Tài liệu SOFT CINEMA navigating the database docx

LINK DOWNLOAD MIỄN PHÍ TÀI LIỆU "Tài liệu SOFT CINEMA navigating the database docx": http://123doc.vn/document/1052730-tai-lieu-soft-cinema-navigating-the-database-docx.htm

drawings by Lev Manovich, 1981–1991
Lev Manovich
Manovich was born in Moscow where he studied paint-
ing, architecture, computer programming and sem i-
otics. After having practiced fi ne arts for a num ber of
years, he immigrated to New York in 1981. This geo-
graphical move catalyzed a logical shift in his inter-
ests from the still image and physical 3D space to the
moving image, virtual space and the use of digital
computers. He worked professionally in the fi eld of
3D computer animation from 1984 to 1992 while com-
pleting an M.A. in Experimental Psychology and a
Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies.
Since the early 1990s, his work has combined
art practice, theory, lecturing and teaching. As a
visual artist, his projects that investigate the pos-
sibilities of post-computer cinema have been pre-
sented by, among others, ZKM, the Walker Art
Center, KIASMA, Centre Pompidou, and the ICA,
London. His pub li ca tions include The Language of
New Media and Tekstura: Russian Essays on Visual
Culture, as well as many articles that have been
published in over 30 countries. Manovich is a
Professor in the Visual Arts Department at the
University of California, San Diego, where he
teaches courses in new media art and theory.
k
www.manovich.net
Andreas Kratky
Born in Berlin, Kratky studied visual communication,
fi ne arts and philosophy in Berlin and Paris. His art
projects include Postkarten für die Hauptstadt, Berlin;
Berliner –Tonale Portraits, Berlin; and mondophrenetic,
Brussels (collaboration with INCIDENT VZW). Kratky
is responsible for media design and co-di rec tion on
the award winning DVDs That’s Kyogen and Bleeding
Through – Layers of Los Angeles 1920–1986 (both pub-
lished by ZKM), as well as a number of other multi-
media publications. He has also colla borated on re-
search pro jects dealing with informa tion visualization
and inter face design at Karlsruhe and Man chester
Uni ver sities. Since 1998 Kratky has worked at ZKM |
Center for Art and Media, and in 2002 he was ap-
point ed head of ZKM’s Multimedia Studio. Since mid
2004 Kratky has been working as an independent
media artist. He is currently de sign ing and co-
directing several DVD projects with the Uni versity of
Southern California, Los Angeles; Hum boldt Univer-
sität, Berlin; and Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sor-
bonne.
details from ABSENCES
Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 8-9Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 8-9 3/1/05 2:48:33 AM3/1/05 2:48:33 AM
TEXAS
How can we represent the subjective experience of a person living in a global
infor mation society? If daily interaction with volumes of data and numerous
messages is part of our new ‘data-subjectivity’, how can we visualize this sub-
jectivity in new ways using new media — without resorting to already normal ized
modernist tech niques of montage, surrealism and the absurd?
Today many places look and feel like composites made up from different
layers: ‘traditional’, ‘global’, ‘capitalist’, ‘post-communist’, etc. How to represent
the typical modern experience of living ‘between layers’ — between the past and
the present, between East and West, between there and here?
Texa s aims to address these questions by using a number of specifi c tech-
niques. The fi lm exists at the intersection of a number of databases, each of
which is structurally organized in the same way and each of which can be
thought of as a portrait of a con temporary ‘global layer.’ ( In other words, each
database is a different set of samples from the same territory.) When the fi lm is
playing, the Soft Cinema software selects samples from these sets and mixes
them in real time.
CREDITS

The original version of Texa s was created for the 2002 Soft Cinema installation
that was commissioned by ZKM Center for Art and Media for the exhibition
Future Cinema: Cinematic Imaginary after Film. This DVD presents the 2004 ver-
sion of the fi lm, which has new narration, music, sound design, and additional
graphics.
[
Lev Manovich | narrative, videography, animations, editing rules ] [Schoenerwis-
sen/OfCD
| Berlin | visualization] [DJ Spooky | Scanner | New York, London | music
from CD The Quick and The Dead ] [George Lewis | New York | music ]
[
Kelly Richardson | New cas tle| media management] [David Ung | San Diego |
narrative graphics] [
Iryna Zinchenko | San Diego | sound editing] [Lee Anne
Schmitt
| Los Angeles | voice over]
Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 10-11Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 10-11 3/1/05 2:48:34 AM3/1/05 2:48:34 AM
TEXAS video database (a partial view)
Database / Sampling
The fi rst database comprises 425 short video clips selected from footage that I
have shot in various locations over a number of years. Extending the genre of a
‘city fi lm’ from the 1920s, the database is constructed to capture the iconography
of a ‘global city’.
The second is a music database created by the composer George Lewis as a
parallel to the video database. It consists of samples taken from his own archive
of sounds – his own version of a ‘global layer’ – as well as from his earlier compo-
sitions. The two data bases are correlated because they use the same parameter –
‘type of space’ – to arrange their samples. (In other words, both video clips and
sound fi les are described using the same spatial categories: ‘city view’, ‘space
with screen’, ‘private interior’, ‘public interior’, ‘object’, ‘working with screen’.)
Along with Lewis’s database, the fi lm soundtrack uses tracks from the CD
The Quick and The Dead by DJ Spooky and Scanner. The CD represents the meet-
ing between different ‘database imaginaries’ of these two outstanding artists. DJ
Spooky brings numerous music traditions, genres, and sound cultures into a
single vast sound space through sampling. His music can be thought of as a
systematic traversal of a multi-dimensional sound database in every possible
direction. Equally versatile and prolifi c in his output, Scanner often generates his
sound databases using a variety of procedures and logics for recording sound in
all kinds of environments. In the words of the artist, “in some ways my work is
concerned with capturing, hunting sound from many inaccessible spaces and
bringing it out, whether it‘s the private phone conversations I fi nd in an airspace
that proved more public than anyone thought, or location recordings from the
restricted access sites which my art projects take me to” (from February 2003
interview, online at www.scannerdot.com). Therefore, if the Texas video database
refl ects visible and spatial characteristics of the ‘global city,’ The Quick and The
Dead captures both its public sound and its less visible communication dimen-
sions: “fl oating above the city: waves, frequency bursts, packets of distilled infor-
mation distributed throughout the spectrum of all communications devices” (DJ
Spooky, from “Web Notes for The Quick and the Dead” at www.djspooky.com).
Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 12-13Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 12-13 3/1/05 2:48:36 AM3/1/05 2:48:36 AM
Proust / Google
If for Proust and Freud modern subjectivity was organized around a narrative – the
search to identify that singular, private and unique childhood experience which
had defi ned the identity of the adult - subjectivity in the information society
may function more like a search engine. In Texa s this search engine endlessly
mines through a data base that contains personal experiences, brand images,
and fragments of publicly shared knowledge. The operation is revealed when
the characters in the story communicate: they semi-randomly jump from one
retrieved ‘record’ to another - similar to the way in which the Soft Cinema soft-
ware retrieves and plays the clips from the video database. While the jumps are
always triggered by something – a question in the conversation, the taste of a
drink or meal – the retrieved records are only loosely connected to the outside
world and to each other.
Database Aesthetics
The editing of the video database in Texa s follows the same poetics of record
retrieval, i.e. weak connections between the displayed records and abrupt shifts
from one record to the next. The clips that the software selects to play one after
another are always connected on some dimension – geographical location, type
of movement in the shot, type of location, and so on – but the dimension can
change randomly from sequence to sequence. In addition, in contrast to a tradi-
tional fi lm, there are no dissolves or cross-fades. Instead one screen layout is
instantly replaced by another. In a nutshell, the ‘hard’ aesthetic of a traditional
narrative is replaced by the ‘soft’ aesthetic of a database narrative.
Finally, the content of Texas addresses the contemporary subjective experi-
ence of living ‘between the layers’ in yet another way. The fi lm belongs to the
series of Soft Cinema editions that I have called GUI (Global User Interface). Each
story in the GUI series occurs in a different location: Texas, Hamburg, Kiev, Mon-
golia. The narratives take place in the present, which has been put through a
light science fi ction fi lter. (However, since in writing them I followed the princi-
ple that they can only take place in locations that I have never visited as an adult,
perhaps they are more accurate than I can imagine.)
Between Narrative and a Search Engine
Each video clip in the Texa s database is described by 10 parameters that specify
where the video was shot, the nature of its subject matter, its average brightness
and contrast, the type of space, the degree and type of camera motion, and so on.
These parameters are used by the software in assembling the movies. Starting
with a particular clip, the software fi nds other clips that are similar to it on some
dimensions. This is similar to the way in which we use web search engines such
as Google. When Google returns a number of results for a particular search term
we can say that all these results are connected on a few dimensions: the search
term, language, domains, etc.
In the case of Texas what you see on screen while the movie is playing are
multiple sequences generated in a similar manner. Each sequence is the result of
a particular search through the Soft Cinema database. Each is perhaps equivalent
to a ‘scene’ in a normal fi lm, while a series of such searches (‘scenes’) becomes
equivalent to a tradi tional fi lm. Film editing is thereby reinterpreted as the search
through the database. Consequently it is possible to describe Texa s as a media
object that exists ‘between narrative and a search engine’.
Editing with Soft Cinema software
Logging clips into the database
Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 14-15Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 14-15 3/1/05 2:48:37 AM3/1/05 2:48:37 AM
Visualization
While the Soft Cinema Project uses a database as the ‘engine’ that generates the
movies, we should also think of the database as a new representational form in
its own right. Accordingly, we asked Schoenerwissen / Offi ce for Computational
Design to translate our video database into a new visual representation. The
resulting dynamic visualization of 425 video clips represents each clip as a small
square, while the human-ascribed sub jective descriptions of the clips appear
to fl oat on the screen. Additionally – since it is the key parameter in Texa s – the
visualization appropriately foregrounds ‘geo location’ by having each of the
squares orbit around a point that represents the city or country in which the
original video clip was shot.
TEXAS video database visualization
by Schoenerwissen
selected clips from TEXAS database
with their keywords (superimposed
over database visualization)
name japan_6_01.mov
cam motion no
distance close
geolocation japan
typelocation pub_interior
description japan fi xed shot
in a restaurant
name LA_029.mov
cam motion no
distance close
geolocation LA
typelocation object
description bubble chair
in trendy hotel
name jap.ber_132.mov
cam motion no
distance far
geolocation berlin
typelocation city_view
description buiding with german
fl ag in the rain
name brazil02_010.mov
cam motion no
distance far
geolocation brazil
typelocation city_view
description city scape
Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 16-17Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 16-17 3/1/05 2:48:38 AM3/1/05 2:48:38 AM
Schoenerwissen / OfCD /video database visu ali zation
Schoenerwissen/Offi ce for Computational Design was founded in 1998 by
Marcus Hauer and Anne Pascual. SW/OfCD develops software and carries out
research in a broad range of areas, including visual network applications, data
mapping systems, and information visualization. In designing dynamic and open
processes that implement temporal and spatial parameters SW/OfCD looks for
new models of representation and aims to make the non-perceived elements
of data processing visible to a general user. Hauer and Pascual studied at the
Academy of Media Arts, Cologne. Their project Minitasking, a visualization of the
Gnutella peer-to-peer network, won both an Award of Distinction in the net excel-
lence category of the Prix Ars Electronica 2002 and the Transmediale Software
Award in 2003.
k www.sw.ofcd.com
George Lewis /music
George Lewis is an improviser-trombonist, composer, and computer/installation
artist. He studied composition with Muhal Richard Abrams at the AACM School
of Music and trombone with Dean Hey. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship
in 2002, a Cal Arts /Alpert Award in the Arts in 1999, and numerous fellowships
from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lewis has explored electronic and
computer music, computer-based multimedia installations, text-sound works,
and notated forms. Lewis’ work as composer, improviser, perfor mer and inter-
preter is documented on more than 120 record ings. His oral history is
ar chived in Yale University’s collection Major Figures in Ameri can Music, while
his articles on music, experimental video, visual art, and cultural studies have
appeared in many scholarly journals and edited volumes. The University of
Chicago Press will publish Lewis’ forthcoming book titled Power Stronger Than
Itself: The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.
details from TEXAS
details from TEXAS
Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 18-19Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 18-19 3/1/05 2:48:40 AM3/1/05 2:48:40 AM
Scanner /music
British artist Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner) creates absorbing, multi-layered
sound scapes that twist technology in unconventional ways. From his early con-
tro versial work using found mobile phone conversations through to his current
focus on trawling the hidden noise of the modern metropolis, his restless ex-
plo ra tions of the experimental terrain have won him international admiration
from, among others, Bjork and Stockhausen. Scanner is committed to working
with cutting edge prac titioners and has collaborated with artists from every
imaginable genre: musicians Bryan Ferry and Laurie Anderson, The Royal Ballet
and Random Dance companies, composers Michael Nyman and Luc Ferrari, and
artists Mike Kelley and Derek Jarman. In addition to producing compositions
and audio CDs, his diverse body of work includes soundtracks for fi lms, perfor-
mances, radio, and site-specifi c intermedia installations. He has performed and
created works in many of the world’s most prestigious spaces including SFMO-
MA, the Hayward Gallery, Centre Pompidou, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Tate
Modern, and the Royal Opera House, London.
k www.scannerdot.com
DJ Spooky /music
Paul D. Miller is a conceptual artist, writer and musician working in NYC. His
writings have appeared in, among others, The Village Voice, The Source, Art-
forum, Raygun, Rap Pages, and Paper Magazine. He was the fi rst Editor-At-Large
for Artbyte: the Magazine of Digital Culture and he is a co-publisher, along with
the legendary African American downtown poet Steve Canon, of A Gathering of
the Tribes – a periodical dedicated to new works by writers from a multi-cultural
context. Miller’s book Rhythm Science (The MIT Press, 2004) was named one of
the best books of the year by The Guardian and Publishers Weekly.
Miller’s art projects have appeared in a wide variety of contexts, including
the Whitney Biennial; The Venice Architecture Biennale; The Ludwig Museum,
Cologne; Kunsthalle, Vienna; and The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. Miller is
most well known under the moniker of his ‘constructed persona’ as ‘DJ Spooky
that Subliminal Kid’. As DJ Spooky he uses digitally created music as a form of
post-modern sculpture and he has recorded a huge volume of music, includ-
ing the score for the Cannes and Sundance award winning fi lm Slam. He has
also collaborated with a wide variety of renowned musicians and composers,
includ ing, among others, Iannis Xenakis, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Butch Morris, Kool
Keith (aka Doctor Octagon), Killa Priest from Wu-Tang Clan, Yoko Ono, and Thur-
ston Moore from Sonic Youth.
k www.djspooky.com
Frame from a clip
used in TEXAS (shot in Riga)
Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 20-21Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 20-21 3/1/05 2:48:42 AM3/1/05 2:48:42 AM
Inga is an alien who comes to Earth from Alpha-1, a planet that is about twenty
years behind Earth culturally and technologically. Mission to Earth is an allegory
of both the Cold War era and of the contemporary immigrant experience that
is so frequently the norm for inhabitants of ‘global cities’. The fi lm reminds
us that, while hybrid identity is often celebrated as progressive, it also entails
psychological trauma.
One of the challenges in creating Soft Cinema fi lms is to come up with narra-
tives that have a structural relationship to the database aesthetics. If Texas uses
semi-ran dom database retrieval to represent ‘info-subjectivity’, then Mission to
Earth adopts the vari able choices and multi-frame layout of the Soft Cinema
system to represent ‘variable identity’. That is, the trauma of immigration, the
sense of living parallel lives, the feeling of being split between different re-
alities. To this end, in generating every part of the fi lm, the software choos-
es from among a number of alternative sequences that refl ect Inga’s variable
identity. Other factors, such as the choice of a large or smaller window to display
a parti cular sequence, and the number of windows (co-present realities) that
appear in a layout, simultaneously tell us what the main character is seeing and
represent her thoughts, memories and feelings.
One of the goals of this fi lm was to visualize the narrative as much through
motion graphics as through live action video. Consequently we invited Ross
Cooper Studios to create a database of short motion graphics clips, which would
respond to the fi lm’s narrative and to the live video footage. In most parts of the
fi lm you will see both video clips and motion graphics clips appearing side by
side. The motion graphics react to the video but they also hold their own. In fact
they form a parallel fi lm that follows the same narrative but visualizes its themes
and the feelings of the characters through different means.
MISSION TO EARTH
CREDITS
Mission to Earth (2003 –2004) was commissioned and produced by BALTIC The
Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead, UK).
[
Lev Manovich | narrative, videography, editing ] [Kelly Richardson | Newcastle |
assis tant director & editor] [
CKUK | Christopher Kent | London | narrator]
[
Ilze Black | London | playing Inga ] [ Alec Finlay | Newcastle | playing Alpha-1
commander ] [ Jóhann Jóhanns son | Iceland | music ] [ servo | Los Angeles, New
York, Zurich, Stockholm | archi tectural designs] [
Ross Cooper Studios | Ross
Cooper & Stuart Sinclair | London | motion graphics ] [
Martins Ratniks | Ernest
Karlsons | Ilze Black
| Latvia | videography ] [Christo Wallers | Stuart Harris |
Newcastle | videography] [
Tom Cullen | Newcastle | technical coordination]
Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 22-23Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 22-23 3/1/05 2:48:43 AM3/1/05 2:48:43 AM
Earth
main sources: video shot in London, Berlin,
Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Sweden (1999 –2003)
1 Tokyo
2 | 3 Los Angeles
4 Newcastle (UK)
12
34
Irbene Radio Telescope /ALPHA-1 Space Center
Irbene Radio Telescope (Latvia) is a 32 meter-wide,
com pu ter con trolled, fully steerable, parabolic dish
that be came opera tional in 1971. While its exact pur-
pose re mains secret, it was most probably used to
spy on sat ellite trans missions between Europe and
North America. Abandoned and nearly destroyed
when the Russian Army de parted Latvia in 1994, the
dish has been successfully repaired by the Ventspils
International Radio Astronomy Center (VIRAC). Since
2001 the Riga-based new media center RIXC has or-
ganized a number of international art work shops and
events that utilize the radio telescope.
1 main telescope dish
2 | 3 top observation area
4 control room
1
234
Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 24-25Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 24-25 3/1/05 2:48:44 AM3/1/05 2:48:44 AM
ALPHA-1
main sources:
1 miniature set (2003)
2 |3 | 7 Novosibirsk (Russia, 1960s)
4 Google image search for “control room” (2004)
5 Pensa (Russia, 1970s)
6 |8 Soviet space program (1960s)
3
45
67 8
1
2
9 the industrial area in UK which inspired
Ridley Scott’s
Blade Runner
(2003 video)
10 Baltic Centre control room (UK, 2003)
11 | 12 drawings by Lev Manovich (1981–1991)
9
10
11 12
Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 26-27Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 26-27 3/1/05 2:48:46 AM3/1/05 2:48:46 AM