Online now: Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal’s discussion with me and Brooke Belisle about our books Post-Cinematic Bodies and Depth Effects. Check it out!
Tag: post-cinematic bodies
Cuerpos Post-Cinemáticos — Spanish translation of Post-Cinematic Bodies
I was pleasantly surprised to receive a copy of Cuerpos Post-Cinemáticos, a Spanish translation of Post-Cinematic Bodies, in the mail today — especially surprised since I had no idea it was being made!
Zenaida Osorio, a professor in the School of Graphic Design at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá, undertook the project with her students as a sort of critical making project. They are open about the fact that they used ChatGPT and DeepL to make the first pass at translating the open-access text, but then a team of 11 students (Alejandro Guerrero, David Inagán, Natalia Correa, Natalia Montaña, Natalie Martin, Roxana Ayala, Selina Ojeda, Sofía Bernal, Santiago Narváez, William Camacho, and Wilmer Casallas) revised and corrected the translation. The whole team added a glossary of technical terms, a commentary (in English and Spanish) before each chapter and at the end of the book, and a set of QR-code–activated “visual comments” — a set of wonderfully designed objects that link the ideas of the book to the students’ lived experience in Bogotá. They also sent me printed copies of these beautiful objects. The final product is finely crafted.
My family and I had the honor to spend a week in Bogotá at Professor Osorio’s invitation back in 2019, where I saw first-hand the amazing work that she and her students are doing there. It was a truly memorable week, which I often look back on fondly, and I hope to return there again someday. Today, I am very touched by this wonderful and unexpected gift!
Post-Cinematic Bodies book launch — write-up in the Stanford Daily (and an AI-generated knock-off?)
Yesterday, The Stanford Daily ran an article by student reporter Joshua Kim about the book launch of Post-Cinematic Bodies, which you can find here. Interestingly, it seems that the article was immediately picked up, processed with AI (I can only assume), and (re)published in machinically modified form, complete with a listicle-like FAQs section, by a certain “Simon Smith,” on a website illustrated exclusively with AI-generated images. Welcome, as Matthew Kirschenbaum writes, to the Textpocalypse!
Post-Cinematic Bodies — pics from US book launch!
»Post-Cinematic Bodies« US Book Launch, November 6, 2023
On November 6, 2023 at 5:30 pm in the Margaret Jacks Hall Terrace Room (Building 460, Room 426), I will be presenting my new book Post-Cinematic Bodies (meson press, 2023), along with responses by Professor Scott Bukatman (Film & Media Studies, Stanford), and Dr. Annika Butler-Wall (Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Stanford MTL Ph.D. ’23).
Food and drinks will be provided. The first 40 attendees will receive a free copy of the book.
RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Please RSVP using the linked form by October 30th if you plan on attending.
About the book:
“How is human embodiment transformed in an age of algorithms? How do post-cinematic media technologies such as AI, VR, and robotics target and re-shape our bodies? Post-Cinematic Bodies grapples with these questions by attending both to mundane devices—such as smartphones, networked exercise machines, and smart watches and other wearables equipped with heartrate sensors—as well as to new media artworks that rework such equipment to reveal to us the ways that our fleshly existences are increasingly up for grabs. Through an equally philosophical and interpretive analysis, the book aims to develop a new aesthetics of embodied experience that is attuned to a new age of predictive technology and metabolic capitalism.”
Speaker and Respondents
Shane Denson is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of Art & Art History and, by Courtesy, of German Studies in the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages and of Communication in Stanford’s Department of Communication. He is currently the Director of the PhD Program in Modern Thought and Literature, as well as Director of Graduate Studies in Art History. His research and teaching interests span a variety of media and historical periods, including phenomenological and media-philosophical approaches to film, digital media, comics, games, and serialized popular forms.
Scott Bukatman is a cultural theorist and Professor of Film and Media Studies at Stanford University. His research explores how such popular media as film, comics, and animation mediate between new technologies and human perceptual and bodily experience. His books include Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction, one of the earliest book-length studies of cyberculture; a monograph on the film Blade Runner commissioned by the British Film Institute; and a collection of essays, Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century. The Poetics of Slumberland: Animated Spirits and the Animating Spirit, celebrates play, plasmatic possibility, and the life of images in cartoons, comics, and cinema.
Dr. Annika Butler-Wall is a Lecturer in the Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is an interdisciplinary scholar and teacher working at the intersections of gender studies, media studies, and science and technology studies (STS). Her current research project explores how digital platforms are restructuring forms of historically feminized labor by examining platforms such as TaskRabbit, Yelp, and LinkedIn Learning.
She holds a PhD in Modern Thought and Literature with a minor in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Stanford University and a BA in American Studies and Economics from Wesleyan University. Her research has been supported by the Clayman Institute for Gender Research and the Ric Weiland Graduate Research Fellowship among others.
This event is sponsored by The Program in Modern Thought & Literature and Intermediations.
Post-Cinematic Bodies in Spanish and Chinese
My new book Post-Cinematic Bodies has not, as far as I know, been translated, but it is getting some discussion in languages other than English. An interview I gave recently for Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences has been circulating on other sites, including this Spanish translation. And now there’s also what appears to be an hour-long walkthrough of the book in Chinese by a Shanghai-based YouTuber.
Incidentally, a new volume is out in Chinese, titled Flash-Forward, which includes translations of a number of chapters from the 2016 open-access book that I co-edited with Julia Leyda: Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century Film.
Body Images — short interview about my book Post-Cinematic Bodies
Recently, I was interviewed by Andrew Myers for Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences. The exchange, which focuses on my recent book Post-Cinematic Bodies, is now online: here.
OUT NOW: Post-Cinematic Bodies (+ pics from book launch event)
My book Post-Cinematic Bodies is now out!
An open-access version of the book can be downloaded for free from meson press (here), and a limited number of print copies are available for purchase at Hopscotch Reading Room in Berlin, where the book launch was held on July 3. Paperbacks will be more widely available soon; the book is currently listed on Amazon Germany, and it should be appearing for other regions in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!
Here are some pictures from the book launch, where I was in conversation with Mark Hansen. Turnout was great, and it was lots of fun!
BOOK LAUNCH UPDATE: New Date (July 3) and Location! In conversation with Mark B. N. Hansen
Please note: Due to factors outside of my control, the book launch event for Post-Cinematic Bodies, originally scheduled for this Thursday June 29, has been postponed to next Monday, July 3 at 7pm.
I am happy to announce that I will be in conversation with Mark B. N. Hansen!
Please also note the change of venue, to the Kurfürstenstraße location of Hopscotch Reading Room!
BOOK LAUNCH! June 29, 2023: Hopscotch Reading Room, Berlin
[UPDATE: POSTPONED TO JULY 3 — MORE INFO HERE]
On Thursday, June 29, Hopscotch Reading Room (Gerichtstraße 43 in the Wedding district of Berlin) will be hosting a book launch event for my new book Post-Cinematic Bodies — which will be out both in print and open-access digital formats from meson press. There will be paperbacks available for purchase at the launch, and they’ll be more widely available soon afterwards. If you’re in town, come out around 7pm for a short reading, discussion, and drinks!
[UPDATE: POSTPONED TO JULY 3 — MORE INFO HERE]