Digital Cinema, Soft Cinema: Screening of "Absences"

a) Introduction:



Andreas Kratky "Absences" 

Name: Absences
When was it released?: May 1, 2004
When has it been shown?: It continues Manovich's interest in database as a new film medium. Malcolm Le Grice was exploring this notion about fifteen years ago, and doing the coding himself. Here, Manovich and Kratky work with software developers Shoenerwissen/Office for Computational Design to visualise their video database.

b) Detailed Description:

Soft Cinema:  Lev Manovich describes soft cinema as the creative opportunities of software culture, cinema and architecture. Its specification include films, dynamic visualizations, computer-driver installations, architectural designs, print catalogs and DVDs. The aim of projects show new representational forms of software cinema to use new dimensions of our time and the effects of subjectivity. Each performance is unique. The database is programmed so the story is never the same. Aim, how narrative and database can work together. Lev Manovich ideas soft cinema to allow the human mind to create a story for themselves and each scene is a unique interpretation.

Soft Cinema explorers 4 ideas: Algorithmic Cinema, Macro-cinema, Multimedia cinema and Database Cinema.
1. Algorithmic Cinema: Focusing on experimental film and contemporary "new media" production. Much of the filmmaker, Hollis Frampton, who anticipates todays algorithmic ways, Frampton's work about new media have some significant consequences and some authors and artists follow his works about new media, such as, Lev Manovich, John Simon, P.Adams Sitney.
2. Macro-cinema: Computer user employs windows of different proportions and sizes.
3. Multimedia Cinema: 2D animations, motion graphics, 3D scenes, diagrams, etc.
4. Database Cinema: Database becomes the center of the creative process in the computer age and the artist made a unique work inside of a particular medium. The story develops by selecting scenes from a given collection. Linear narrative structure opposite of the traditional cinema. New Media objects lack this strong narrative component, they do not have beginning or end they just start or stop any point when they want to start or stop. Lev Manovich first related the database to cinema to understand the changing technologies of filmmaking techniques in media. Database and narrative are natural enemies.

Soft Cinema, the database is an ambitious project by Lev Manovich and Andreas Kratky. There are three films; Texas, Mission to Earth and Absences. All three works use space to explore feelings between the individuals and their environment and relationships. "Soft Cinema project is designed to take a number of forms, including different movie editions, installation versions, and publications. Each edition movie presents different narratives and uses different media databases".

" For the Absences database each film clip was analyzed in regards to several visual qualities such as brightness, contrast, texture, activity, the difference between the center and the periphery, and the difference between the upper and the lower part. The soundtrack of Absences comes from the same parameter space: the curves describing the temporal development of the activity, brightness and contrast values of the individual clips were used to synthesize sounds that were then combined with location sound. The rhythm of the filmic montage also creates a sonic rhythm. The overall film sound track follows the progression of film visuals from more concrete to more abstract by moving from location sound to the layered abstract sound".




Absences: Like previous works, the images shown unique parameters. These parameters include brightness, contrast, texture, activity, frequency, and others. The Absences was created without pre-set narrative.It gives different sets of images and footage, the theme surrounds the aspect of natural and urban surroundings. "The montage and split-screen structure are also spatial in their relativism. Kratky's work is more distant, more of a poem to Manovich's prose, which perhaps also has something to do with his use of the film noir aesthetic".

Andreas Kratky's Absences is the more abstract than Texas and Mission to Earth. The artist use the black and white narratives in the movie and the fragments of film describing urban and nature scenes. This movie has three main aspects that are sound, parameters and montage. It is interesting the differences between part of the frame, contrast, texture, activity, etc. There are many different visual experiences cause not to fully focus one by one.

"Today I am going to leave...I will be on the way again, heading to some other place...I do not belong here..."

Absences is a movie that use many small windows and some sentences to explain ideas about alienation, solitudes, and escape from everything. We can understand there is a woman in this movie because of her ideas about a lovely boy and sentences like comes from her mouth without seeing her. She feels that everything and everyone same in the world and she should go somewhere else to escape everything. She thinks that there is no reality anymore and she wants to follow the light to go other country. The light symbolize the 'hope', the 'brightness' and the good 'feelings' in this movie. Because the scenes are black and white like an everything shows depressive feelings. She does not feel to belong herself in this area and she just wants to run away everything to find light. 

In this movie we can obviously see the alienation for woman. Alienation; a feeling of being alone and aparts or distance from the society and others. In this video, the woman also thinks that she does not belong in her life and she wants to escape everything about her life. "I do not belong here...."

References

Soft Cinema- Lev Manovich & Andreas Kratky

http://transjuice.org/page23.htm  

Database as Symbolic Form-Lev Manovich

http://con.sagepub.com/content/5/2/80

Soft Cinema- Ambient Narrative. Lev Manovich & Andreas Kratky 

http://www.softcinema.net/absences.htm

Mission to Earth

This is a film that has many small and many back windows to use to explain something by different views. This film is not traditonal one to which one people use to watch. It is not similar to traditional films because there is no such orders to follow and present the story. It is like a bit surrealistic to show many different feelings to use many different windows. This film is also narrative and jump step by step different way to decsribe different feelings. Randomly differentiation and it is a bit like a Dada. The women in the movie feels depressive and the atmosphere also show people this psychological depression. It is not give people happiness or good feelings when someone watch the movie, it makes feel bad and make to think about it. Because it is the new one and people have not used to watch such kind of film.

Alienation; a feeling of being alone and aparts or distance from the society and others. In this video, the women also thinks that she does not belong this culture or other one. She feels assimilation to become part of a foreign or dominant culture. Film uses colour to great effect like painting design, pastel colours and low saturation colour to show her melancholy, lowkeey mood. There is also art forms like software, constructive and multimedia. There are small windows to give different feelings that have some repetition and painting effects to show photoshop events. The film uses of simultaneous screens and change relationships of these screens like emotional effect.


Other examples:

"Piet Mondrian"


  

"Dada" "Raoul Hausmann"



"Marcel Duchamp"

Umbrella effect...=)

Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki Umbrella-net

             http://www.undertheumbrella.net/

It is quite interesting to networks coincidence. Coincidence change and after the network is change. It is follow one by one to provide communication among people. The concept "what is it", "what is it about" and "what people want to share or collect some data". The internet gives chance to share some data. And now there are many bluetooth effects to provide sharing something what people want to share with someone.

Bluetooth effect is also an artwork. Aim, provide to communication, relationships and getting information or some data by person among participants. This example is clear and good to give visible images. Everything can be share among participants to get new data or view or idea from others.

Digital art is a networked art or not??

The networked art is more active than the digital art. People can see in their daily life or they can go somewhere to see some art stuffs without depend on computer. Digital art is not the same with network art. It takes place computer and exists in the computer base area. People can access digital art from the computer. Therefore the digital art is an interactive. Its also making people feel  and think different things, its new and untraditional to help people think different way. Sometimes its hard to understand, nobody useful and it makes to feel differentiation; but it is also an art to give some feelings, ideas or some new and different format to think new things.

There is also some cons because of the digital art. Some old people cannot use the computer very easily or they don't have any idea about the computer usage. Because of this, they cannot see the digital art and they have no idea about what is it. However now, everyone do not go to the some museum or some gallery to see art things. This time digital art can help them to achieve art things by their computer in eveywhere. In millenium time everyone tries to learn how they can use the internet and they just use them what they want to do. So they can get some ditital art things by their computer and it help to people start to interest head for art.

new aspect...April 4 - May 4 2002 at bitforms gallery 529 West 20th Street 2nd Floor NYC...The Waiting Room..

The Waiting Room is a virtual space that 50 users share through the Internet. In this space the visitor becomes a participant in a moving painting. Their actions activate and shape the artwork, shifting the screen through moods, from hard-edged to atmospheric, from dark to light, from quiet to chaotic.

In digital art is very famous in this time. People like to attain many art things from the internet and they can provide themselves without going somewhere. Also some galleries or museums entrance fee are very much to someones cannot go inside to see art things. The digital art helps people to see art things without paying anything. People can achieve them easily and they can see the opposite things to compare art things between each other. 

People wait in their whole lives. Time is main against and all of us fight with time. All people have some wishes and regrets. And all of them say if I can change the time I do not do this...Our regrets help to be good people or to do good things in our lives. The Waiting Room evoke me to the time is very important thing in peoples' lives. We are always wait something to continue our lives. When the child term we wait to go to school, when school time we want to graduate and when we graduate we want to find a job...So all of things constitute our llives, especially time help to shape our characteristics. In time of people can grow up and improve themselves according to their regrets and wishes. 

This work shows digital art effect and it is typical of much digital art because it is an artwork that places importance on the concept rather than the the art object. It helps people to think about something about it. It helps to improve peoples' ability or view about artwork. There is a concept to constitute some evets or ideas about differant things according to what people see or think when they see this artworks. It consists existence the digital art in peoples' daily life. Therefore using the internet and spreading feeling of the importance of digital art can be developed.

my blog...=)

http://www.potatoland.org/word/

Words are everywhere in peoples' lives. People can use them what they want to say or tell with them easily. Words are provide to make easy peoples' lives. It provide to get good communication with someone and to understand someone easily. Also if we cannot talk we can use the words to tell our feelings, ideas, situations  easily. It makes communication among everyone by talking or without talking. Also the sign or some rules or some things have words to give people some directions or regulations to provide them good life.

I would like to choose words' thing because I think words are everywhere and useful things that we need them every situation in our lives.

filmmmm...=)