Videographic Frankenstein – medieninitiative

Out Now: Videographic Frankenstein in Hyperrhiz 19

I am excited to announce that the Videographic Frankenstein exhibit, which ran September 26 – November 2, 2018 at Stanford, lives on in an online version — out now in Hyperrhiz 19! There you will find 10 video works on various facets of Frankenstein‘s moving-image legacy, from early film to television and digital animation, along with creators’ statements that reflect on this history and its relations to videographic scholarship, among other monstrosities.

Thanks again to the Stanford Medicine and the Muse Frankenstein@200 Initiative and the Stanford Department of Art & Art History and Program in Film & Media Studies for their generous support of the project.

Thanks also to Helen Burgess, editor at Hyperrhiz, for entertaining the notion of publishing an exhibition of creative and scholarly videos, and for working with me to find the right format.

And thanks, finally, to the contributors for all their hard work: Matthew Fishel, Jason Mittell, Allison de Fren, David Verdeure, Carlos Valladares, Lester Friedman, Kristine Vann, and Spencer Slovic!

Also, be sure to check out the full issue of Hyperrhiz, which is chock full of more excellent scholarly and creative work!

Video: Playtest at Library of Congress

On November 8, 2018, I presented a pop-up version of the Videographic Frankenstein exhibition at the Library of Congress, in the context of an event called Playtest convened by Tahir Hemphill. This video, shot that day, gives a glimpse of the projects presented there. You’ll find me talking about Videographic Frankenstein shortly before the 1:00 minute mark.

Videographic Frankenstein Lives On at the Library of Congress

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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.

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Incidentally, the Library of Congress has just made a beautiful new restoration of Thomas Edison’s 1910 Frankenstein available here.

Check it out!

Extended till Nov. 2: Videographic Frankenstein

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!

It’s Alive! Videographic Frankenstein

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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.

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Works featured:

Frankenstein (2018), 2018
Matthew Fishel
Silent Animation Loop

Spark of Being, 2010
Bill Morrison
Found Footage Film, 1:07:11

Frankenstein’s Television, 2018
Jason Mittell
Video, 10:02

Mad Science/Love and the Body in Pieces, 2018
Allison de Fren
Video, 17:18

The Meaning of “Animation” in Edison’s FRANKENSTEIN, 2017
Shane Denson
Video, 12:57

Red, Not Blood: Godard, Frankenstein, and Eastman Red, 2018
Carlos Valladares
Video, 6:46

Persona versus Frankenstein, 2015
David Verdeure, a.k.a. Filmscalpel
Video, 4:15

On Galvanism: Electricity, Frankenstein, and the Moving Image, 2018
Spencer Slovic
Video, 7:30

Sight and Sound Conspire: Monstrous Audio-Vision in James Whale’s FRANKENSTEIN (1931), 2015
Shane Denson
Video, 8:47

Questioning the Human Machine in EX MACHINA, 2016
Allison de Fren
Video, 10:26

Horror 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.

Jason Mittell: “Videographic Deformations: How (and Why) to Break Your Favorite Films” — Oct. 10, 2018

Frankenstein's Television headshot copy

In conjunction with the exhibition Videographic Frankenstein (Sept. 26 – Oct. 26, 2018 in The Dr Sidney & Iris Miller Discussion Space, McMurtry Building, Stanford), television scholar and video essayist Jason Mittell (Middlebury College) will deliver a public lecture titled “Videographic Deformations: How (and Why) to Break Your Favorite Films.”

The lecture, which takes place at 5:30pm on October 10, 2018 in Oshman Hall (McMurtry Building), is in conversation with Frankenstein’s Television, Mittell’s contribution to the exhibition, and with a broader set of methodological concerns around the idea of “deformative” methods:

Deformative criticism has emerged as an innovative site of critical practice within media studies and digital humanities, revealing new insights into media texts by “breaking” them in controlled or chaotic ways. Media scholars are particularly well situated to such experimentation, as many of our objects of study exist in digital forms that lend themselves to wide-ranging manipulation. Building on Jason Mittell’s experiments with Singin’ in the Rain and his “Frankenstein’s Television” video (included in Stanford’s Videographic Frankenstein exhibit), this presentation discusses a range of deformations applied to film and television, considering what we can learn by breaking a media text in creative and unexpected ways.

Jason Mittell is Professor of Film & Media Culture and American Studies, and founder of the Digital Liberal Arts Initiative at Middlebury College. His books include Complex Television: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (NYU Press, 2015), The Videographic Essay: Criticism in Sound and Image (with Christian Keathley; caboose books, 2016), and co-editor of How to Watch Television (with Ethan Thompson; NYU Press, 2013). He is project manager for [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, co-director of the NEH-supported workshop series Scholarship in Sound & Image, and a Fellow at the Peabody Media Center.

See here for more information.

FrankensteinsDeepDream

Creation scene and aftermath, as described in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Chapter 5, 1831 edition) and interpreted by Cris Valenzuela’s text-to-image machine-learning demo (http://t2i.cvalenzuelab.com) utilizing AttnGAN (Attentional Generative Adversarial Networks).

Made for the upcoming Videographic Frankenstein exhibition at the Department of Art & Art History, Stanford University (Sept. 26 – Oct. 26, 2018). More info here: https://art.stanford.edu/exhibitions/videographic-frankenstein