This video essay explores “suture” and ideology in an excerpt from Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016). Moreover, the video itself is an experiment or “proof-of-concept” piece: made entirely in Keynote (Apple’s version of PowerPoint), all of the transitions and effects are automated by the software. In other words, after designing the presentation (or “programming” it), I simply clicked “play” and let the presentation run. This is a screen recording of the results.
Category: Video
Videographic PechaKucha
Inspired by Jason Mittell’s latest blog post on “Videographic Deformations,” in which Jason discusses an exercise we did at last summer’s NEH digital humanities workshop on Scholarship in Sound & Image in the context of what Lisa Samuels and Jerome McGann call “deformative criticism,” I’ve finally gotten around to uploading a multiscreen compilation of “videographic PechaKuchas” that I made in Middlebury, based on the videos made by all the participants in the workshop. Be sure to check out Jason’s post for the essential context, and: Enjoy!
(For best image quality, check out the video on vimeo, where you can view it in 1080p HD.)
Post-Cinema: 24fps@44100Hz
Out Now: [in]Transition 2.4
The latest issue of [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies has just been published. This is a special issue featuring video essays that emerged out of the NEH workshop on videographic criticism that I attended last summer at Middlebury College, organized by Jason Mittell and Christian Keathley. In addition to my video essay “Sight and Sound Conspire: Monstrous Audio-Vision in James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931)” — with peer reviews by Steven Shaviro and Drew Morton — the special issue also contains great pieces by Allison de Fren, Patrick Keating, Jaap Kooijman, and Michael Talbott. Check it out!
Post-Cinema / AR
Sneak preview: “Post-Cinema: 24fps@44100Hz” — Acrylic on canvas, 24″ x 24″, augmented with digital video and Markov chains…
Hyperrhiz: Kits, Plans, and Schematics. An Exhibition of Electronic Art
Check out the cool video Robert Emmons put together for the upcoming exhibition at Rutgers Camden’s Digital Studies Center, which will launch the new issue of Hyperrhiz. Both the journal and the exhibit — and now also the video — feature work done by members of the Duke S-1: Speculative Sensation Lab, in collaboration with Karin Denson. Very happy to see the data gnomes enjoying some sunshine up in New Jersey!
From ‘Suture’ to ‘Scan’ in Paranormal Activity 3
My video essay “VHS Found Footage and the Material Horrors of Post-Cinematic Images” is now online over at In Media Res, where it kicks off a week of discussions on the topic of found-footage aesthetics. Take a look and join the conversation!
“Found Footage Video Aesthetics” Theme Week at In Media Res
Next week, August 17-21, 2015, I will be participating in the “Found Footage Video Aesthetics” theme week at the mediaCommons site In Media Res. I’ll be up first, on Monday, Aug. 17, with a video essay on the topic of “VHS Found Footage and the Material Horrors of Post-Cinematic Images” — a project I started this summer at the NEH-funded Middlebury College Workshop on Videographic Criticism. Stay tuned!
Making Mining Networking: Video Documentation
Above, some video documentation of the pieces included in Making Mining Networking, the exhibition that Karin and I have going on until September at Duke University. As I posted recently, the augmented reality platform we used to make the interactive components (Metaio) has been sold to Apple and will be going offline at the end of the year. All the more reason to document everything now — but until December 15 you can still try out the pieces yourself, either in person at the exhibition or on your own computer screen with a smart device (see the images here)!
The (generative, network-driven) music is from the project “Listen to Wikipedia,” by Hatnote — which seemed a perfect match for the theme of Making Mining Networking!
Sight and Sound Conspire: Video Essay on James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931)
Above, the video essay I made at the NEH Workshop on Videographic Criticism at Middlebury College, June 14-27, 2015. See also Jason Mittell’s blog post on the workshop, which details many of the exercises we did and includes several examples that Jason made. Stay tuned for more!