[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 107, Issue 10

Mon Oct 14 02:34:12 EST 2013

Hi there,

I am sorry for late participation into the discussion, yet enjoy your
iinteresting
discussions on technology and film.

I would like to suggest my experience of computer generated film in South
Korea. I think that technology in Korean film symbolize the desire towards
advanced capitalist society. For South Korea, computer technology stands
for the coming class of technocrats against traditional hierarchical
society and implies the democracy of markets contrary to the stuffy old
authoritarian regime. In South Korea, market-centrism is often confused
with the notion of democracy and from this perspective technology would be
regarded as something to do with social evolution.Not only the conservative
but also the progressive emphasize up-to-date technology as the source of
economic growth, and the cinema particularly generated computer technology
has been praised as the achievement of Korean film industry. For instance,
Bong's previous film, The Host, a smash-hit Korean blockbuster (The Host is
the English title of “Goemul”), was used as propaganda to say that Korean
film industry finally found its success in an American film market. As for
the structure of the story, The Host presupposes that audience knows
everything about the monstrous predator of the film. It reveals the reason
why the mutant comes to exist from the outset; the film begins with a scene
that US army secretly ditches formaldehyde and the poisonous liquid flows
into Han River. This constitutes the simple logic that the pollution
produces a brutal monster. Neither any hidden plot nor any implication for
the story. The film story straightforwardly started from the advent of the
monstrous creature. I think this is a symptomatic scene internalizing
paradox from within. Not like Hollywood disaster film, it is hardly to see
that The Host intends to deal with environmental and ecological issues
concerning the revenge of Nature. The motion picture rather seems to be
interested in something different; it aspires to achieving something
occasionally attempted by a Korean film since 1990s: an attempt to
visualize what Korean spectators really want to see, the desire for realer
reality. The Host is the exact film that answers to Asian desiring
machines. This is the first occasion in which computer graphic technology
occupies successfully the center of film narrative in the Korean film
industry. It is not until the moment of The Host that Korean film industry
can wholly realize the fantastic imagination by using CGI technology. In
this way, the effect of The Host to Korean film production would be equal
to the way in which Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park catalyzes the shift
from a traditional way to the new mode of film production. In this sense,
technology is closely connected with what one calls Korean film today.

On Sun, Oct 13, 2013 at 4:52 PM, Timothy Conway Murray <tcm1 at cornell.edu>wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Hi, Richard,
>
> No I don't mean to suggest that creative 'convergence' is not possible
> with screen-based, linear films.  I too can think of many such examples,
> from early examples such as Chris Marker's Level 5 and Peter Greenaway's
> Prospero's Books to much more recent and more complicated examples, such as
> Bong's Snowpiercer. My concern is that the Busan film festival seemed
> hesitant to embrace and celebrate alternative approaches. I can see your
> concern about the "spectacular."  I'd be hesitant to argue against the
> value of the spectacular but I guess I could be baited into arguing for the
> value of lending adding attention to new media based approaches.  While I
> realize that this is my personal preference, it wouldn't be difficult to
> call upon the history of cinema to develop a suspicious attitude toward the
> merely spectacular.
>
> Renate and I were meeting today with Alex Taek-Gwang Lee who will be our
> guest this week who made the very interesting suggestion that the
> convention of contemporary Korean film is not to divorce spectacle from the
> political.  So it will be interesting to hear more about this from Alex
> this week.
>
> 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 Richard Wright [
> futurenatural at blueyonder.co.uk]
> Sent: Saturday, October 12, 2013 7:38 PM
> To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 107, Issue 10
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Dear Tim,
>
> thanks for your response. I hope you won't mind if I say that I am still
> not quite sure I have got my head around this.
>
> You referred to festival films that have brought the "spectacle of digital
> technologies" to the screen ("spectacle" being one of those words often
> used in these scholarly debates to connote something disapproved of). And
> contrast these to "alternative artistic approaches" that are specifically
> dependent on completely different basic moving image technologies (the
> interactive, networked, mobile and so on). So do you mean that the
> "converging", one directionally or otherwise, of digital technologies in
> screen based film (is that the right term? Or "linear film"? Or "theatrical
> film"?) does not lead to new artistic approaches but to the "spectacular"?
> And/or do you mean that even if they do lead to new artistic approaches
> they will not be as successful as those using new media based film
> technologies (is that the right term?) because these specific technologies
> are necessary to permit artistic approaches that can "critique commercial
> and conventional notions of the screen and vi
>  ewing subjects"?
>
> I am not sure, but I think I might just be able to think of a few examples
> of single screen-based, linear, sit-on-your-arse-and-watch films, that
> qualify as incorporating new media forms into "alternative artistic
> approaches" and so able to "critique commercial and conventional notions of
> the screen and viewing subjects" or something equally worthy.
>
> I do hope this is not all getting too convoluted,
>
> Richard
>
>
> > Message: 4
> > Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2013 23:55:27 +0000
> > From: Timothy Conway Murray <tcm1 at cornell.edu>
> > To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 107, Issue 9
> > Message-ID:
> >       <
> 338FF2A47233C34B9DC167AAA91534C20F4E2966 at CH1PRD0411MB442.namprd04.prod.outlook.com
> >
> >
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252"
> >
> > Dear Richard,
> >
> > Thanks for your question and I'm happy to clarify my suggestion.  Yes,
> you're absolutely correct in suggesting that the presence and flavor of
> animation in Snowpiercer and Anatomy of a Paper Clip indicates the extent
> to which cinema has integrated digital technologies, I was trying to share
> my observation that this interest, at least as championed by the Busan
> International Film Festival, seemed to be one-directional.   While the
> festival championed these films that brought the spectacle of digital
> technologies to the big screen, it chose not to champion alternative
> artistic approaches to capitalizing artistically from multiple digital
> platforms, such as interactive technologies, multiple screen formats and
> mobile technologies,, networked cinemas or what Jeffrey Shaw has termed,
> iCinema, net.art, etc.  While this is understandable for a traditional film
> festival, the independent experimentation with new media that often
> critiques commercialism and conventional notions of th
>  e "screen" and viewing subject(s) seemed not receive any attention at
> this year's Busan Festival, which paradoxically staged a new conference
> format around the theme of medial "convergence." Hope this clarifies
> things.  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 Richard Wright [
> futurenatural at blueyonder.co.uk]
> > Sent: Friday, October 11, 2013 5:46 AM
> > To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 107, Issue 9
> >
> > ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> > Yello all,
> >
> > not quite sure I follow the point you're (both) making about the
> "absence of new media and technologies influences" in the movies.
> >
> > Aren't the two movies Tim Murray describes examples of just that?
> > The first "Snowpiercer" is described as using copious amounts of
> computer animation technologies. And the second "Anatomy of a Paper Clip"
> is described as using a (digital?) stop motion style of performance which
> would indicate the strong influence of technologies on artistic style.
> >
> > So are they absent or not absent? Are you saying that these movies are
> rare exceptions? (which would not have struck me as the case).
> >
> > Richard Wright
> >
> >
> >> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> Message: 1
> >> Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 14:44:22 +0000
> >> From: Timothy Conway Murray <tcm1 at cornell.edu>
> >> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> >> Subject: [-empyre-] Youngmin and things at BIFF
> >> Message-ID:
> >>      <
> 338FF2A47233C34B9DC167AAA91534C20F4E1432 at CH1PRD0411MB442.namprd04.prod.outlook.com
> >
> >>
> >> ?
> >
> >> 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.
> >>
> >>
> >> Message: 2
> >> Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 11:21:43 -0400
> >> From: Renate Ferro <rtf9 at cornell.edu>
> >> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> >> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Youngmin and things at BIFF
> >> Message-ID:
> >>      <
> CAA2fNo+4ojMKyEq+9rFGNeGgyvbW+ffdwGoZyjqP+Gpd_BbrTA at mail.gmail.com>
> >> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
> >>
> >> 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.
> >
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>
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-- 
Dr. Alex Taek-Gwang Lee
Associate Professor
School of English Language and Culture
Kyung Hee University
Guiheung-gu Seocheun-dong 1
Gyeonggi-do Yongin-si
Korea (South)

Mobile: +82 (0)10 2787 1459
Telephone: +82 (0)31 201 2285
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