the main character. The moving graphic helps the story to develop the mood of the character. It is very innovative. There is no words describing the depressed and melancholy mood of the movie, but the graphic images can clearly convey the messages to people.

What other art forms (eg early film, digital art, painting, websites etc) does this film remind you of? Explain each similarity.

This film makes me remind of the artwork of Mondrian, whose artwork usually contains a lot of grid square with vertical and horizontal black lines and three primary color. The movement of the graphic images in the film looks similar to this pattern.

I also think of Mary Flanagan: [domestic] 2003, which contains some linear flow background like the moving graphic images of the film. 

UMBRELLA.net

This work is typical of much digital art because it is an artwork that places importance on:

Formal instruction

The umbrella.net system works with a 10 Bluetooth-equipped umbrella with an accompanying Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) which runs the networking software. When it rains, participant can open and initiate the network connection. With bright LEDs, different people are recognized as 3 status: Pulsing red if searching for nodes, Pulsing blue if connected to other umbrellas, Flashing blue if transmitting data between umbrellas. 

The concept rather than the art project

"Coincidence of need" can be defined as seemingly individual activities that are also common experiences based on factors beyond the individual's immediate control." (http://www.mee.tcd.ie/~moriwaki/umbrella/system.php)

The act of opening an umbrella is a "Coincidence" when rain begins to fall. Participants may not know whether the person next to his/ her is a participants of umbrella.net or not, until rain falls.   The connection between the umbrella creates an invisible social network without verbal communication. Participants are "connected" and feel like they belong to a particular group of people. 

The event and Audience participation

The audience participation is indeed important in these events. 

(you can send a message to people around you)

The audience participation is indeed important in umbrella.net. The audience are gather together in a particular open place and time. When all the umbrella opens, it creates a visualized scenery that is very beautiful and stunning. The audience is the most essential element of this art movement. This network art emerge the human participation with the technology with randomness and fun.

An interest in random events/ or chance

Umbrella.net really interests me because of its randomness. It will be a great "coincidence" that the one who passes by maybe a participant of Umbrella.net. It creates a enormous social communication network by really partaking it instead of sitting in front of the computers and typing words and programmes. 

Borrowing or appropriation

This artwork reminds me of the early networked art- Dada. Dada is connected by a bunch of unrelated sentence, words together. Same as Umbrella.net, which is making unrelated people become connected. They are strange people, but through Umbrella.net, they can know each other and communication. 

Dada Poem: Human Emotions

We are talking about different challenges of digital art presenting to the art world

Screening of Gamer Revolution (CBC documentary, 2007)

a) According to the film, what are some pros and cons of playing video games for individuals and societies?

Pros
For individuals, players can develop their self-esteem and self confidence through winning the games and finishing the tasks. Further, game producers mastermind the creation of a star system. Some professional gamers in South Korea can earn big money in winning the gamer. They are proud of their jobs of having a lot of fans and doing what they love to do- playing computer games.

For societies, videogames is a big industry all over the world. They are earning hundred millions every year by attracting many people paying to different games. Furthermore, videogames provide a special culture which create a unique language and topic of conversation to the players. For examples, a lot of game race are held in South Korea. Most of the audience know the rule, strategy of the games and this create a great and large network between the players.

Besides, games like "America's army" made for attracting the young man in order to boost the recruitment rate and train the next generations of being a soldiers. The game let youngsters to get into the life of military service and arouse their interests of military. Some games includes social values.


Cons
For individuals,  some professional gamers are separated with families and arranged to live out of shore in order to be focus in the game careers. They are facing huge stress because once they lose the games, they lose their careers as well. They lose their social network with normal social life, family life or even isolated. It is far too much "professional" to be a gamer when it is easy to lose their job.

For societies, some shooter games are based on stories related to other nations. For example, the shooter game "Under Seige" hurt the feelings of arabs and thinking why they need to be killed by American armies. Some themes of the games harm the nationalism of other nations, especially the middle east because the game label them as terrorists and evils who destroying the peace of the world.

b) According to the film, is there any evidence that digital games can encourage aggressive values and anti-social actions in the real world? Do you agree?

In the film, a research has been done to prove that digital games can encourage aggressive values to the mind when playing first-shooter games. I agree that because a lot of examples like "Under seige", " America's army" put emphasis on violence with bombs, bloods, knifes, guns etc. It is hard for a teenage in the age of 14 or 15 to distinguish their identity in the videogames or in the real world.  Some games like GTA(Grand Theft Auto) even focus on crimes committing like dealing with drug business. I believe some digital games are not constructive and destroying the sense of peace of teenage.

c) Should government had the right to a certain game or place age restrictions on it? Why?

I totally agree that government should have right on restricting certain video games. The reasons are some videogames are not suitable for young teenagers, who haven't completely develop their sense of responsibility in society and their morals and values. Further, some games included racial discrimination may hurt the feelings of other nations' people. Therefore, I think the government should had the right to a certain game or place age restrictions on it.