[-empyre-] Screens and films and airlines

Fri Jul 6 17:53:49 EST 2012

This is strange... writing asynchronously... and I think I am in danger of
oversimplifying, because screens and screen languages dominate us still and
their different meanings, modes of reception and influences all exist
contemporaneously - as happens when one technology transmutes into another-
and yes, Johannes, we use screens as much as notebooks, as extraordinary
windows into the newly blended spaces of the pervasive world and like you
my mental screens dominate and replay, but I think we have to look at the
new technologies of augmentation differently and try to understand what
this collapse of the virtual into the "real" might begin to mean.

Martin

On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 11:06 PM, Johannes Birringer <
Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk> wrote:

> dear all
>
> interesting that a historical look back [Christian's fascinating reference
> to O.Winter's "Ain't It Lifelike!", and the comments on the cinematograph
> and X-ray machines, and  the "borderlands of cinema and other screens"] can
> allow us to reflect, in several ways, on the phenomena of screens and
> screening and reception (the "acts of viewership"), and whether or not the
> "spectacle" succeeds (in doing what?)..... I immediately wanted to ask
> Christian what exactly would be the advantage or success of the the X-ray
> -- >
>
> >>  The X-ray offered the far more humane element,
> the opportunity to break down topics and people into component pairs, and
> presumably that made it a potential heir to the higher arts. X-ray as
> entertainment, cinema as medical marvel....[Christian]>>
>
> and how would we understand the function of the x-ray [or medical
> visualization, or other kinds of "visualization" or simulation or
> experimentation, if you think for a moment of the Higgs-boson discovery at
> CERN's Large Hadron Collider yesterday....]  in the context of the debate
> that Martin proposes:  I feel that Martin wants us to look at the new
> "screens" and a paradigm shift, and yet i believe this paradigm shift can
> only be addressed if we sometimes go back to screens and the art of
> projection (of light) in the not so long history of photography and cinema;
>   and furthermore, when I read Charlie's  fine posting, on screens as
> partitions (and the Bartleby story), I couldn;t help thinking of "sound"
> and all the lovely stories i have read from sound artists/theorists on
> Pythagoras and acousmatics, the way in which Pythagoras hid from view when
> he was teaching so that his voice would reach the listeners (not the
> "viewership', that is) unencumbered.
>
> now, what paradigm then?
>
> Martin schreibt:
> >>
>
> Given the growth of mobile and pervasive media forms, all dependent to
> some degree on screens, this changed condition really forms a new paradigm,
> variously described by  researchers who now tend to regard the screen as a
> window into an extended  “Hertzian” space,  ‘hybrid space’, ‘augmented
> reality’, ‘mixed reality’, ‘pervasive space’; or from the user behaviour
> end as forming  ‘trajectories’ (Benford) , and even as ‘sculpture’ (
> Calderwood) .
>
> The primary role of the screen, as Simon points out, is now one that
> mediates or remediates the world in a growing number of ways  (although the
> internet of things and NFS promise to make direct -and
> screenless-interaction more prevalent)  not as another space like cinema ,
> where fantasy is experienced through a locked and dreamlike suspension, but
> as a dynamic and changing condition of experience, where the user is
> interactive or pro-active in creating their own personalised experience.
>
> I am interested in the next week in  examining this changing condition of
> reception as the key to the phenomenon [...]
> >>
>
>
> This raises some questions. Why is mobile communication dependent on
> "screens" (what screens, one must ask, once again, like some of you already
> did)?  Do we really bother to think of our cell phone or Ipads or whatever
> as "screen media"? or remediation instruments"? i don't think so.  In my
> mind they carry over, or transport information, such as messages, and
> sometimes pictures, or sound, and i listen to them.  The sender is hidden,
> like Pythagoras, or if i am on slype, i look at whoever is talking and
> communicating, and i generally actually don't view as much as i am writing
> (on the chat window at same time as talking, to add/expand references and
> allow me to make notes, as i would with my notebook on  a train ride or
> when I walk through an art exhibit.  I receive making notes, and later
> exchange them or think about the experience, i re-play the experiences (in
> my mind, my memory screens or whatever they are, the films running inside
> me, not x-rays), like I did after watching the Euro championship matches.
> I replayed these matches. In those instances I am not quite the kind of
> interactive proactive person Martin envisions, but in other instances,
> giving a certain amount of interactional interfaces that I encounter in my
> daily life, i might "personalize" my experience or i am actually enslaved
> by the programming of the interface operation, as i was the other day
> trying to book a flight on Ryanair which took me hours and was as
> frustrating as it can be.  The airline online browser thing was doing some
> "screening" thing on me, that I detested rather thoroughly.
>
> Remediating the world,  can you give examples please, Martin?
>
>
> with regards
>
> Johannnes Birringer
> _______________________________________________
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> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>

-- 
Martin Rieser

Professor of Digital Creativity
De Montfort University
IOCT: Faculty of Art Design and Humanities
The Gateway, Leicester LE1 9BH
44 +116 250 6578

http://www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk
http://www.mobileaudience.blogspot.com
http://www.martinrieser.com
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