[-empyre-] re: textual community

[Adrian Miles <adrian.miles@uib.no>]

lachlan wrote:

> Does the progression from txt->video have more to say about the
> assumed critical progression from Post-structuralist literary theory
> to screen studies or film and video studies in academia? Can  we
> consider  hyperlinks and cam without forcing filmic discourse,
> despite the  rather staid and deeply embedded institutional
> investments? I mean, do  we really need film and video studies as a
> filter for ?a new media?  or has that all, as October #100
> provocatively suggests become ?obsolete??  Can we weave an
> intertextuality between the refreshing confessional/observation of
> the blog ie  jill/txt and what you call  ?vog? and a hypermedia
> theory that takes into account interruptions  that sit comfortably
> neither with Lit. Theory nor with Screen Theory,  and certainly not
> Information Studies, but require a new multi-discipline? Digital
> Culture.    I?d like to see txt<->vog, worked in intertextuality not
> forgetting of  course the possibility of non-sequitors (often
> productive cultural  political vectors, otherwise productive
> interpersonal undercurrents)  such as those delivered by IM or email
> as parrishka [she?s hot]  illustrated earlier in this discussion.
>
> I mean... Can't we think of text and cam as mere texts? Can't we
> consider the textuality of the 'mere text' the cam work as well as
> the 'matrix or mesh?, the WWW, together as an intertextual whole?

about the progression. i hope not. ain't mine :-) i went cinema
studies then hypertext and now i'm finding a way between both. but i
understand hypertext as cinema with words (nodes are shots, links as
edits). and no, i don't think film studies gives us a very good way
to think about new media, though it gives us one way.

(having said that my film theory in relation to new media is all
deleuze cinema theory, so institutionally it doesn't even count as
real film theory except for a very small group.)

at the moment i'm describing my educational practice as new media
humanities. but that's just this week, it isn't computing humanities,
it isn't media arts (not in the australian context anyway), it isn't
quite media studies.

and yes, an intertextual whole, that's why i like the vog quicktime
stuff. i had vogs + text on a web page, then after a year i had a duh
that's obvious moment when i realised that i was still so stuck in
text + image land. now the text is always just another track/s in the
movie. i want the distance/difference maintained (text and image and
video have different semiotic and material economies) but i also
think bringing them together makes the distance/difference visible.

 (i dislike some theory's assumption that putting video next to text
is novel or a valuable outcome - if you're a visual arts person the
text still tends to be little more than caption, if you're a text
person the image tends to be little more than illustration to the
wondrous word. of course that could be a strawman argument, but it
works well at making visible the fact that words and images are
different but that doesn't mean they can't work together (can anyone
say blake?), and more importantly at making visible that multimedia
doesn't erase that distinction.)

cheers and thanks for the provocation
adrian miles
--

+  lecturer in new media and cinema studies
[http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/vlog]
+  interactive desktop video developer  [http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/]
+  hypertext rmit [http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au]
+ InterMedia:UiB. university of bergen [http://www.intermedia.uib.no]