There is a short article in today’s Stanford News about the Scholars Select exhibition that’s on right now until until April 14 at Green Library. The centerpiece of the article is this set of pictures by University Photographer Linda A. Cicero, who shot a selection of scholars and their objects. Each image links to the short statement that the faculty member prepared about their object. Take a look!
For the Scholars Select Exhibit at Stanford’s Green Library — in commemoration of the library’s 100th anniversary — I was asked to choose an object from Special Collections and write something about its significance for my work. I chose a letter to Bob Leedom contained in the September 1974 issue of the People’s Computer Company newsletter, published around the corner in Menlo Park:
The letter discusses Super Star Trek, a game I have written about in “Digital Seriality: On the Serial Aesthetics and Practice of Digital Games” (co-authored with Andreas Sudmann). Here, in much more condensed form, is what I wrote about it for the exhibition:
And here’s the letter itself:
You can find the full issue of the People’s Computer Company online, through the Stanford Libraries website: here.
Check out the full exhibition, which will be on display January 24 – April 19, 2019. More info here.
The Videographic Frankenstein exhibition at Stanford came to a close today, but like any good monster its demise is only temporary… On November 8, 2018, the show will be resurrected in the form of an augmented reality pop-up exhibition at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., as part of an event called “Playtest: An Open House for Emerging Media in the Digital Humanities” organized by Tahir Hemphill.
Incidentally, the Library of Congress has just made a beautiful new restoration of Thomas Edison’s 1910 Frankenstein available here.
Check it out!
The Videographic Frankenstein exhibition has been extended an additional week, until November 2, 2018! If you’re in the Bay Area and haven’t been able to check it out, you’ve still got (a little) time!
See here for more details, and stay tuned for a few related events/developments!
Videographic Frankenstein–the exhibition that I am curating at Stanford–opens today. The show runs from Sept. 26 through Oct. 26, 2018 in the Dr. Sidney and Iris Miller Discussion Space, McMurtry Building.
Works featured:
Frankenstein (2018), 2018
Matthew Fishel
Silent Animation LoopSpark of Being, 2010
Bill Morrison
Found Footage Film, 1:07:11Frankenstein’s Television, 2018
Jason Mittell
Video, 10:02Mad Science/Love and the Body in Pieces, 2018
Allison de Fren
Video, 17:18The Meaning of “Animation” in Edison’s FRANKENSTEIN, 2017
Shane Denson
Video, 12:57Red, Not Blood: Godard, Frankenstein, and Eastman Red, 2018
Carlos Valladares
Video, 6:46Persona versus Frankenstein, 2015
David Verdeure, a.k.a. Filmscalpel
Video, 4:15On Galvanism: Electricity, Frankenstein, and the Moving Image, 2018
Spencer Slovic
Video, 7:30Sight and Sound Conspire: Monstrous Audio-Vision in James Whale’s FRANKENSTEIN (1931), 2015
Shane Denson
Video, 8:47Questioning the Human Machine in EX MACHINA, 2016
Allison de Fren
Video, 10:26Horror and Humor: Frankenstein’s Comic Offspring, 2018
Lester D. Friedman and Kristine Vann
Video, 17:38
The exhibition was made possible by a Frankenstein@200 Initiative grant from the Medicine and the Muse Program at Stanford.
More information about the exhibition can be found here.
About two years ago, the exhibition On Display: Immemory, Soft Cinema, After Video at Bilkent University in Ankara brought together projects by Chris Marker, Lev Manovich, and the contributors to the “video book” after.video — including the collaborative AR piece “Scannable Images” that Karin Denson and I made. Recently, Oliver Lerone Schultz (one of the editors of after.video) brought to my attention this “critical tour” of the exhibition, which takes the form of a discussion between Ersan Ocak and Andreas Treske. It is audio only, and you might need to turn up the volume a bit, but it’s an interesting discussion of video and media art.
(See here for more on after.video. Also, I should note that the AR on “Scannable Images” is currently not working due to the ephemeral business models of AR platforms these days, but I hope to port it over to a new platform and get it up and running again soon!)
Essays in Sight and Sound — an exhibition of video essays that I am co-curating with Spencer Slovic at Stanford — opens today. The wall text (above) outlines the aims and objectives of the show. Here is a list of the 13 works included:
Explorations of Narrative
On-Again, Off-Again Relationships: A Recurring Theme, 2017
Gita Krishna
Video, 5:33TALLADEGA NIGHTS: A Reinvention of the Tragic Hero, 2017
Robin Fierberg
Video, 5:56Crafting a Cinematic Universe, 2017
Antonio Avalos
Video, 8:37THE LAST OF US: What’s in a Moment?, 2017
Matt Bernstein
Video, 3:52Focus on Color
Minelli Red, 2017
Carlos Valladares
Video, 19:10Character Design in Pixar, 2017
Rogelio Salinas
Video, 5:55Sound, Form, Aesthetics
Sight and Sound Conspire: Monstrous Audio-Vision in James Whale’s FRANKENSTEIN, 2015
Shane Denson
Video, 8:47The Arc Shot, 2017
Sabrina Medler
Video, 5:17LOCK UP: Tonal Dissonance and Homoeroticism, 2017
Francesca Watkins
Video, 10:33Culture, Context, Contour
You Eat with Your Eyes First: Comparing the Eastern and Western “Foodie” Movie Genres, 2017
Rose Adams
Video, 11:05Healing Waters, 2017
Zoe Mhungu
Video, 5:21Flexing Culture, 2017
Eleni Aneziris
Video, 4:46The Animal in the Lake: Ambient Sound in CEMETERY OF SPLENDOR, 2018
Spencer Slovic
Video, 4:30
Essays in Sight and Sound: An Exhibition of Video Essays brings together a number of works produced in the Fall 2017 course “The Video Essay: Writing with Video about Film and Media.”
The assembled videos deal with cinema, television, video games, and online media, which they approach from a variety of angles. Together, these works not only probe our changing media landscape but explore the critical affordances of the video essay as a means of writing with sight and sound.
The exhibition will be on view January 12 – 26, 2018 in the Gunn Foyer of the McMurtry Building, home of the Department of Art & Art History, on the Stanford University campus.
Post-Cinema: Videographic Explorations — an exhibition of video essays that I am curating at Stanford — opens today. The wall text (above) outlines the aims and objectives of the show. Here is a list of the 13 works included:
Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century Film (Book Trailer), 2016
Shane Denson
Video, 4:12The Beyoncé Image: Synesthetic Abilities of the Visual Album, 2017
Cleo Chung
Video, 17:07Iñárritu’s Films in a Conversation on Realism, Hyperrealism, Time-Image, and Movement-Image, 2017
Raquel Orendain Shrestha
Video, 4:00WTF IS THAT? The Pre- and Post-Cinematic Tendencies of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, 2017
Allison de Fren and Brian Cantrell
Video, 10:12hijab.key, 2016
Shane Denson
Video, 2:46The Shared Universe Cinema, 2017
Will Ferrer
Video, 21:18Transformers: The Premake (a desktop documentary), 2014
Kevin B. Lee
Video, 25:03Slowness and Slow Cinema, 2017
Spencer Slovic
Video, 11:42FX’s LEGION and Post-Cinematic Television, 2017
Katie Adams
Video, 19:31Questioning the Human Machine in EX MACHINA, 2016
Allison de Fren
Video, 10:26New Forms of Racism in the Post-Cinematic Dispositif, 2017
Jace Alexander Casey
Video, 4:02A Closer Look at/into Depth Perception: Illusion, Impression, and Indexicality in Animation, 2017
Ouree Lee
Video, 20:14VHS Found Footage and the Material Horrors of Post-Cinema, 2015
Shane Denson
Video, 5:02