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When McDonald's closed all its restaurants in Iceland in 2009, one man decided to buy his last hamburger and fries. "I had heard that McDonald's never decompose so I just wanted to see if it was true or not," Hjortur Smarason told AFP. This week, it's 10 years since the seemingly indestructible meal was purchased, and it barely looks a day older. Curious observers can watch a live stream of the burger and fries from its current location in a glass cabinet in Snotra House, a hostel in southern Iceland.

(via Iceland livestreams 10-year-old McDonald's cheeseburger - BBC News)

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RIP

For me the three most interesting points from this semester were the time imagw and moving image, the digital event and post continuity discussions. I enjoyed them both because they were about the changing of the guard, the move from film to digital, and the aesthetic and temporal changes that shift brought.

I found David Rodowick’s article about the digital event very interesting, as I had never really considered that the new digital format allowed for every detail to be altered in a way that film couldn't. Although I found Rodowick to be a bit extreme in his defence of film cinema, I thought he brought up some good points. Obviously the digital ability to alter every frame, every detail raises wider questions about the medium of film.

Steven Shaviro’s talk on post continuity was very enlightening. He was very convincing in his discussion on the change in action film to a new post continuity style. With the constant success of action films and franchises in particular I found this to be a very relevant article. He too was very articulate in detailing the shift in action films. However I am left wondering what caused the change. I found it interesting how the art of editing has changed and how sound has very much helped fill in any details with action sequences in contemporary action films.

Additionally I found the discussion around the time image and the moving image very intriguing, if somewhat confusing. These terms introduced a new way of thinking about the difference in certain types of film to me. It was interesting to me to classify films through their relation to time, as this was not something I had previously considered.

Ultimately these three points were the most interesting to me as the readings we had for them were well written and the arguments were obviously relevant.

 - Thomas 

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Stop-Motion, The Index and The Uncanny

My essay examines how Mary and Max and My Life As A Courgette utilise stop-motion’s paradoxical movement of instants in order to reflect the traumatic experiences of the characters.

  Drawing from Laura Mulvey’s ‘The Index and the Uncanny,’ I have been examining how these films similarly create an uncertain temporality, which is derived from the way the indexical nature of the photograph cements a moment in time, thus ‘carrying the past across innumerable futures, as they become the present.’

  In stop-motion animation, the photograph plays a privileged role. This is due to the way movement is constructed through the manipulation of physical objects between individually photographed frames, as opposed to continuous shooting. As a result, the way the photograph acts as an index, which occupies the uncanny space between stillness and movement and blurs the distinctions between life and death, is mirrored in both Mary and Max and My Life As A Courgette. Consequently, the way the photograph acts as a ‘hallucination that is also a fact’ reflects the way traumatic experiences leave a mark on the unconscious, creating a kind of index that parallels the photograph’s trace of an original event.

  In Mary and Max and My Life As A Courgette, the trauma the characters experience is reflected in a representation of time that is at once layered and lingering, where the movement of the physical and the movement of the plot both occur outside of the frame. One way this occurs is through the use of letters and drawings. These objects in both Mary and Max and My Life As A Courgette are inscribed with longevity, which creates a complex impression of history and permanence, that is received in the present. As well, in Mary and Max, these letters communicate the plot, which is articulated to the audience as flashbacks and narrated from an omniscient perspective. As a result, the narrative appears to unfold both in real time and outside of it. In My Life As A Courgette, however, the letters provide a link to space that is outside of a perpetual present, which is embodied by the orphanage within which the characters live, thus creating a potential future. 

Erin Rogatski

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Doctor Who essay

As a reminder: my essay topic is movement and stillness in Doctor Who and I will base that analysis on the notion of delayed cinema and spectatorship as introduced by Laura Mulvey in her book Death 24x a Second.

I have started writing at this point, luckily, but I do struggle with how far I should go in explaining movement and stillness in cinema. There is the debate if movement in film is real or only experienced, the notions of any-instant-whatever, the notions of past versus present and life versus death. And with that comes an enormous number of scholars with large books explaining their philosophies in detail. I feel a little bit lost in where to stop reading and draw from what I know.

At the moment I think that most relevant to my thesis is the notion of present versus past, life versus death and the uncanny. These are all things that Mulvey dwells longer upon in her book, but she also has the space to go into notions of the indexical of film and photography and a whole chapter on passing time.

Another issue is that I am not sure how much to take from other sources, because I relate my analysis specifically to Mulvey’s notions of delayed cinema and spectatorship. So far, I have drawn from a couple of articles that are about Mulvey’s theory and a little bit from Mary Ann Doane and Raymond Bellour. I am not sure if this is enough, because there are so many famous scholars writing on the topic of time

Other than that, I think I am on the right track for my essay, as I can see more and more clearly how the issues I am explaining in the theoretical part relate to the episode. Although my conclusion becomes more and more balanced…

I am not sure if this is what is expected from this final blog post, but this is what is relevant for me and my essay writing at the moment. 

- Sjoukje

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Deleuze and the Representation of a Representation.

Deleuze’s movement image is important in the discussion of stop motion animation in regards to the uncanny affect produced by the movement of the objects infront of the camera. If cinema only captures a indirect representation of movement then stop motion is a representation of that indirect representation of movement and can account for the uncanny affect produced by the movement as the foundations of the Phi phenomenon and the persistence of vision is challenged by that dual layer of representation. Stop motion animation is twice removed from real movement and therefore movement through time in stop motion animation is also uncanny in its representation.

This is also relevant to the amount of frames that are used to convey movement, and the fidelity which is produced. This is often tied to an economic standpoint as producing more frames requires more money and time investment. Therefore there is ratio within animation, which can be observed when looking at animated films of varying quality. This tolerance of uncanny affect is not only relevant to stop motion but to 2d and 3d animation too, as they both are representations of representations of movement. However the added element that stop motion animation has over those two other styles is its real world physicality, which the human eye can distinguish between.

Stop motion animations relationship with time is also obscured by its modality and physicality, as each frame is indexical of hours of work and manipulation. Because in animation physics of the real world no longer apply time has a infrequency, which usually manifests itself through quick pacing in animated films. Once again this indirect depiction of time varies from production to production and can also lead to uncanniness or help to realize a cartoony aesthetic.           

By Matthew Allan

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The Music Video of Smack My Bitch Up

Carol Vernallis explores the  music video in extreme depth, highlighting its interesting use of space, colour and time to differentiate itself from cinema while enhancing the music.. A music video that I think utilises space, colour and time to service the music is the 1997 song Smack My Bitch Up by Prodigy. Aesthetically this music video is amazing. The video is entirely in first person, giving a closer link between viewer and protagonist. This device also allows the makers of the music video to play around with visual distortions.

One of the ways this is done is by having the physical space contort and shift within the frame, highlighting the inebriating effects of the party lifestyle, both in terms of music and in terms of habitual libations. The combination of a first person POV and quick editing leads to an incredibly disorienting space as it is shown to be small and fast moving. This effect in conjunction with the distortions of the latter half of the video lead to an incredible visual experience reminiscent of the club scene that spawned the music genre. The video uses neon colours to associate the song with its London nightclubbing roots, as well as setting the story along a single temporality. However it also uses a red and green colour palette that tracks the descent of the protagonist into a dizzying night. This also aids the development of the narrative.

Interestingly still is it’s use of time to enhance the music. Due to the style of music the quick editing matches the tempo and high intensity of the rave music. The viewer is caught in the music time and the lived time of the protagonist, creating a feeling of excited exhaustion, a feeling that very much emulates the club scene.  At the end of the music video we see the protagonist in a mirror as she collapses into her bed leading us to wonder, does the music stop when we do or do we stop when the music does?

 - Thomas Elisara

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K-Pop's Machine-like Music Videos

I have to say that I am a big fan of several K-pop bands coming from the same company, SM Entertainment. When thinking about how their music videos are like, I found that the word mentioned by Vernallis and Carol automata is quite precise. For me, nearly all the product forms created under the idol-growing-system are mainly similar. There are two bands I like both consists of 5 people as a group, including two lead singers, two lead singers, plus a rapper. Although the style of those two bands is different, their music videos do deliver the same reception with extremely standardized dancing following precisely every single tempol, sound effect, even the speed of the dance would change following the music at that time, which I would say to that extent, they did do a fabulous job which makes it great to watch, for instance, the 7th Sense from NCT U.

By that, watching K-pop's music videos does create the feeling of 'flickering between human and mechanical'(132). That's maybe the result which the company means to do so like to create a sense of adorable that a group of individuals can and do dance and cooperate just like a bunch of robots precisely follow the music they dance with. Regarding that, most K-pop bands would release a dance version of a song with only cuts, edits, effects happening followed the same temporality catching different angles or frames of the dance which is kinda different with the standard one leased before containing narratives and multi-temporalities. It is exactly what K-pop bands famous for, and even a particular name is created for that kind of mechanical appearance, 칼군무(dance like sharp knives).

It is to say that the mechanical feeling and appearance of the performance would not be coincidently happening, it may be an intended result to create an advantage and distinct from others.

-Boya

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Music Video Aesthetics and Temporality

In Carol Vernallis’ ‘Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context,’ Vernallis discusses how music videos are able to create a sense of temporality, despite lacking most traditional markers found in narrative film. Vernallis suggests this is achieved is through presenting a multi-layered representation of time, derived from cues through music, image and lyrics.

In Childish Gambino’s recent music video for ‘This Is America,’ time is articulated in conjunction with the pace of the music, yet also seems to operate in a perpetual present tense. One way this is experienced is through the lyrics. The present tense of ‘this is’ and ‘now’ creates a sense of immediacy, but also suggests an ambiguous past tense, the length of which is unknown to the audience. This is echoed by the extremely long takes of the camera, which zooms and pans, but rarely cuts. As a result, the video creates a sense of real-time movement.

Nevertheless, when the tempo of the song changes, accompanied by a gunshot, the action in the background of the music video increases in pace. While Childish Gambino continues to dance, joined by other dancers in school uniform, the background turns to chaos and violence. This creates a sense of dual temporality, where the background of the video appears to be operating at a much quicker pace than that of the dancers. As well, the previously mentioned long takes begin to reveal more and more of the chaos of the background, and the tight framing of Gambino begins to feel restrictive, as opposed to creating a sense of immediacy. This is evident during a “cut” to what appears to be a different scene, featuring choir singers and a slower tempo. Nevertheless, as Gambino opens fire and the tempo of the song picks up again, the camera zooms out and the location is revealed to be the same as the rest of the music video.  

Erin Rogatski

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The Dissociation of Tool’s Music Videos

This weeks chapter on music videos explores the symbiotic relationship of the music, the lyrics and the music video and how they each have their own part to play in the diegesis of the song. An example given is of the function of each of the components is: lyrics being symbolic, the music video being iconic and the music being affective. This relationship can be observed when looking at specific music videos. Firstly looking at the catalogue of the music video’s by Tool, their music is often a series of complex motifs with intricate guitar riffs and time signatures, added to the music is opaque but expressive lyrics. The music videos are too complex and highly expressive whilst still remaining vague in terms of context and concrete meaning, the best example of this being Schism, which depicts alien beings performing unknown actions. The music videos are highly affective and uncanny, often using stop motion, surreal makeup, costumes and sets and portraying unintelligible actions and images, which works in conjunction with the song.

I would argue that it’s their complete lack of cohesion of time and space that maintains the uncanny presence of their music videos. The fact that the band rarely features in their music videos (only briefly in two) also produces that dissociation with reality. The band stated this themselves, "latching onto the personalities involved rather than listening to the music." The music videos provide very little relatable substance to latch on to which is synchronous with the opaque lyrics and long, complex and evolving music.   

By Matthew Allan

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Complicated Time in Tonight by Fun

Carol Vernallis talks about temporality in music video. She mostly talks about how the music and video complicate each other’s temporality. It made me think of the music video for the song Tonight by Fun.

For some reason almost the whole video is shot in slow motion. Although the rhythm of the song itself is relatively slow, the speed of the image never goes along with the crescendo in the music. What does happen is that the fighting and destruction in the video become worse. The space portrayed is also clearly just one space, probably a club or a similar space.

 It seems to me that everything in this video is used to give a feeling of timelessness of being encapsulated in a moment in time. The songs title gives it away: Tonight. So, this one night is what the song is about, this one moment in time. Enjoy the night and do not worry, I found someone that can carry me home tonight. The slowness of the video marks that feeling expressed in the song of enjoying the night and not thinking about tomorrow or earlier today. The speed of the video draws the viewer into the moment, a night that feels like it will last forever.

Interestingly enough, there are a couple of moments that are in normal speed, like at the beginning of the video and during a part of the bridge. As if the beginning and end do not matter, but the time in between should last forever or at least, feel like forever.

I think this music video is a good example of the complicated ways music and video can attribute to each other on different levels as the video speed, imagery and music relate to each other in different ways.

Sjoukje

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Nostalgia in 2018

Vivian Sobchack talks about the nostalgia she feels for a (soon to be) obsolete technology. Reading her article, I realised that what she is talking about is already obsolete, as I did not understand for quite some time what she was talking about. The QuickTime I know, is not different from Windows Media Player or VLC, which made it difficult to grab her point directly related to QuickTime movies.

However, the feeling of nostalgia for a certain technology is something that I do recognize. Mostly coming to me during the class discussion on television. I guess it is a different kind of nostalgia, as television cannot be labelled as completely distinctive from cinema. But in turn, it is happening on smaller screens, interrupted by commercials, in a certain environment. As discussed in class, watching television seems to become obsolete as well. Everything can now be streamed or downloaded, privileging the quick QuickTime.  

My nostalgia would be for the medium of television. The broken-up ways in which you watch a film or a series. Getting annoyed, and excited, during the commercials, because it breaks up the flow, but at the same time gives the excitement of ‘what is to come’. The run to the bathroom during the commercials to not miss anything of the actual programme. This interrupted flow is still present in television, but television itself is being replaced by digital streaming services. Smooth, fast and everything in one place, anything you want to watch only one click away. No waiting for a certain program or film to be aired. Its all neatly stored away on the internet.

Now everything is quick, and although in certain ways television is keeping up pace, the form itself might very well become just as obsolete as Sobchack QuickTime memory boxes. And television itself evokes memories as well, with all the reruns of programs or broadcasting of older films. I still get excited when a film I like is showing on television and I will bear the interrupted flow to enjoy it. It is a different experience from watching on the internet, slower and stricter but filled with memories as well. Not only of the pastness on screen, but also of my past, my memories of watching television.  

  Sjoukje

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The Aesthetics of Failure

  Vivian Sobchack’s chapter, Nostalgia for the digital object: Regrets on the quickening of QuickTime, laments about the eventual demise of Quicktime as a unique form of video player as it’s quality will inevitably improve (or it will become a redundant software), but it’s the players limitations that she finds so endearing and fascinating. The nostalgia for the loss of its unique form is a counter to the technological deterministic paradigm of all forms of technology but especially digital and film.  

This rejection of the new can be seen in many facets, film vs digital or vinyl vs CD. Even beyond competing mediums with varying degrees of quality there is a explicit nostalgia of the aesthetics of failure. This is recall and fondness for old and redundant media objects. Some examples for the aesthetics of failure are the recent influx of retro style games that emulate 8 or 16 bit aesthetics such as Undertale or independent movies which are pastiches or 80’s era B movies such as The Void.

Minor trends of the aesthetics of failure often occurs online with examples like the twitter accounts @SegaCDgames and @paprbckparadise, which are parodies of the inanity of cheap products released via mediums considered low art and defunct. Although being made fun of there is still a clear sense of affinity for these long lost and dust covered products.

All of these examples show a want, not only to hold onto media object and mediums of the past but a postmodern appreciation for the more obscure and redundant forms.          

By Matthew Allan

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Little Movies and Digital Limits

In Vivian Sobchack’s ‘Nostalgia For a Digital Object,’ Sobchack makes reference to Lev Manovich’s QuickTime “Little Movies,” in order to interrogate the differences between classical and digital media forms. In doing so, Sobchack attempts to articulate how QuickTime “movies,” or, in Sobchack’s words, “memory boxes,” are small both spatially and temporally, which enables them to highlight the interiority of the audience and the computer. As a result, Sobchack argues, the miniaturisation experienced in Manovich’s A Single Pixel Movie, wherein the film eventually disappears from human sight, reminds the audience of that which exists ‘outside the given field of perception.’ This is due to the way the film cannot be distinguished by the human eye, yet still remains in the memory of the computer.

  While Sobchack uses A Single Pixel Movie in order to examine the intersection of new and old media, another of Manovich’s “little movies,” entitled Binary Code, expresses a similar phenomenon. Unlike A Single Pixel Movie’s “loopy” soundtrack, Binary Code begins almost in silence, only interrupted by a short beep and a burst of light. However, as the “little movie” progresses, these bursts of digitized light expand to reveal the borders of the film, which are otherwise indistinguishable from the black background. Consequently, Manovich is revealing the spatial limits of the digital, which often appear abstract and immaterial. Furthermore, as the film progresses, the burst of light transforms into Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat. The result of this, just as with A Single Pixel Movie, is that the audience watches more and more intently, becoming hyper-aware of the impermanence of the film and its ability to be digitally altered.

-Erin Rogatski

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Memory-box Streaming Videos are Outdated Now

I had lost in the saying of QuickTime movies or memory boxes at the first as it is only one of the mass video players until I noticed the date when this article first published, 1999. Then I would like to consider the saying in this article is about to defend a defective application which is able to turn images into motion via the web, QuickTime, at that time and to affirm its value somehow. Although the examples Sobchack mentioned in that article as Little Movies are not what I excepted a video should be like, it is more like a moving-image instead, showing a movement and keep repeating it.

In that article, Sobchack stated 'Regrets on the Quickening of QuickTime'(pp.305) with a further explanation as 'I don't want QuickTime 'movies' to get any quicker. I also don't want to watch them get any bigger...I don't want them to become 'real movies' at all. Nonetheless, they will(pp.307)'. It is to say that she treasures the foregrounded 'illusion of life'(pp.307).

While, as the YouTube occurred, people all over the world are sharing, connecting and communicating with each other through the online approach. We now watch a broad range of visual contents through tiny screens of our phones or laptops from live world events to pop music videos on YouTube. And people build up connections with others through the virtual community based on the YouTube. It seems that the style of the memory-box way of streaming or downloadable videos have already been replaced. So it is definitely an outdated style for me what Sobchack mentioned in this article about QuickTime movies.

-Boya Zhao

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The birth of a dying medium

First published in 1999, Vivian Sobchack’s Nostalgia for a Digital Object analyses the, then novel, QuickTime player. She sees the Quicktime player as distinct from Cinema, and for her it is the site of a new type of moving image. Today it is easy to forget how primitive the first media players were on computers, how they were prone to error, and had slower processing rates and a lower quality of presentation than the cinema. Sobchack does not criticize Quicktime or lament the death of cinema, instead she sees the primitiveness of Quicktime as charming and defends its form. Aware that the development of technology will render Quicktime obsolete Sobchack has aimed to capture this moment of moving image history.

She makes a convincing case in her defense of Quicktime. In 1999, the computers running Quicktime couldn’t have shown movies or videos at the definition they had known in the cinema or even on the television. As a result they ended up almost being poorly rendered imitations. But for Sobchack that is fine because film “isn’t the medium, its an organizing principle”. For Sobchack, Quicktime’s limitations render any image shown through it different from cinema, more cousins than offspring. Quicktime images are not seamless (she used the now ironic term streaming) nor do they depict real time like cinema does.

However this piece has inevitably become dated as there came a convergence with Quicktime images and film and television. Computers are now far more powerful than in 1999, and asa  a result it’s hard to imagine the images she describes. Perhaps the only true modern equivalent is when you are streaming from sites such as Netflix a poor internet connection causes the image to buffer or drop in quality. But this is not truly similar what Sobchack describes; the errors she describes are the result of the Quicktime player performing as it should, whereas issues today are aberrations. Unfortunately for Sobchack, Quicktime sped up and in the process, disappeared.

 Thomas Elisara

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The TV Remix

The reading TV as a Time Machine by William Uricchio explored the way in which studying television in the context of programming, flow, advertisement ect is important as it tied to temporality and taking it out of that temporality to analyse a single segment loses some of the essence of television, it gets recontextualised. Television however has its own way of recontextualising other mediums, from sports highlights, recycled news footage and even film.

When a film is aired on television (in conventional, terrestrial and pre recording technology terms) it is inevitably cut up via ad breaks, essentially re-editing the film and recontextualising the pacing of the film. This is a direct impact of the necessity of advertisement on television. TV edits often come in the form of censorship, editing out words, phrases or even whole scenes. TV dubs have changed profane dialogue to cleaner alternatives such as "This town's just a great big chicken waiting to get plucked!" from Scarface or "Your mother sews socks that smell!" from The Exorcist. These edits are due to the ease of access to a TV and thus it is has tighter restrictions than film.

Going beyond editing films, television has recontextualised films through framing devices such as horror host like Elvira Mistress of the Dark, or entire TV shows doing parody commentaries like Mystery Science Theater 3000. Examples such as these provide a postmodern context of the films, re-purposing old, forgotten, obscure or just plain bad films for entertainment. Horror hosts acted as a pre digital version of playlist makers, Vjing films and having an over the top personality.   

These examples all show televisions ability to contextualise films through a variety of means, however most stem from the affectations of TV as a medium.       

Matthew Allan.

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TV as a device

It has been a long time I haven't watched TV. When reflecting TV and time, TV itself can be regarded as a symbol of past to me as I don't watch TV now and perhaps won't in the future as well, which is stated by Uricchio as a notion of history(27). The TV I mean here is that a medium constituted of many channels displaying specific programmes, waiting for and attracting viewers to turn to. To that extent, TV can be regarded as a time machine. However, according to my current experience, I would like to say that TV is more like a device similar to any digital devices like cell phones or laptops distinguishes itself as it is not easy to carry. As it gives out the capacity to the users (the previous concept of viewers) to customize the context of a so-called TV, TV is more like a medium which displays or manifests the connection between individuals and the Internet. As for me, I download certain channels to my TV of course, plus game applications and projectors to connect to my laptop which turns TV into a digital device with a huge screen. It is liberation for viewers to control the sequence, interpenetration, and repetition of what to show on the screen and how the televisual experience goes. What drives my interest is that Uricchio stated that this fabric of change had left unchallenged television's temporal characteristics of immediacy and continuity, but it has fundamentally transformed the experience of sequence, interpenetration, and repetition(36). From my perspective, the power shift is all about the change on the power over manipulating the sequence, interpenetration and repetition of selected programmes which break existing concepts of channels into fragments and it will be the viewer to do the recombination depending on their specific desire.

-Boya Zhao