Audiovisual Culture Research Articles

The Silver Triton

Abstract This article assesses the imperial Roman technological options and cultural impetus for constructing and displaying an automaton Triton. Suetonius reports that such a figure announced the commencement of a staged sea battle organised by Emperor Claudius to entertain the Roman citizens in 52 CE. This automaton, whose feasibility we assess, fits neatly as an application of the pneumatic techniques summarised by Heron of Alexandria, who was probably alive at the time. By drawing attention to this little discussed passage of Suetonius, our article corroborates the idea that these techniques were useful – here contributing to the “media-image” and audio-visual culture of Claudius’ imperial agenda – and that their wondrous effects provided an intellectual bridge between their practical utility and their ability to contribute to the philosophy of science and technology.

Dalí’s Eccentric Imagination: Impact of Audiovisual Culture in Roberto Sierra’s Sch

From the appearance of sound film in the late 1920s to the spread of media outlets such as television and personal computers to today’s video-enabled mobile phones, the immediacy of audiovisual culture has changed the way people navigate and manipulate content. Visual images often instinctively induce aural and musical associations, and vice versa. Yet musical analysis in audiovisual culture often presumes the constraint of the visual on the musical (i.e., the primacy of a visual product over its accompanying music). In this paper, I take a diverging approach. I present Roberto Sierra’s Sch. as a case study for the effects of multimedia technology in a twenty-first-century composer’s creative process and product, which conjures up the imagination in historical and contemporary ways. This investigation complements research in music analysis, film music, and music pedagogy in relation to audiovisual culture by highlighting the mutually influential effects of musical and visual cultures.

Problems of Definition and Classification of Sonic Image in the Audio-visual Culture

The purpose of the research is to identify the basis of the sonic image in audio-visual culture, to substantiate the interrelation of its elements and to demonstrate the peculiarities of its functioning. The following specific methods were used to obtain the desirable scientific results: the analysis was used to dissect the subject of the research into individual components, to study their properties, that helped to create a coherent idea of the notion of the sonic image; systematic method was used for the building of a certain structure and typology, which would allow to organize the knowledge about the sonic image in audio-visual works, to expand the toolkit for creative sound solutions; induction and comparison were used to identify the characteristics of different types of use of sound in order to create an artistic image. In this work the foundations of sound image in audio-visual culture are considered from a new angle, an attempt is made to give a substantiated definition to this concept, to disclose its essence through the means of its creation, the expanded system of elements and a detailed analysis of their characteristics up to the archetypal level, also classification different ways of using sonic images is derived in a new way.

Mixing It Up: New Audiovisual Cultures in South Africa

This article explores the representation of social mixing in contemporary South African films, where apartheid-era anxieties around racial mixing have now developed into newer anxieties applied to realms beyond race, such as sexuality, nationality, and class. Beyond exploring the politics and aesthetics of films such as Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon (dir. Khalo Matabane, 2005), we remember differently (dir. Jyoti Mistry, 2005), and Sea Point Days (dir. François Verster, 2008), however, the article also engages more broadly with the concept of “mixing” as it is performed in cultural and scholarly production in contemporary South Africa. The article surveys scholarship on films made in and about South Africa, identifying varied and overlapping movements in which conventional cinema studies are being eclipsed by interdisciplinary research on audiovisual cultures, research which makes use of mixed methodologies in exciting new ways, and research that pays attention to the complex relationships between formal and informal media practices and flows. The author also reflects on her own changing pedagogical practice in relation to her desire to disrupt and “mix up” apartheid-era chronologies in the way South African film and history are taught.

Encountering sound: the musical dimensions of silent cinema

ABSTRACTThis article identifies silent film soundtracks as evidence of the tensions between old and new audiovisual cultures, and examines the distinctions between our experience of live and mediated cinema through contemporary modes of presentation. My primary interest is in the aesthetic and cultural dimensions of film sound, and the ways in which digital technology influences the creation, performance, and recording of music for silent cinema. Parallel to this subject, I address the relationship between scholars and their object of study. I analyse how different audiovisual environments (rehearsal and concert spaces, recording studios, theatrical and domestic spaces) shape the aesthetics of film sound and the culture of its reception. More generally, this article seeks to engage film studies with media and performance studies, arguing that a reflective and interdisciplinary approach is needed to evaluate our ever-changing encounters with live and recorded film sound.

Filmmaking As Therapy: Between Art Therapy And Resilience Theory

An interdisciplinary project “Dimensions of the body: between bioethics and film studies” is focused on the concepts of the body and on the ways of portraying it in audiovisual culture. One of the issues we investigate is the body of a paediatric patient. In this paper we concentrate on the new idea of using film as an element of psychiatric therapy of paediatric cancer patients. By referring to the concept of resilience theory, which studies the phenomenon of children’s, adolescents’ or adults’ positive adaptation despite adverse life conditions, traumatic events and hostile environments, we show how filmmaking workshops can constitute a key element of achieving resilience. In our research we employ the concept of José Luis Medina Amor’s theory of three C’s, that is: control, change, commitment. This paper presents the way filmmaking workshops for paediatric cancer patients could become a practical tool contributing greatly to achieving resilience. We show how all the elements of the three C’s theory can have a practical use in filmmaking workshops and that an active participation in such workshops can be especially beneficial to paediatric oncology patients while they discover and bolster resilient values.

Main Objectives of Film Education in Poland: Institutional Context and Developmental Tendencies

This paper is focused on problems concerning film education in Poland. It concentrates on the changes in and different ways of defining the goals of film education, the aims or recipients of this type of education. By presenting several definitions provided by Polish experts, it shows the direction of the changes; for example the inclusion of film knowledge into a wider context of essential competencies of each participant of contemporary audiovisual culture. The paper shows that in the 80’s and the 90’s of the 20th century academics identified the relationship and mutual interdependence between literature and the cinema as the most important part. Now, however, they mostly focus on the role of film in preserving national and European heritage. Moreover, contemporary concepts of film education mainly deal with workshops rather than with theoretical studies. What are the effects of the changes and new tendencies? Film education is present in the curriculums of primary and secondary schools (but constituting only limited elements and playing a marginal role). In Poland there are ministerial programmes, institutional projects, public offerings and also competitive commercial offers. Although we can see positive tendencies in this area, the system of film education in Poland stillneeds a coherent policy and institutional care.

Hearing Films: A Contribution to the Discussion on Film Sound and Music Education

The paper presents a comprehensive overview of the issues of the broadly defined audial education (how to listen), with special regard to its meaning in the need of film education. Beginning with comments on the specificity of contemporary audiovisual culture and on the role of education in the matters of listening (including music education) in general as well as professional education, the author analyses the consequences of this state concerning incomplete film perception and interpretation resulting from underestimating the role of its audial layer. In the second part of the article the author points to and describes certain important initiatives aimed at the improvement of the previously shown negative situation.

Giving visibility to urban change in Rio de Janeiro through digital audio-visual culture: A Brazilian webdocumentary project and its circulation

Abstract This article discusses the crowdfunded Brazilian webdocumentary project Domínio Público (produced by the audio-visual collective Paêbirú Realizações Cultivadas), which portrays urban transformations in Rio de Janeiro in the run-up to the city’s hosting of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, with a particular focus on the impact in the city’s favelas. It argues that Domínio Público can be understood as a snapshot of a key moment in the recent history of Rio de Janeiro and of Brazil, which intertwines Rio’s urban transformations with digital audio-visual culture, fundamental for the circulation and visibility of these processes in Brazil and abroad, as well as with national political processes and crises which would go on to take unforeseen directions and proportions after the film’s release. The article shows how circulation and visibility were embedded in the project from the outset, and became an intrinsic part of its critical narrative on urban transformations.

New communication practices on the radio and in the audiosphere

For the past decade or so, internet radio, podcasts, mobile sound apps, and digital libraries of audio content have enjoyed increasing popularity among researchers and receivers of culture. Radio, similarly to other traditional media, often experiments with the opportunities offered by the new media technologies enabling the emergence of new communicational practices. As a starting point, I consider the contemporary audiosphere, which constitutes the auditory part of the audio-visual culture, and the influence of technological changes on radio communications, artists, and receivers. I attempt to answer the question, what happens at genre fringes? What are the characteristic features of the emerging forms? How, when one is faced with new technology, the multimedia world, and virtual reality, can one reach a reflection on the fiction and non-fiction genres on the radio? The expansive character of new technologies is often the source of inspiration for that which is traditional, thus renewing the object of its study. The inclusion of new phenomena within the widely understood auditoriness has a rescuing nature for traditional forms, and, at the same time, offers new opportunities for creators, and thus an area of research for literary scientists, media scientists and literary critics.

A nostalgia dos anos 1950 no cinema norte-americano dos anos 1980: os casos de De volta para o futuro e Veludo azul

O objetivo deste trabalho é refletir sobre duas características importantes da cultura audiovisual estadunidense na década de 1980: a centralidade das figuras masculinas adolescentes e a nostalgia dos anos 1950. Tais características serão discutidas por meio de uma aproximação comparativa entre os filmes De volta para o futuro (Robert Zemeckis, 1985) e Veludo azul (David Lynch, 1986), observando-se, entre outros aspectos, o uso que ambos fazem da figura de Sandman (o Homem da Areia) a partir de letras de canções em suas trilhas musicais. Com isso, procura-se destacar o papel central dessas obras nas carreiras de seus diretores, bem como sugerir que pode haver uma ligação mais forte entre esses dois distintos, porém influentes, filmes da década de 1980

‘The golden era’ of Finnish documentary film financing and production

ABSTRACTThis article outlines trends in Finnish documentary film industry during the so-called golden era of 1990s and early 2000s based on key variables in documentary film financing and production. This period coincides with global documentary financiers increasing market orientation (‘factual turn’, which has largely broken the ties of documentary film production with filmic modes of craftsmanship and public service [Hogarth 2006. Realer than Real: Global Directions in Documentary. Austin: University of Texas Press, 5]. Public service cinema culture was still largely intact in Finland in the early 2000s and is the main reason for the ‘golden era’. The ‘golden era’ would not have been possible without strong domestic public subsidy organizations, The Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture (Audiovisuaalisen kulttuurin edistämiskeskus, or AVEK) and the Finnish Film Foundation (Suomen elokuvasäätiö, or SES). Another crucial factor is that the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) has not given in to the global ‘factual turn’. Finnish documentary filmmakers strongly identify with Aaltonen’s [2006. Todellisuuden vangit vapauden valtakunnassa: Dokumenttielokuva ja sen tekoprosessi [The Prisoners of Reality in the Realm of Freedom: Documentary Film and Its Production Process]. Keuruu: Like, 248] observation that the metanarrative of documentary film is the narrative of itself becoming an art.

PERKEMBANGAN MEDIA PENYIARAN TELEVISI : Menjadikan Televisi Sebagai Kebudayaan Masyarakat

Television is one of the most widely broadcast media undergo a process of evolution. Today the presence of broadcast media is certainly not out of a myriad of appreciation from many in the community. Man himself was unable to deny that a television media will always be present in front of him. Various impressions broadcast program comes through this medium, different interpretation will emerge from the community as audience. Now, television has become an important need among the millions of people in the world community. This can happen because one characteristic of this form of broadcast media that is intrinsically capable explores some of the information occurs in parts of the world manapan the same time. As part of a development of new audio-visual culture, television becomes the thinking about the main attraction in an impact to thewider community . Positive and negative impacts of television media can only be known if the people themselves are willing and able to follow the development of this medium.Keywords: Broadcasting Media, TV Function, and Society

Intermediality in Miranda Hart’s Performance

The article refers to the problems of intermediality in the context of contemporary audiovisual culture and performance of Miranda Hart – one of the most popular comedy artists in the United Kingdom. The aim of this paper is to examine her work in this context. It will start with the introduction of the term “intermediality” and will then present Miranda Hart, her depiction in contemporary culture. The main part of the article deals with the (pop)cultural works of art, focusing on the image of the artist emerging from this output, and final part provides a brief overview of her current audience and relations between them.

3D Cinematography in the Cinema Art of Kazakhstan: Technological, Film Studying and Social Aspects

The article discusses the problems of formation and study of the new direction in the audiovisual culture and art-3D cinema. The film set of the first Kazakhstan 3D film, i.e., complicated for production feature 3D film named "Returning to the 'A"' directed by Yegor Mikhalkov-Konchalovskiy was the experimentation facility of the research. The purpose of the study is to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the integral characteristic of the communicative potential-social and psychological climate in the shooting team of first Kazakh 3D movie. A comprehensive analysis of the social and psychological climate in the shooting team staff of 3D movie has revealed its positive evaluation in all the communicative tests as the best, friendly, good, close to the maximum group cohesion index, sufficient level of sociability and democratic style of leadership. The author's definition to the communications as a social and informative metabolism is given. The model of film production is developed by types of communications. 3D film-making technology can extend the capabilities of the communication potential of film art as a means of mass communication.

Audiovisual Policymaking in Estonia at Times of Convergence: An ‘Innovation System’ as a Policy Rationale

Abstract The first thing this article tries to do is discuss the Estonian audiovisual media and content production system in its entirety - i.e. to look at film, television and interactive audiovisual services as an increasingly integrated system. Secondly, it tries to understand the issues that this convergence process presents to these formerly distinct sub-fields of the audiovisual culture, as well as for the country’s cultural policy makers. Thirdly, it presents an alternative rationale for audiovisual policymaking - reconceptualising the policy in support of an ‘innovation system’. The aim of this policy would be to improve ‘innovation coordination’ - to make the system generate more innovative cultural forms and representations, which at the aggregate level would translate into increased cultural diversity. The article assesses the innovation coordination within the Estonian audiovisual media and content production system.

Super Mario Clouds and the John Ford Sky: Love and Loss in the Work of Douglas Gordon and Cory Arcangel

<p><strong>Abstract</strong>: A shared culture of art practice has emerged around classical Hollywood films and interactive video games, an art practice that uses both of these dominant media as a type of “readymade." One critic has called contemporary video artists such as Cory Arcangel and Douglas Gordon the “ideal childrenof the children of Duchamp.” Reformulating well known films, video games, and television broadcasts, these artists provide a way of customizing industrially produced pleasures, reconfiguring in a personal and illuminating way the objects of audio-visual culture.</p><p> </p>

Nowy dokument historyczny

Methodology of New Film History The article’s author, based on various examples taken from the European documentary tradition, seeks to determine how the particular position of a new generation of found footage films is allocated and viewed in Polish cinemas and in relation to Polish contemporary audiovisual culture. Marek Hendrykowski redefines film editing (found footage film, compilation) as a historical narrative with its own, attractive poetics and successful way of negotiating its prestige and popularity in the public sphere.

Hard-boiled simulacra and cybernetic cartographies: other virtual worlds in the fiction of Salman Rushdie and Haruki Muakami

The digital re-staging of the body in cybernetic spheres such as Facebook, Twitter or the online gaming world, which occurs on a daily basis in much of the developed world today, represents a biotechnological symbiosis of digital self and organic self which has materialised as the ubiquitous cultural and social norm. The result is an epistemological doubling, a duality of identity, whereby the organic body and its cybernetic other simultaneously inhabit two spaces: that of the real world, and the virtual, straddling ostensibly polarised worlds which are becoming increasingly blurred. As Haraway envisaged, ‘by the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorised and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs’. This article seeks to examine how fiction has responded to such ideas and developments in late twentieth and early twentieth-century audiovisual culture. With reference to the novels Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Fury, Dance Dance Dance and Luka and the Fire of Life, it examines how Rushdie's and Murakami's fiction registers a reality which simultaneously engages with, and disrupts, spatiality through the aesthetics of virtual cartographies, and the metaphor and materiality of simulacra.

Vitalization and spectacle in Thanassis Rentzis’s Bio-Graphia and Corpus

Abstract Thanassis Rentzis’s work offers an investigation into the nature of the cinematic medium and the constellations of industry, spectacle and subjectivity, most explicitly demonstrated in two films he made in the 1970s, Bio-Graphia (1975) and Corpus (1979). Largely influenced by collage and pre-cinematic techniques, these are the most essayistic of Rentzis’s films and they set out to trace human sensibilities that were central to the rise of audio-visual culture. Their main themes concern the fragmentation of representation in modernity, and correspondingly, a mutual constitution of the audio-visual with interactions throughout social life. The article will argue that the films do not insist on spectacle as a negation of life, but on a vitalist approach of audio-visuality whereby the dissemination of images relies on physiological and perceptual modes of spectatorship.