[-empyre-] Youngmin and things at BIFF

Fri Oct 11 18:06:21 EST 2013

Thanks, Tim and Renate,

In fact, as far as I understand, new media in relation to film in Korea has
always already been the focal area for the interactive business
transaction, by appropriating the new media technologies which includes
digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, video games, computer
robotics, and biotechnology. However, new media studies in Korea fail to
articulate the convergent event of “new media turn,” particularly in the
BIFF Conference in Busan as in Venice, as Tim and Renate observes.
In one session, entitled “Film and Science,” one presentation by Prof.
Hyeong-Seok Ko, School of Electrical Engineering, Seoul National
University, arrested my eyes/gaze. It was on the “Engineering Digital
Costumes,” a tutorial presentation which demonstrates a character appearing
with fashionable clothing in 3D animation which reveals highly
sophisticated “realistic, stable, fast clothing animation technique.”
Interactive convergence of clothing simulation, hair simulation, fluid
simulation, and deformation has been noteworthy. Another version of this
presentation was appeared at 1st International Conference on Digital
Fashion, 16-17 May 2013, London, UK
(
http://graphics.snu.ac.kr/publications/conference_proceedings/DigitalProductionOfTraditionalCostumes.pdf
)
In fact, the lack of curating the intersections of computing, science, the
humanities, and the visual performing arts has been one of the distinctive
problems of convergence in Korea. But I hope this initiating conference on
the convergence in Busan will be further coordinated and integrated into a
real vortex of convergence. This has been my rough impression of the BIFF
Conference at this moment.
Best,

Youngmin Kim
Professor, English Department, Dongguk University, Seoul, Korea (
http://www.dongguk.edu)
Editor-in-Chief (2013-15), JELL [Journal of English Language and
Literature, Outstanding Journal supported by the National Research
Foundation Grant funded by the Korean Government (MEST)]
Former President of ELLAK(English Language & Literature Association of
Korea, 2012-3) (http://www.ellak.or.kr)

2013/10/11 Renate Ferro <rtf9 at cornell.edu>

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Thanks Tim for encapsulating Youngmin's session.
>
> One of the themes of the Busan Film Festival Forum has been the
> convergence of contemporary cross-disciplinary interests with time-based
> media and film. I concur with Tim that the striking absence of new media
> and technologies influences is definitely noteworthy.
>
> How dramatically our notion of the screened surface has changed because of
> technological innovation and distribution shifts.  The dynamics of screen
> size alone has had a huge impact on cinema.  Now we can watch moving
> images on hand-held devices as small as our smart phones and i-pads, on
> computer screens, or larger format cinema display televisions. That in turn
> has affected distribution with venues such as Netflix, HBO, Showtime, even
> YOU TUBE in the US.  Today these distribution networks not only
> distribute films but also produce them.  The expectations that all movies
> will come out on the big screen is not a given.
>
> While the VCR tape and the DVD affected how viewers consumed movies ten to
> fifteen years ago, now the distribution networks make it easy to access
> material with simply a computer to access big-box film, independent cinema,
> TV series, or socially networked moving images.  Many even bypass
> legitimate distribution accessing pirated copies.
>
>  The addition of sound technology has also affected the reception of
> moving images.  No longer simply a directionally left or right channel
> but now sound that is complexly layered to create three-dimensional sound
> environments that simulate real experiences.
>
> At this year’s Venice Biennale it was apparent that the moving image and
> soundscape was appropriated by national pavilions where cinematic
> productions were being screened within the scope of an international art
> context.  Entire pavilions were crafted with two, three or four cinematic
> screening spaces where the work of artists (and their production teams)
> were shown.
>
> One of note was the two channel Ari Sala’s “Ravel Ravel Unravel” a
> two-cinematic and sound spectacle.
>
>
> http://www.designboom.com/art/anri-sala-french-pavilion-at-venice-art-biennale-2013/
>
> Ari Sala writes ‘my intention, is to make a space resound consecutively
> to the temporal gap between the two performances; to paradoxically create
> an ‘other’ space in an environment conceived to annihilate he sense of
> space (by suppressing echoes)‘.
>
>  One of the things I can’t help think about as a new media artist who
> uses both found/archived and new moving images is the impact and power that
> the installation space has on the image being screened. While some
> cinemaphiles may lament the loss of the revered movie theater, I see the
> flexible interplay and manipulation between architectural space, projected
> image, directional sound and viewer's response within the space to open up
> exciting possibilities.
>
> The consideration of scale is an important one to tease out especially ias
> it is relational to budgets and funding sources. New media artist's are
> master's at creative fund sourcing.  With the DIY capabilities of Final Cut
> Pro film and sound editing can be done by the film maker/ artist  herself.
>
>  More to write about tomorrow but I am hoping that others will see
> threads to pick up on.  These are just a few things I have been thinking
> about these past few days.
>
>  From Busan, Korea
>
> Renate
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 10:44 AM, Timothy Conway Murray <tcm1 at cornell.edu>wrote:
>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> Hi, everyone, we are so thankful to Youngmin Lee for having taken time
>> out from his administrative responsibilities at the Busan International
>> Film Festival to post to everyone from Busan.  While his interests in the
>> visual theories of Lacan might be familiar to the majority of empyreans, I
>> think it's important to appreciate Youngmin's efforts to translate Western
>> theoretical thought into the Asian media discourse, which is extremely
>> complicated and multilayed by cultural convergences.   I'm somewhat
>> suprised not to have heard reservations about some of you regarding the
>> relevance of Lacan's visual theories to the new media context -- not too
>> late....
>>
>> On the same panel today, for example, one Korean colleague translated the
>> film, Avatar, as a Buddhist allegory while another addressed very similar
>> visual conditions in a Russian sic-fi film in relation to the Foucauldian
>> panopticon and procedures of subjugation (for which Avatar has faced severe
>> criticism for what some understand as its endorsement of primitivism).
>>
>> What's been interesting to me throughout the panels and screenings at
>> Busan is how the overall Asian film community seems to be missing the
>> opportunity to capitalize on the pluses of new media, from interactivity to
>> networked relations to the exhibitional convergence of multiple screens and
>> platforms [which is not dissimilar to what would be heard at Cannes, the
>> Occidental equivalant of Busan].  While yesterday featured a panel on
>> digital communication, this ended up being an endorsement of search engines
>> and deep data for advertising and audience development --  a far cry from
>> endorsing a convergence of cinematic and new media habits and techniques.
>>  While it's understandable that a major film festival would promote
>> conventional business models, it's disheartening that the Asian
>> "independents" seem to work indifferently to so many of their Asian peers
>> who lead the new media arts (and this in the land of Nam June Paik -- one
>> of Paik's sculptures even graces the lobby of Seoul
>>   airport hotel where we slept off our first night of jet lag).
>>
>> Yet, Renate and I have enjoyed two films that seem to thrive on such
>> convergences.  The Korean director Bong Joon-ho screened his extraordinary
>> film, Snowpiercer, which tells an eerie and violent tale of social upheaval
>> in the new postglobal warming ice age, as the survivors circle the globe in
>> a hierarchically ordered train, with a marvelous performance by Tilda
>> Swinton.  The marvel is how the film successfully cut between dazzling
>> animated sequences of the train crashing through icebergs and the
>> traditional analogue representation of the diegesis. We enjoyed the
>> flipside of this tonight while watching Japanese director Akira Ikeda's
>> Anatomy of a Paper Clip (a miminalist sado-masochistic portrayal of class
>> abjection in which directing evoked a combination of realist miminalism and
>> pared down animation).  While the film contained no animation until the
>> credits, the actors every movements seemed to embody the craft of
>> top-motion animation as nuanced in the digital scene.
>>
>> Today we also enjoyed the dialogue between this week's guest, Youngmin
>> Lee, and next week's featured guest, Alex Taek-Gwang Lee.  It'll be very
>> interesting to hear how Alex weighs into the discussion.
>>
>> Of course, we're very anxious to hear the thoughts of empyreans
>> throughout the month.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Tim
>> Director, Society for the Humanities
>> Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
>> Professor of Comparative Literature and English
>> A. D. White House
>> Cornell University
>> Ithaca, New York. 14853
>> ________________________________________
>> From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [
>> empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of Renate Ferro [
>> rtf9 at cornell.edu]
>> Sent: Tuesday, October 08, 2013 1:40 AM
>> To: soft_skinned_space
>> Subject: [-empyre-] Fwd:  Welcome to the October Discussion:
>>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
>
> Renate Ferro
> Visiting Assistant Professor of Art,
> (contracted since 2004)
> Cornell University
> Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office:  306
> Ithaca, NY  14853
> Email:   <rferro at cornell.edu <rtf9 at cornell.edu>>
> URL:  http://www.renateferro.net
>       http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net
> Lab:  http://www.tinkerfactory.net
>
> Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>

-- 
Youngmin Kim, Ph. D. in English
Professor of English, Dongguk University, Seoul, Korea
President (2012-3), ELLAK
Chair, 2013 International Conference Committee of ELLAK (English Langauge &
Literature Association of Korea)
Editor-in-Chief, JELL (Journal of English Language and Literature), an
Outstanding Journal Endowed by the National Research Foundation and the
Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea
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