Tài liệu SOFT CINEMA navigating the database docx

SOFT CINEMA

navigating the database

TEXAS

MISSION TO EARTH

ABSENCES

Cinema and Software

Lev Manovich

The Future Was Then

Sheldon Brown

The Maturity of New Media

Jeffrey Shaw

Films

Introductions

Lev Manovich | Andreas Kratky

Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 1 ooklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 1 3/1/05 2:48:29 AM /1/05 2:48:29 AM

Lev Manovich | Andreas Kratky

Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database

Distributed by The MIT Press, 2005

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142

http://mitpress.mit.edu

© The MIT Press, 2005

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means

(including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from

the publisher.

MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use.

For information, please email [email protected] or write to Special Sales Department, The MIT Press,

5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142.

ISBN 0-262-13456-X

Produced with the assistance of:

BALTIC The Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK

CAL-IT (2) (California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology),

San Diego and Irvine, USA

CRCA (Center for Research in Computing and the Arts),

University of California - San Diego, USA

RIXC (The Centre for New Media Culture), Riga, Latvia

ZKM (Center for Art and Media), Karlsruhe, Germany

Cinema and Software

The twentieth century cinema ‘machine’ was born at the intersection of the two

key technologies of the industrial era: the engine that drives movement and the

electricity that powers it. While an engine moves fi lm inside the projector at uni￾form speed, the electric bulb makes possible the projection of the fi lm image on

to the screen.

The use of an engine makes the cinema machine similar to an industrial

fac tory organized around an assembly line. A factory produces identical objects

that are coming from the assembly line at regular intervals. Similarly, a fi lm

projector spits out images, all the same size, all moving at the same speed. As

a result, the fl ick er ing irregularity typical of the moving image toys of the nine￾teenth century is replaced by the standardization and uniformity typical of all

industrial pro ducts.

Cinema also refl ects the logic of the industrial era in another way. Ford‘s

assembly line, introduced in 1913, relied on the separation of the production

process into a set of repetitive, sequential, simple activities. Similarly, cinema re￾placed previous modes of visual narration with a sequential narrative and an

assembly line of shots that appear on the screen one at a time.

Given that the logic of the cinema machine was closely linked to the logic of

the industrial age, what kind of cinema can we expect in the information age?

Rather than waiting for this new cinema to appear, the Soft Cinema project

generates new cinema forms using the key technology of the information society–

a digital computer.

As I have already explained, the logic of twentieth century cinema was not

dir ectly connected to the operation of an engine but instead refl ected the

industrial logic of mass production, which the engine made possible. Similarly,

the Soft Cinema project is interested not in the digital computer per se, but rather

in the new structures of production and consumption enabled by computing.

Booklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 2-3 ooklet-readers-spreads-v7.indd 2-3 3/1/05 2:48:30 AM /1/05 2:48:30 AM