[-empyre-] screens

Sat Jul 7 20:50:19 EST 2012

It ties in. I suggested we avoid Virilio (the connection between guns and film) but perhaps Baudrillard is unavoidable at this juncture. When he suggested the Gulf war was a virtualised war he was possibly proposing that the perception of war had been profoundly shifted by how it was being televised at that time. I grew up with the Vietnam war, the Australian media saturated with it due to our direct engagement and the social unrest that generated. That war changed the way we understand ourselves, the way we live and organise ourselves. The role of television in that was critical. The Gulf War did the same, with it's POV shots of bombs locking onto target, the screen itself an essential part of that locking procedure. It was the war when we first saw head-up displays (screens) in fighter jets. Now our cars have this technology. Soon these displays will be combined with eye-tracking technology, already used in military head-up targeting systems, and our eyes will do our targeting (driving). The urban environment is becoming similarly mediated. The ocular loop is closed (but perhaps it always has been, a re-visioning of the panopticon?). Yes - I'd say that if it doesn't 'effect' ontology then it certainly changes how we understand it.

best

Simon

On 7 Jul 2012, at 11:16, Mark Hancock wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> It's interesting that the discussion has moved around and we've tried to understand exactly what we mean by 'screens' and indeed, cinema. Simon's summarising of the point about passive screens and pervasive screens seems interesting, because it makes me think about the performative nature of our interaction with the 'new screens' and conversely, the ways the screens are now interacting with environments almost without us. I like this shift from passive to engaged. I'm not sure what this might mean for narrative and story telling, just yet, but I'd be interested to see if this comes out in the discussion at all.
> 
> That you point towards Gulf War 1 (a phrase I've not heard used before, but I like it!) does somehow seem really key. I've been trying to unpack this a bit of late, in thinking about our expectations of (reality) TV and the shift in what we expect of the screen/TV (I'm aware that I'm talking about broadcasting mediums here).  Was this perhaps the first time that many people outside of the experimental film/art world, began to really understand the different places that the screen/lens could exist? 
> 
> Does this tie in to your point, Simon, about ontologies?
> 
> Cheers
> M
> 
> On 7 Jul 2012, at 10:50, Simon Biggs wrote:
> 
>> I know Flash isn't needed. I use Java and Processing and they support vector graphics, with or without HTML5. The reason Flash is becoming unsustainable is lack of support for its engine on mobile media. I've heard that Adobe are considering adding an export function that will allow files to run with HTML5, platform blind, so it might not die anyway.
>> 
>> However, this has nothing to do with screens.
>> 
>> I think the current debate, about types of screens, is off piste from the original theme, which was to do with agency. Yes, different types of screens will have different affects and effects. But the key point was that we have moved from the more or less passive screen (whether a blank surface and projector assembly or an all in one CRT, plasma or LCD panel) to active and pervasive screens. Screens that we interact with, that form our environment, that control other devices - screens that actively mediate agency and can, in some cases, act upon things without human involvement. This takes consideration of the screen into frameworks concernin
>> ontology, rather than aesthetics. Cronenberg fantasised about this in relation to video and TV but the technologies we have now aren't fantasy and are very different to what now seem quaint pieces of kit. Perhaps Gulf War 1, with laser guided bomb POV video on our nightly news, was when the change began, where the screen assembly became both targeting and recording mechanism, just as in Vietnam the portapak transformed the moving image camera. We have come a way since then. But let's try to avoid Virilio...
>> 
>> best
>> 
>> Simon
>> 
>> 
>> On 6 Jul 2012, at 18:18, Rob Myers wrote:
>> 
>>> On 07/06/2012 02:16 PM, Simon Biggs wrote:
>>>> With the death of Flash it's not just the vector based screen on its way
>>>> out (that's been on the way out ever since Evans and Sutherland invented
>>>> the framestore at the start of the 1970's) but also vector based
>>>> graphics (or at least one commercial application).
>>> 
>>> Flash isn't needed for vector graphics on the web, though. Even if we don't use SVG, the html5 canvas tag supports all the usual vector graphics operations, and there are JavaScript libraries to support this:
>>> 
>>> http://raphaeljs.com/
>>> 
>>> http://d3js.org/
>>> 
>>> http://calebevans.me/projects/jcanvas/index.php
>>> 
>>> - Rob.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Simon Biggs
>> simon at littlepig.org.uk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ @SimonBiggsUK skype: simonbiggsuk
>> 
>> s.biggs at ed.ac.uk Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
>> http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ http://www.elmcip.net/ http://www.movingtargets.co.uk/
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 
> _______________________________________________
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Simon Biggs
simon at littlepig.org.uk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ @SimonBiggsUK skype: simonbiggsuk

s.biggs at ed.ac.uk Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ http://www.elmcip.net/ http://www.movingtargets.co.uk/

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