The summer of 1960 was a critical moment in the history of film, when the fly-on-the-wall documentary was born. The Camera that Changed the World tells the story of the filmmakers and ingenious engineers who led this revolution by building the first hand-held cameras that followed real life as it happened. By amazing co-incidence, there were two separate groups of them - one on each side of the Atlantic.
In the US, the pioneers used their new camera to make Primary, a compelling portrait of American politics. They followed a then little known John F Kennedy as he began his long campaign for the presidency. Meanwhile, in France, another new camera was inspiring an influential experiment in documentary filmmaking. Chronique d'un Ete captures the real lives of ordinary Parisians across the summer of 1960.
Both these extraordinary films smashed existing conventions as handheld cameras followed the action across public spheres into intimate and previously hidden worlds.
The cinema of today owes so much to these film makers and technicians. This was the audiovisual revolution that made the 1960s and 70s what they were.
The four‐part cycle Parallel deals with the image genre of computer animation. The series focuses on the construction, visual landscape and inherent rules of computer-animated worlds.
"Computer animations are currently becoming a general model, surpassing film. In films, there is the wind that blows and the wind that is produced by a wind machine. Computer images do not have two kinds of wind."—Harun Farocki
A history of graphical representation in computer games. It starts with the 30 year history of the tree in computer games, how it changed and what it means to recognise a tree in a game around 2010. It then goes on to explain how images are adapted and transferred across media. It ends with the claim that the creators of computer images want to surpass film images.
This is the first in a series of four films about the visuality, ontology and philosophy of digital imaging in computer games, along with its intersections with other visual art forms and cognitive philosophy.
Parallel I opens up a history of styles in computer graphics. The first games of the 1980s consisted of only horizontal and vertical lines. This abstraction was seen as a failing, and today representations are oriented towards photo‐realism.
"For over one hundred years photography and film were the leading media. From the start, they served not only to inform and entertain, but were also media of scientific research and documentation. That’s also why these reproduction techniques were associated with notions of objectivity and contemporaneity -- whereas images created by drawing and painting indicated subjectivity and the transrational.
Apparently today computer animation is taking the lead. Our subject is the development and creation of digital animation. If, for example, a forest has to be covered in foliage, the basic genetic growth program will be applied, so that “trees with fresh foliage”, “a forest in which some trees bear four-week-old foliage, others six-week-old foliage” can be created. The more generative algorithms are used, the more the image detaches itself from the appearance as found and becomes an ideal-typical.
"Using the example of trees and bushes, water, fire and clouds we compare the development of surfaces and colourings over the past thirty years in computer animation images. We want to document reality-effects such as reflections, clouds, and smoke in their evolutionary history." -- Harun Farocki
This second film deals with the spatial dimensions of computer game imagery. Permitted and forbidden space. How boarders are established in computer games spaces. A beautiful thing that encages the player.
Parallel II explores the borders and boundaries of the game worlds. The work follows characters attempts to escape the edges of their animated world by any means, and seeks to reveal what lies outside of the defined spaces and digital borders.
We as player are placed within the space of the game. Before long the limit of the game is reached. The limit of the game is a backdrop as in a theatre. The world ends like a board game.
Parallel III seeks out the backdrops of the game worlds and the nature of their digital objects. It reveals digital worlds which take the form of discs floating in the universe—reminiscent of pre-Hellenistic conceptions of the universe. The animated worlds appear as one-sided theatre stages, flat backdrops revealed only by the movements of an omniscient camera. The objects in the worlds often do not react to "natural forces." Each of their properties must be separately constructed and assigned to them.
Parallel IV explores the actions of the heroes and protagonists of the video game world. These heroes have no parents or teachers; they must test their relationships with others and determine of their, own accord, the rules to follow. Farocki notes these characters are "homunculi, anthropomorphist beings, created by humans. Whoever plays with them has a share in the creator's pride."
À propos de Nice is a 1930 silent short documentary film directed by Jean Vigo and photographed by Boris Kaufman. The film depicts life in Nice, France by documenting the people in the city, their daily routines, a carnival and social inequalities. Vigo described the film in an address to the Groupement des Spectateurs d'Avant-Garde: "In this film, by showing certain basic aspects of a city, a way of life is put on trial... the last gasps of a society so lost in its escapism that it sickens you and makes you sympathetic to a revolutionary solution."
TThe magic of this film, though, happens as the inky black expands. Pulling farther and farther from Earth, you see the deep blue of the Pacific give way to night as the Sun comes into focus, the orbits of the solar system shrink smaller and smaller, the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpio stretch and distort, and, as the Milky Way receeds, the spidery structure of millions of other galaxies come into view. Then, you reach the limit of the observable universe, the afterglow of the Big Bang. This light has taken more than 13.7 billion years to reach our planet, and you return, back to Earth, to two lakes that are nestled between Mount Kailash and Mount Gurla Mandhata in the Himalayas.
The structure of The Known Universe is based on precise, scientifically-accurate observations and research. The Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History maintains the Digital Universe Atlas, the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe. The Digital Universe started nearly a decade ago. It is continually updated and is the primary resource for production of the Museum’s Space Shows such as the current Journey to the Stars, and is used in live, real-time renderings for Virtual Tours of the Universe, a public program held on the first Tuesday of every month. Last year, some 30,000 people downloaded the Digital Universe to their personal computers, and the Digital Universe will soon be updated with a more accurate and user-friendly software interface. Digital Universe is licensed to many other planetariums and theaters world-wide.
“I liken the Digital Universe to the invention of the globe,” says Curator Ben R. Oppenheimer, an astrophysicist at the Museum. “When Mercator invented the globe, everyone wanted one. He had back orders for years. It gave everyone a new perspective on where they live in relation to others, and we hope that the Digital Universe does the same on a grander, cosmic scale.”
The new film was produced by Michael Hoffman, and directed by Carter Emmart. Brian Abbott manages and Ben R. Oppenheimer curates the Digital Universe Atlas. The exhibition at the Rubin, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, opened on December 11 and continues through May 10.
Rammy Elsaadany, a Masters of Architecture student at the Bartlett school of architecture, has just completed a collaborative film with Bruce Damer about the proposed EVOGRID project.
The film connects together a simplified version of the scientific narrative and also a conceptual development of what could possibly happen once the EVOGRID project is established. Rammy used a variety of techniques to achieve this film, including 3d modeling, compositing, and green screen. The software used includes 3D Max, After Effects, Premiere and Sound Booth.
I had the pleasure of hanging out with Bruce for a week recently. One of the most interesting people I have ever met (and I have met a lot of interesting people). More about the EvoGrid project here.
This research proposal rests on the hypothesis that it is possible to create a simulation, the “EvoGrid”, utilizing a large interconnected grid of computers which could plausibly model the pre-biotic chemical environment which was the precursor stage to evolution and life arising on Earth. The key innovation over previous efforts will be the use of a level testing function (Gordon, 2000) that searches for emergent complex self-organization within the discrete element system of the simulation, focusing computing resources and tuning parameters in order to permit the system to drive itself towards ever more complex emergent structures and processes. Research outcomes from the EvoGrid project may shed light on the origins of life on Earth and in the universe, and provide new tools for evolutionary biology, biochemistry, and complexity studies.
Using numerous examples from the film "Ivan the Terrible" as well as writings and sketches by Eisenstein, a good overview is given of the complex and sometimes purposefully contradictory ways in which Eisenstein used imagery, including his methods of having scenes mirror each other, his use of recurrent motifs, and his employment of the tropes of psychoanalysis. This is a fascinating essay that makes you look at these films in a whole new light.
