Department of Film, Theatre and Television

Manifestations of Media Technology

Journeys Across Media 2006

Friday 21 April Department of Film, Theatre and Television University of Reading Journeys Across Media- April 2006

WELCOME

Welcome to Journeys Across Media 2006, our annual conference organised by the postgraduate students of the University of Reading’s Department of Film, Theatre and Television.

This booklet provides the paper abstracts and short biographical notes of this year’s JAM presenters and details of the day’s nine panels, in three time slots, as listed below.

We would like to thank you all for coming along to what promises to be an interesting and productive event. We hope you enjoy it!

Leah Panos and Kostas Konstantinidis – Organisers of JAM 2006

Registration 10:00 Bob Kayley Studio/Theatre

Welcome and Opening 10:30

SESSION 1, 10:45 – 12:15

Panel 1: Space, Montage and the Body, BG78 Page

Vicky Spanovangelis: Cityscapes and the Body 4 Stavros Alifragkis: City Symphonies - Restructuring the Urban Landscape 5 Kostas Konstantinidis: Close Digitextual Analysis: The Encoding and Decoding of the 'IKEA Furni' Sequence in Fight Club 6

Panel 2: New Media Narrative Structures, B147

Maurice Suckling: Beyond Storytelling: New Media, Narrative Structure and the Role of Writers 7 Angelina Karpovich: "The Song but not the Singer": Authorship in Fan Videos 8

Panel 3: Virtuality and Projection Technologies in Theatre, Bob Kayley

Stefanie Kuhn: Augmented Reality Stage: Virtual Scenery and Costumes in Marlowe: The Jew of Malta 9 Rebecca Hickie: The Theories of Adolphe Appia and the Use of Projection Technology in 21st Century Scenic Design 10

2 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

3 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

Panel 4: Technology and Performance, BG78

Leah Panos: The Uses and Effects of the Steadicam in Christine 11 Ceri Hovland: Keying Performance Through the Rhetoric of Photography and Advertising in The Virgin Suicides 12 Bridget Birchall: Serie Noire: Technology and Performance 13

Panel 5: Distribution Technologies, B147

Miriam Ross: Korean Cinema and the Reliance on DVD Technology for an International Market 14 Daniel Ashton: From Piracy to Hacking: Playing with Code in the Context of Film Digital Rights Management 15 Nathan Roger: From Terry Waite to Kenneth Bigley: How Terrorists Use New Media to Promote Their Cause 16

Panel 6: New Media and Performance Practices, Bob Kayley Maria Chatzichristodoulou: Cybertheatres: What Are They? 17 Christos Prossylis: Performing Prometheus: The Dramatic Interpreter 18 Mostafa Yarmahmoudi: E-Motion Capture and Spirituality in a Technological Age 19

SESSION 3, 3:30 – 5:00

Panel 7: Visual Narratives and Endings in Sci-fi Texts, B147

Dave Hipple: Creating the Universe: Science Fiction in the Film Industry 20 Greg Singh: Film Trilogies, Narrative Closure and the Politics of Remediation 21

Panel 8: Anthropological Perspectives & Reconfigurations, Bob Kayley

Giacomo De Caterini: Representing Non-linear Knowledge: Planning the Research of Performance Based Events by Means of Hypermedia 22 Mousumi De: 80 Hours, 40 Minutes and 800 Clips: Distilling Raw Footage into Linear and Interactive Documentary 23

Panel 9: Transitions in Film and Drawing, BG78

Yuna Tasaka: Shunga and Ivan the Terrible: Eisenstein's Art in Exile 24 Maxa Zoller: Institutionalising the Underground: The Avant-garde Film Exhibition Film as Film, 1977/197 25

4 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

SESSION 1: 10:45 – 12:15

Panel 1: Space, Montage and the Body

Chair: Lisa Purse BG78

City-scapes and the Body: Architecture and Choreography as explored through Multi-Media based Performance Practice Research

Vicky Spanovangelis

As an architect and choreographer my interest in performance practice is widely explored through the processes of choreographic practice taking the form of multi-media / collaborative film and installation based work. The interdisciplinary approach to my work can be described as practice based research using performance to speculate architectural space.

My contribution is to present a short dance film titled ‘1.06’ [10 minutes] and discuss through a brief presentation the key issues that have informed the film and my subsequent research on space, architecture and choreography.‘1.06’ is a site specific film drawing upon themes of memory, city, space and identity. Based on a loose narrative of the city the film explores notions of space through a central character that takes on the role of the ‘stranger and in the city’.Filmed in London ‘1.06’ presents a series of events and encounters that take us through a non-linear journey where animate and inanimate objects bodies and space fuse and transform into a montage of the city-scape.

My aims are to discuss the key issues generated by the dance film and the manifestation of the spatial environment in which the film was installed.Examples of methods of Multi-media based Performance practice research and examples of current work in collaboration with Dr Ana Sanchez-Colberg will be incorporated into the presentation text.

As an Architect and Choreographer, I have been developing a body of research on the interdisciplinary practice of Architecture and Choreography over the last 7 years. Having trained in Architecture [UCL and the Royal College of Art] and completed a 2 year Masters Programme for Dance studies and Choreography at the Laban Centre London I have had the unique opportunity to implement performance practice strategies as a way of speculating architectural and choreographed spaces.

5 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

City Symphonies: Restructuring the Urban Landscape

Stavros Alifragkis (Cambridge University)

In the 1920s and 1930s the fascination with the city as a phenomenon resulted in an unprecedented increase of moving image pieces that renegotiated the age-old mythology of cities in the novel context of modernity. Such formalistic, cinematic experimentations with the iconography of urban landscapes are called "City Symphonies". Undoubtedly, one of the most celebrated "City Symphonies" is Dziga Vertov's film "Man with the Movie Camera" (USSR, 1929). This film reconstructs the cinematic image of the ideal socialist city of the future by depicting what lies there before the camera lens, but also, what exists as a possibility in Lenin's "New Economic Policy" and Stalin's "First Five Year Plan" Russia.

My research wishes to identify and test the conditions under which expressive cinematic reconstructions of urban landscapes can produce effective and compelling spatially organised narratives and vice versa by investigating the "terra incognita" where theory of architecture and city planning meet cinema theory and practice. Also, it aims to understand and systematise the rules that regulate montage by visual analogy.

The formalist, shot-by-shot analysis of "Man with the Movie Camera" that was performed with existing and experimental software, supplied my research with groundwork on narrative structures and montage. The results have been incorporated in the production of "Cambridge City Symphony”, an interactive, reconfigurable cinematic portrait of Market Place, Cambridge. The pilot production seeks to update the screen language of "City Symphonies" and experiment with possible applications of this revitalised film genre.

Stavros Alifragkis was born in Athens in 1977. In 2002 he graduated from the Department of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and attended the MPhil in film studies at Cambridge University Moving Image Studio. In 2003 he attended the MPhil in theory of architecture at the School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens. Currently he is working on his PhD research entitled “City Symphonies - Restructuring the Urban Landscape” under the supervision of Dr. Francois Penz at Digital Studio, University of Cambridge.

6 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

Close Digitextual Analysis: The Encoding and Decoding of the Furni Sequence in Fight Club

Kostas Konstandinides (University of Reading)

The aim of this paper is to foreground the manifestation of the technological and examine the correlation between encoding and decoding in Fight Club’s furni sequence. Anna Everett’s neologism ‘digitextuality’ will be applied to explain and discuss how the furni sequence follows the paradigm of a “metasignifying system of discursive absorption whereby different signifying systems and materials are translated and often transformed into zeroes and ones for infinite recombinant signifiers” (2003: 7). The furni sequence remediates other cultural forms, namely, TV ads and the Ikea furniture catalogue to consciously render the image as flat; an effect, which has a close affinity to Baudrillard’s understanding of hyperreality and obscenity within the framework of postmodernism’s teleological discourses. The discernible hybridity of the space suggests that the encoding of the image entails a playful and meaningful element of irony that does intend to comment on the depthlessness of consumer culture. The technological makes possible a space where the boundaries between reality and hyperreality are simultaneously confused and well-defined. They are well-defined because CGI is not disguised, and neither does it claim to be ‘realist’. Thus it enables the viewer to understand which elements are CG and which are live action footage within the frame. However, one plausible meaning that the image itself generates is the effacement of reality, and therefore the main character’s body becomes a representative symbol of consumer culture. Overall, this study is an example of how a technological process can enhance the possibilities of representation in a cinematic text.

Reference: Everett, Anna. “Digitextuality and Click Theory: Theses on Convergence Media in the Digital Age” in Everett, Anna & Caldwell, John T. (eds), New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Kostas Konstandinides is a 2nd year PhD student and part-time seminar tutor in the Department of Film, Theatre and Television at the University of Reading, UK. His doctoral research on Post-film Adaptation is supervised by Professor Jonathan Bignell.

7 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

Panel 2: New Media Narrative Structures

Chair: Greg Singh B147

Beyond Storytelling; New Media, Narrative Structure, and the Role of Writers.

Maurice Suckling (Newcastle University)

New media such as reality television shows and computer games (especially massively multiplayer on-line games) are propelling new developments in narrative structure. Media such as novels and films are concerned with telling stories, and story- driven computer games form stories – shape them, whilst allowing limited or carefully controlled narrative interactivity. Narrative structure in story-forming has changed little from story-telling – it allows for some ‘branching’ and alternative and multiple endings, but essentially the player’s experience is controlled. But now we have story worlds in which the narrative structure is concerned with forming an environment for people to experience interactively, and this is changing the responsibilities of writers from being tellers to being world-builders, creating a new way of encompassing stories, where the originators of content attempt to create story-dwelling environments.

This paper will give a brief overview of historical developments in new media and the origins of the impact on narrative structure. I will be looking at computer games and reality TV in particular. I will be suggesting that new media is shifting the remits, requirements and theory underpinning the craft of writing.

Maurice is due to complete an MLitt in Creative Writing at Newcastle University in January 2006. He will then proceed with a PhD at the same university, looking at elements of narrative structure in prose fiction. Since his BA from Bristol University in 1992, in Religion with Literature, Maurice has worked as a copywriter, script writer and freelance games writer. He has worked on numerous internationally bestselling games such as the Driver series and his newly formed company, The Mustard Corporation, work as writers and games designers on a range of games platforms, including console, PC, PSP and mobile phones. Maurice’s first collection of short stories, Photocopies of Heaven, is due to be published by Elastic Press in November 2006.

8 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

“ The Song But Not The Singer”: Authorship in Fan Videos

Angelina Karpovich (University of Wales, Aberystwyth)

The prominence of fan videos, or “vids” for short, within fan culture is growing. From relatively humble beginnings, characterised by the use of imprecise domestic video editing facilities, vidding has emerged at the forefront of fandom’s espousal of both technological and textual convergence, enabled largely by the medium of the Internet.

Jenkins (2003) discusses the production of fan texts, in particular fan films, as an example of such convergence. However, fan films, although necessarily derivative and frequently parodic, are, in general, unambiguously authorial works. Like most types of fan productivity which take inspiration from a source text, they not only re- interpret but actually re-produce the text anew.

Fan vids, in contrast, disrupt the traditional understanding of the notion of authorship, by directly re-using the primary source material in a new context. In practical terms, vidding involves the conceptual re-interpretation and physical re-organisation of the primary source materials. Moreover, fan vids simultaneously appropriate several different source materials from different media, re-interpreting not only the visual (and narrative) flow of a film or television programme, but also the aural source material of a pop song, and thus frequently also providing an alternative to the familiar text of a pop video.

How is authorship negotiated in a genre which defines itself through the re- organisation of existing media texts? This paper will analyse the construction and aesthetics of fan vids in order to determine the complexity of the relationships between the source text, the vid producer, the technology, and the audience within the vidding culture.

Angelina Karpovich is a graduate of the advanced programme in Anthropology of Media at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She teaches Film Studies at the University of Westminster and London Metropolitan University and is completing a PhD on the social and technological development of online fandom at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

9 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

Panel 3: Virtuality and Projection Technologies in Theatre

Bob Kayley Studio Chair: Lib Taylor

Augmented Reality Stage: Virtual scenery and costumes in Marlowe: The Jew of Malta

Stefanie Kuhn (University of Exeter)

This paper analyses the aesthetic of reactive and interactive stage environments. Hereby I refer to virtual scenery and virtual costumes in André Werner´s Marlowe: The Jew of Malta, an opera commissioned for the Munich Biennale in 2002.

First, I discuss the technology applied to build up the virtual scenery, which integrates a VR simulation and special positioned screens. Here, I explain how the main character can control the scenery through motion tracking devices. I also refer to virtual costumes, light projections on blank costumes, that are enabled through a second motion tracking system. The two main questions that this paper addresses are: why is the VR technology utilised in the context of the meaning and aesthetic of the opera? What are the consequences of the use of Augmented Reality on stage?

In this context, I consider the significant effects on the presence of the performers, regarding their moving style, cruising radius and mutual synchronisation. I also locate the virtual scenery within the history of stage media and look into this through the lens of intermediality, by juxtaposing stage composition with the illusionistic organisation of the baroque stage and with a stage in cinemascope format.

Finally, I propose the concept of ´Augmented Reality Stage´ (and additionally also of ´Mixed Reality Stage´), by adapting Milgram’s term (1994). I denote ARS as an overlaying of the performed materiality with digitally processed image data that partially enhance the stage reality.

Diploma in Applied Theatre Studies (Giessen, Germany). Free-lance work as Assistant Dramatic Adviser and Director for several opera productions, among others at the theatres of Giessen and Luzern (Switzerland). Since October 2005 PhD researcher at the University of Exeter, associated with the AHRC-funded research project Performing Presence: From the Live to the Simulated. (http://www.projects.ex.ac.uk/performing-presence/)

10 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

The Theories of Adolphe Appia and the Use of Projection Technology in 21 st Century Scenic Design

Rebecca Hickie (Loughborough University)

Throughout the twentieth century ever increasing amounts of technology, most electrically driven, were brought to bear on the theatre making of practitioners from the experimental to mainstream commercial. Central to this developing technology was the ability to project both shaped and patterned light, through the use of lanterns and gobos, and complete photographic images, through the use of increasingly sophisticated projectors.

This use of light and image was predicted by the Swiss designer Adolphe Appia even before the technology allowed it, over 100 years ago, and the possibility of evoking both location and emotion through the use of colour and intensity of light guided his life’s work.

However, there are examples in the contemporary theatre of this modern projection technology being put to use to create not representative but illusionistic ‘real’ scenographic images; The Woman in White is a large-scale, commercial example of this phenomenon. But no matter how well the issues of perspective are addressed, and how detailed and authentic the images may seem, we cannot help but once again return to the issue which inspired Appia’s work - the fundamental disparity and incongruity of the three dimensional performer on a stage filled with two dimensional images.

This paper will address this disparity, and whether the use of projection in The Woman in White is simply a return to the aesthetic values of the nineteenth century theatre but achieved through considerably more sophisticated technological means, or whether there is an aesthetic value to be gained by a return to two dimensional scenery.

Rebecca Hickie is 27 years old, and has just begun her second year of PhD research at Loughborough University. Her PhD thesis is focused on the scenographic process versus the scenographic product, the place of scenography within collective theatre and its use as a methodology for performance making. Prior to studying at Loughborough she completed a Masters degree in Advanced Theatre Practice at the Central School of Speech and Drama, London, and a BA(Hons) in Theatre Studies from Trinity College, Carmarthen.

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SESSION 2: 1:30 – 3:00

Panel 4: Technology and Performance

Chair: John Gibbs BG78

The Uses and Effects of the Steadicam in Christine

Leah Panos (University of Reading)

British director Alan Clarke used the Steadicam extensively in his films of the 1980s and the meandering long take alongside a walking character is surely his ‘signature’ shot. My paper examines the use of this highly mobile camera in Clarke’s films and discusses its effects.

I consider the formal and aesthetic impact of the Steadicam in the context of the television single play and the smooth long shots’ relationship to both docu-realist and ‘cinematic’ shooting strategies, engendering the radical ambiguity of minimalist, naturalistic technique and overt stylistic flourish. I analyse the epistemological implications of the apparatus in Clarke’s work, how it captures performances, explores environments and positions the spectator. The spatio- temporal proximity of the camera on the socially excluded and often ‘deviant’ characters in motion is integral to their construction as both psychological and social entities and as active agents.

In addition, the Steadicam walking shots establish a distinctive rhythm and directional force within individual scenes and over the duration of the films which is fundamental to the ontologies of character and place, and the sensory impact of the shots carries ideological meaning. The kinetic drive of the walking Steadicam shot can also be read as a representation of the forward movement of narrative. I draw on Laura Mulvey’s recent work on movement and stillness in film to discuss the notion that the embodied movement matched by that of the Steadicam becomes ‘a metaphor for the metonymic forward drive of narrative itself.’ Thus, my paper highlights various formal, performative and narrative facets of the Steadicam as used in Clarke’s films and explores its role in his particular mode of social realism.

Leah Panos is a 2nd year PhD student at the University of Reading. Her doctorate is a critical study of the works of TV director Alan Clarke.

12 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

Keying Performance Through the Rhetoric of Photography and Advertising in Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides (2000)

Ceri Hovland (University of Reading)

Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, adapted from a book by Jeffrey Eugenides, depicts the events prior to the multiple suicides of five teenage girls. The events in the novel are completely aligned with the knowledge of a group of teenage boys who were obsessed with the girls both in life and in death. Through the adaptation from novel to book our surety of the alignment of the events depicted with the boys’ knowledge of those events is lost. Similarly our access to the girls is changed. Our impressions of them are no longer filtered through an authorial voice instead they are physically depicted, they are performed. So our understanding of the girls as the subject of the boys’ fantasies must be evoked differently. My assertion is that Coppola achieves this through borrowing the rhetoric of both still photography and advertising. This evokes issues regarding obsession, memory, loss and attraction which ‘key’ our understanding of the performances of the Lisbon girls, and play an integral role in helping construct their characters.

I would further suggest that the use of the differing rhetoric is partially segregated along gender divides. The rhetoric of photography suggests the attitude of the boys towards the girls: it shows their obsession. On the other hand, the rhetoric of advertising seems more designed to make us understand why the boys’ are obsessed and invite the spectator to share in their obsession; it shows the girls as the epitomes of feminine mystery. Obviously, this raises issues concerning the objectification of women, which are never unproblematic and the film itself is ambivalent.

Ceri Hovland is a first year PhD student at the University of Reading, researching approaches to the analysis of Hollywood performance. She is a graduate from the MA in Film Studies here at Reading, and before that she completed my first degree, in drama, at the University of Hull.

13 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

Série noire (Alain Corneau, 1977): Technology and Performance

Bridget Birchall (University of Exeter)

This paper looks at the relationship between technology and star performance in Série noire (Corneau, 1977). The film takes place in the impoverished urban periphery of Paris and follows the ill-fated trajectory of Frank Poupart (Patrick Dewaere). The delusional Poupart attempts to escape his miserable existence through an ill-conceived heist. As the plot inevitably begins to unravel, so too does Poupart’s sanity, and his escape becomes impossible. This paper looks at how Corneau and his team were forced to push the boundaries of technology in order to accommodate Dewaere’s frenetic performance of insanity and schizophrenia.

The paper outlines how Corneau’s team developed innovative approaches to sound and camera work. For Série noire, sound and camera equipment needed to be flexibile in order to record Dewaere’s explosive performance. For the first time in France actors wore radio microphones to afford them maximum mobility. Similarly, in order to capture the activity of Dewaere’s performance Corneau avoids stylized and contained camera shots. This freedom of movement was further aided by Corneau’s use of an ultra-lightweight Panaflex camera and a Panaglide, both of which allowed the team technical freedom and mobility.

Série noire is widely recognized as Patrick Dewaere’s most accomplished performance. This paper will argue that this level of excellence is in part achieved as a result of the technological innovations of Série noire’s production team. By embracing new cinema technologies, Dewaere and Série noire’s production team introduced new methods of filmmaking, and acting, to French cinema.

Bridget Birchall is a PhD student at the University of Exeter. Her thesis looks at the actor Patrick Dewaere and the configuration of masculinity during the presidency of Giscard D’Estaing (1974-1981). Her main research interests are star studies and gender in French cinema. She has published work on Isabelle Huppert and Catherine Deneuve.

14 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

Panel 5: Distribution Technologies

Chair: Dave Hipple B147

Korean Cinema and the Reliance on DVD Technology for an International Market.

Miriam Ross (University of Glasgow)

South Korea, with a population of just over 50 million people and only a small diasporic community, has a relatively limited market for cultural products in its native language. Nevertheless, Korean language films are rapidly gaining a substantial place in the international market. The recent surge has, in many ways, been facilitated by DVD technology that allows multi-language subtitling for distribution worldwide. The extent to which the international market then affects films going into production cannot be denied when pre-sales of a film to countries such as Japan can secure the necessary costs for production. Furthermore, television programmes, particularly soap operas, that would not normally receive international screenings can be both subtitled into different languages and distributed at low cost so that a broader range of Korean cultural product can be seen abroad. Conversely, distribution companies are reluctant to re-print and subtitle older South Korean films due to costs involved and uncertainty about market demand with the effect that the body of South Korean films currently available is only from recent years. This paper will explore these issues and the extent to which DVD technology affects the production of contemporary films and their reception in world-wide markets.

Miriam Ross is currently an M.Litt student in the Film and Television Studies Department at the University of Glasgow. Her proposed dissertation topic is ‘The effect of distribution practices on the content and reception of South Korean film.” She completed her undergraduate degree in Drama and English at Trinity College, Dublin, 1998-2002.

15 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

From Piracy to Hacking: Playing with Code in the Context of Film Digital Rights Management

Daniel Ashton (Lancaster University)

The coming together of traditional media industries and computer-based technology industries (AOL and Time-Warner in 2000 and Microsoft and Sky in 2006) illustrate processes of integration and the intertwining of content and distribution interests. In concert with efforts to open new avenues of content distribution there have been corresponding attempts to ensure copyright controls of content through ‘Digital Rights Management’ (DRM). The enforcing of limitations through DRM technologies has, as Lessig describes (2004), far reaching implications for the possibilities for content manipulation such as ‘Phantom Edits’ and Video-jockeying. This paper will suggest how hacking activities can serve to re-open possibilities for manipulating content through manipulating technologies of distribution

Drawing on Sassen and Latham’s concept of Digital Formations (2005) this paper will point to some of wider implications of the merging of different media cultures. Further to debates concerning the consumer/user as author and digital piracy, I will specifically discuss the ‘hacker ethic’ (Levy 1984) and responses to DRM. Technical Protection Methods (TPMs), such as Content Scrambling Systems (CCS) encryption used for DVDs, used by the film majors to regulate use of their copyright protected materials will be introduced as examples of traditional media’s turn to emerging technologies to protect established rights. Significantly TPMs used by film majors have come under ‘attack’ as the hacker ethic of playing with and dismantling code is applied in the context of DRM and attempts to regulate distribution. Distinct from previous economically orientated acts of piracy and efforts to ‘free’ content from copyright controls, this paper will suggest the hacker response to DRMs are as much about the technical challenge. In this sense film distribution channels exist, as well as film content, as the focus for creative engagements.

Daniel Ashton is a Cultural Studies PhD student in the Institute for Cultural Research, Lancaster University (UK) working on emerging media technologies and values in design.

16 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

From Terry Waite to Kenneth Bigley: How Terrorists Use New Media to Promote Their Cause.

Nathan Roger (University of Wales, Swansea)

I propose to study two instances where British nationals have been kidnapped.

The case of Terry Waite’s kidnapping and the subsequent serialization of his story over almost five years will be explored. In Joanna Bourke’s book ‘Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War’ she writes about the case of the ‘Unknown Soldier’ as an everyman, and focus for all those lost to the Great War. I will link this notion of the everyman to Terry Waite because his opinion continues to resonate and he gives a sense of hope to the families of hostages.

Kenneth Bigley was taken hostage and imprisoned for approximately three weeks before being brutally killed. In this age of new media, we have witnessed the proliferation of communication technologies and the birth of real-time information. Terrorist’s now have a greater awareness of Western media conventions and therefore use these hostage images more expertly to advance their message. There now is a saturation within the media of horrific images and as Susan D. Moeller espouses in her book ‘Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell, Disease, Famine, War and Death’ – Western news corporations are now less able to captivate their audience’s attention over-time. Therefore, in the case of Kenneth Bigley, new updated images were released to the media on numerous occasions, thus feeding the audience’s interest in the story. Finally, these attention-grabbing images, I will argue, clearly appear to have been produced specifically for the eyes of the global audience.

Nathan Roger is currently doing an MPhil in the Politics and International Relations Department at the University of Wales, Swansea researching the al- Jazeera Arabic media phenomenon. He also has supervision in Swansea University’s Media and Communication Department. He has a published article in the 2004(2) edition of the Aberystwyth Journal of World Affairs entitled: ‘Abuse & Death in the Media! The Exploitation of Prisoners of War as a Focus of “Public Curiosity.”’ He is currently a Research Associate on a project entitled: ‘Shifting Securities: National and Transnational News Cultures Before and Beyond the Iraq War 2003’, which is funded as part of the ESRC ‘New Security Challenges’ programme. He has an MSc(Econ) in Strategic Studies and a BSc(Econ) in International Politics and Intelligence Studies, both from the Department of International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

17 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

Panel 6: New Media and Performance Practices

Chair: Kostas Konstantinidis Bob Kayley

Cybertheatres : What are They?

Maria Chatzichristodoulou (Goldsmiths College, University of London)

I use the 'found' term Cybertheater to describe networked performance practices that take place on the WWW, using the Internet both as a distribution medium and as a place for the development of dramatic (re /inter) action and co-creation between their diverse agents. Cybertheaters are networked performances that take place within the space/time of the Internet, making use of 'cyberspace' as a stage; they can combine cyberstages with physical ones, merging 'real' and virtual space. The aim of the paper will be to articulate this new genre, whose ontology places it as a hybrid between different genres and technologies such as: theatre /performance art, cinema, and Internet technologies (including AV streaming, chat environments, VR, AL, AI). The spatio-temporal qualities of Cyberspace act as a catalyst for this process of hybridisation, radically challenging traditional concepts and structures of temporal and spatial parameters and relations in live and mediated performance: Cybertheater allows for performances that enable the fusion of mediated / unmediated, live / pre- recorded, proximal / distant, synchronous / asynchronous, physical / digital, natural / artificial elements of practice.

Maria Chatzichristodoulou (aka maria x) was born in Cyprus in 1974, and was brought up in Athens, Greece. She currently is a PhD researcher in Arts and Computational Technologies at Goldsmiths College, Univ. of London (Digital Studios & Drama Dpt.). She has studied theatre (BA Hons, School of Theatre Studies, Univ. of Patras, Greece) and has worked as a performer, producer, curator, programmer and events organiser for numerous cross-disciplinary cultural events and activities.

18 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

Performing Prometheus: The Dramatic Interpreter: A Performance Art / Digital Art Project

Christos Prossylis (Middlesex University, London)

The project forms part my long-standing and ongoing preoccupation with innovative ways of expression through art. I have for years stretched the boundaries of performance and digital art and film/stage directing and I am now venturing into a new field of research, exploring existing systems of knowledge transfer and communication.

Academic lecturing is one such system. A lecturer lives and works within an established social system of codes and signs, which is, however, constantly personalised by him or her. Lecturers send their messages across both from within a system and as individuals. They are, in a sense, performers who act according to directing, but also make their own particular interpretations. This complex semiotic system is taken up as an example by myself, who uses a number of ‘catalysts’ –other established systems, in this case ancient drama and myth- to initially unpack and highlight the particulars of the semiotics of academic lecturing. I then eventually re-synthesize everything into a new whole that is a combination of the above in the form of artistic creation.

My experimentation is facilitated and enriched by the use of new technologies, which enable me to both improvise and create a unique aesthetic experience, while exploring the elements of a new ‘system’ in the making. The title of the project reflects its main parameters, namely the contribution of the academic lecturer to knowledge and a furthering of thought as a parallel to the mythical hero’s Prometheus’s contribution to the enlightenment and empowerment of the human kind.

With this experiment I am looking to define a new expressive means for myself as a director, which I will elaborate through a series of similar performances, with the participation of different lecturers exploring different themes. At the same time, I am offering a wide audience an opportunity to question established systems and participate in the creation of new ones, which reflect contemporary thought and behaviour.

More about the project: www.performingprometheus.com

More about Christos Prossylis: www.prossylis.com

19 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

E-motion Capture and Spirituality in a technological age

Mostafa Yarmahmoudi (Brunel University, London)

This paper argues in the field of contemporary multimedia in Western Countries. (United States, Australia and UK). It focuses on spirituality and the use of technology and computer generated imagery in performance development.At the turn of this new century, many interests in related fields (film, digital arts, science and technology, design, engineering, communications, etc) further our understanding of the complementary thinking processes that drive new interdisciplinary research and conceptual models influenced by the computer’s information processing capabilities and the internet’s global reach. This movement has grown from a small, but up-and-coming group of choreographers, performers, and media artists who experimented with computer-assisted work linking performance and new technologies. This has now developed into a growing network of collaborative projects spurning internet discussions both enthusiastic and contentious.

These are examples: Merce Cunningham (U.S.A) has utilized the computer for the invention and visualization of new movement possibilities. Virtual performance installation is derived from optical motion capture, computer hardware and software process that generates digital 3-D representation of recorded moving bodies. This is one example of motion capture. I will argue, in the field of spirituality. Similarly, Stelarc in Australia and Drs. Broadhurst and Bowden in the UK are doing this type of work using different techniques. In a different but related field Andrew Newberg, a psychologist in USA, is researching into the effects of meditation on our brain.My paper embarks on a journey that passes through Technology, Spirituality and Performing Arts creating a synthesis towards realising E-motion Capture.

Ph.D. School of Arts, Performing Arts, Brunel University. London, 2005 M.A in Theatre acting & directing B.A in Cinema directing Institutionalising the Underground: The Avant-garde Film Exhibition Film as Film, 1977/1979

20 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

SESSION 3: 3:30 – 5:00

Panel 7: Visual Narratives and Endings in Sci-fi Texts

Chair: Mike Stevenson B147

Creating the Universe: Science Fiction in the Film Industry

Dave Hipple (University of Reading)

Criticism of visual science fiction (sf) frequently assumes that sf’s main task and preoccupation is the presentation of the marvellous, mistakenly identifying sf with the use or abuse of special effects as a specifically generic feature. Material deemed inept on all other levels is regularly endorsed, nonetheless, for being visually stunning.

This paper initially suggests that such self-perpetuating misconception of the genre accentuates a tension between practices of creating and appreciating sf texts in both written and visual forms. Visual sf is certainly widely perceived, and cherished, as being defined by a conspicuous deployment of effects technologies such as to seem an end in itself. Criticism based in written sf (and in non-genre film and television) often dismisses the visual form wholesale, for precisely the same reason.

Principally, I examine the extent to which the development of effects technologies is, nevertheless, bound up with the ambitions of sf film and television (one significant reason for rejecting a recent critical claim that no significant dialogue exists between sf and other filmmaking). Visual sf texts have always progressively developed specialised methods to realise impossible mises-en- scene; and since the 1970s sf film has, for good or ill, spearheaded a drive towards ‘photorealism’. This process has influenced the economics and politics of the film and television industries overall. It has also driven the evolution of techniques that no longer, in themselves, determine whether or not a particular product ‘looks like sf’. Popular association of sf with special effects has, historically, devalued both.

Dave Hipple is a postgraduate student at the University of Reading, pursuing research in science fiction on television. Topics of conference papers include the movie adaptation of the novel Starship Troopers, the TV series Firefly and the relative contributions of visuals and sound to various versions of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He has contributed a chapter to a book on the TV series Stargate SG-1, and is preparing chapters for books on Star Trek and British Telefantasy.

21 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

Film Trilogies, Narrative Closure and the Politics of Remediation

Greg Singh (University of Reading)

There is a tendency in Hollywood cinema to use narrative structure itself to highlight narrative closure as a goal in its storytelling trajectories. That is, the primary thing they sell is endings. This feeds into ideological and protocological containment strategies, that attempt to engage the audience at the level of ‘preferred’ meaning at the cost of negotiated meaning. These containment strategies are reinforced through sequelisation and remediation of filmic texts, which work in conjunction with the original cinematic releases to ‘close off’ meaning through a series of predetermined revelations.

This paper will argue that systems of containment work at both the level of narrative and media conflation, and as a case study, considers the notion of ‘The One’ in the Matrix franchise as a whole and the Matrix: Path of Neo game in particular, to highlight the central tension of control and freewill in the narrative. Neo’s appearance as the main (Player-) character in both the film series and Path of Neo is problematic, due to the paradox of freedom and control embodied in a single entity, and the effect of this on the overall experience of the Matrix story world is twofold.

Firstly, it establishes identification practices more akin to gamic- rather than filmic- identification, thus remediating the phenomenological experience of the Matrix film trilogy. Secondly, it undermines the ‘addition effect’ of texts such as Enter the Matrix, and Animatrix, which used the ancillary media of the video game and the anime short, to augment the filmic narrative specifically at both ludological and narratological levels. In the case of Path of Neo, the film text is merely adapted to video game, thus only adding to the experience of the story world through the novelty of kinaesthetic engagement.

Greg Singh is Lecturer in Media Studies, in the Department of Arts and Media, Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College. He has published articles on GTA: San Andreas, as well as forthcoming articles on CGI and Japanese SF cinema in 2006. He is a PhD candidate at the Department of Film, Theatre and Television, University of Reading, with a thesis titled ‘Spectatorship, Narrative Closure, and the Remediation of Recent Cinematic Trilogies’.

22 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

Panel 8: Anthropological Perspectives and Reconfigurations

Chair: Leah Panos Bob Kayley

Representing non-linear knowledge: planning the research of performance- based events by means of hypermedia

Giacomo De Caterini (University College London)

While in the story of Anthropology the subject of the performance-based event analysis has been extensively covered from a multitude of directions, very few scholars, to my knowledge, have ventured past a theoretical evaluation of the potential of hypermedia for such kind of anthropological research so far: I see it as an innovative medium not only towards the analysis, but also the representation of a complex, multi-layered performative event, given its ability to track the non-linearities peculiar to ritual activities. Other than how to deal with the representation of a complex performance as a whole – by dissecting and recomposing it using the electronic medium – the main questions such an approach should try to answer would be: how to deal with the difficulties of organizing and reporting the audience’s dynamic reactions to the performance as a whole; how to deal with issues of time (intended as a fundamental vector of the performance); how to account for improvisatorial aspects (usually very difficult to represent); how to map the connections (implicit and explicit) between different aspects of the performance: not only the single stages following one another, but also what is happening at a communicative level between performer and audience during each of these stages. Also, the use of such an intrinsically open-ended tool gives way to a transformation of the role of the viewer, who finds him/herself now much freer to ‘fill the gaps’, and interpret the (represented) whole in his/her own personal way. My contribution to the Workshop therefore would be to highlight peculiar aspects of (and stimulate discussion on) alternative methodologies of representation toward both the stages of research planning and, mainly, actual performance tracking and representation.

Giacomo De Caterini is a PhD student at University College London (Anthropology dept.). He has a degree in Ethnomusicology, has done some fieldwork in Morocco, published internationally a cd-rom on Moroccan music and dance, founded and run for five years a small multimedia production company. Also, he has a 15 years professional experience in music production (I still work as a free-lancestudio sound engineer).

23 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

80 Hours, 40 Minutes and 800 Clips: Distilling Raw Footage into Linear and Interactive Documentary

Mousumi De (Coventry University)

Whilst we are familiar with linear documentaries, non-linear and interactive documentaries provide novel modes of viewer experience by presenting visual material with multiple screen interfaces and multi-modal interactivity, providing the viewer control over time and sequence of presentation. And for the author, the tasks of content gathering for an extensible content base, programmatically sequencing material and presentation of visual material take on new dimensions.

Hence how do the production methodologies of shooting and editing processes get influenced whilst creating an interactive documentary in relation to a conventional linear documentary?

‘An Eye for an Eye?’ is a project initiative, which seeks to provide a platform for an unbiased and multi-dimensional composition of people's perceptions of global violence and non-violence; shot over a period of 7 months in 4 countries with interviews of over 70 people, the project concludes in the form of a 40-minute linear film and 800 clips put together into an interactive film.

This paper presents a description of the shooting methodology employed in this project and the editing process involved in converting eighty hours of footage into a linear and non-linear film. This paper thus seeks to provide an insight into the differences in the production of linear and interactive documentaries.

MA, Design and Digital Media; currently pursuing practice based research with the Coventry School of Art and Design, Coventry University; investigating the use of Interactive documentary as an educative tool in peace-building, with special reference to the Kashmir conflict.

24 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

Panel 9: Transitions in Film and Drawing

Chair: Alastair Phillips BG78

Shunga and Ivan the Terrible : Eisenstein’s art in exile

Yuna De Lannoy (Birkbeck College, London)

This paper discusses the interrelationship between film and drawing, and explores the cultural link between Japan, Russia and the West. My paper will be based on a chapter from my thesis on Eisenstein and Kurosawa. It focuses especially on Eisenstein, who continued to draw throughout his life except for a few years’ gap in the 1920s. Drawing was his childhood hobby, a tool to ponder on his ideas for theatre productions and, later, was used as storyboards for his films. After a six years’ gap, Eisenstein began to draw again while he was staying in Mexico for making the ill-fated film Que Viva Mexico! What Eisenstein drew, however, was detested by his producers who were ‘horrified’ by what they saw: his drawings were regarded as pornography, being full of violence, sadism, masochism, homosexuality and perversion. I will approach Eisenstein’s drawings as his personal shunga, terminology for a genre of Japanese erotic woodblock prints, which were, like Eisenstein’s drawings, both socially subversive and secretive. Eisenstein’s interest in Japanese art, including ukiyoe and kabuki theatre, has often been mentioned. Nevertheless, the relationship between his drawings and shunga has yet to be researched. I will make a parallel between shunga and some of Eisenstein’s drawings. I will then focus on his drawings from October 1943, which were produced while he was shooting Ivan the Terrible, and analyse how his drawings function as a ‘third text’ of Ivan, representing his unofficial thoughts which haunted his mind when working on his official state assignment.

Yuna De Lannoy is a Japanese student at Birkbeck, University of London. Since January 2003 she has been working on her PhD thesis in which she compares the way Eisenstein and Kurosawa exploit Japanese and Russian cultures in their films.

25 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

Maxa Zoller (Birkbeck College, London)

My paper will raise the question of the relationship between the museum and new media art. The focus of this paper will be the first historical avant-garde film survey exhibition Film as Film which was first presented in Cologne in 1977 and came to the London Hayward Gallery in 1979. Film as Film is key in the process of institutionalisation of experimental film. It introduced a highly original presentation method: the reproduced enlarged film frame which could be attached to the wall like a photograph. This ‘virtual’ presentation of the films was combined with the display of practical devices, for instance props, Duchamp’s camera and most importantly artists’ drawings. While Film als Film made underground film accessible to a wider audience it also deprived the audience of the original experience of the work limiting it to ‘still’ reproductions. The reduction of the medium to its documentation denied the visitor a ‘proper’ experience of the work. The film had to be ‘imagined’.

The formal chronological approach to avant-garde film history replaced disorder with order effacing any disruptive counter-developments in order to support the pedagogic intentions of the museum. The museum’s function was to ‘show and tell’ to the visitor the (constructed) epistemological system of knowledge. Referring to Benjamin I will discuss his theory of the ‘de-fetishisation’ of the artwork through its technical reproducibility. This forwards the more general question of whether the museum re-inscribes new media art into the discourse of fetishism and commodity.

This paper will be accompanied with highly original archival material. This will be the first time the visual documentation will be presented to a public audience.

Maxa Zoller is currently working on her Ph.D. entitled Between Cinema and Museum. The Contextual Displacement of Avant-garde Film Projection at Birkbeck College London. She hopes to finish her Ph.D. by the end of 2006.

Maxa Zoller has worked as a critic since 2001. She has worked in the educational department of Documenta11 in 2002 and recently curated a structural film programme entitled Open Systems: Film at Tate Modern. In 2005 she presented a paper on Expanded Cinema at the CAA conference in Atlanta.

26 Journeys Across Media- April 2006

Attending Delegates (University of Reading)

John Bull John Gibbs Eirini Nedelkopoulou Alastair Phillips Lisa Purse Sara Steinke Mike Stevenson Lib Taylor

Kostas and Leah would like to thank all those who assisted in making JAM 2006 possible.

Many individuals did a lot of work behind the scenes to help make the day work. Pam Wiggins looked after the catering. Chris Bacon provided sterling technical support. Rosemary Allen lent invaluable support with the administration and organization. Simone Knox maintained the conference information on the department’s website. Victoria Chalard designed the JAM logo.

For their work on the day we would like to thank Lisa Purse, John Gibbs, Mike Stevenson, Greg Singh, Lib Taylor and Alastair Phillips.

For all the experience, support and suggestions that they made available to us this year we are greatly indebted to Ivana Brozić and Dave Hipple, the organizers of JAM 2005.

Finally we are grateful for the support provided by the Department of Film, Theatre and Television, the Graduate School in Arts and Humanities and SCUDD.