Movie / Cinema: Rearrangements of the Apparatus in Contemporary Movie Circulation
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GOLDSMITHS Research Online Thesis (PhD) Gonring, Gabriel Menotti M.P Movie / Cinema: Rearrangements of the Apparatus in Contemporary Movie Circulation You may cite this version as: Gonring, Gabriel Menotti M.P. 2011. Movie / Cinema: Rearrangements of the Apparatus in Contemporary Movie Circulation. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London. [Thesis]: Goldsmiths Research Online. Available at: http://eprints.gold.ac.uk/6604/ COPYRIGHT This is a thesis accepted for a Higher Degree of the University of London. It is an unpublished document and the copyright is held by the author. All persons consulting this thesis must read and abide by the Copyright Declaration below. COPYRIGHT DECLARATION I recognise that the copyright and other relevant Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) of the above- described thesis rests with the author and/or other IPR holders and that no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. 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This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. http://eprints-gro.goldsmiths.ac.uk Contact Goldsmiths Research Online at: [email protected] Movie/ Cinema: Rearrangements of the Apparatus in Contemporary Movie Circulation Gabriel Menotti Miglio Pinto Gonring Department of Media and Communications Goldsmiths College, University of London Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) 2011 1 I hereby declare that the work presented in this thesis is mine own. 2 Abstract This thesis investigates how cinema’s specificities are defined in relation to technological developments. I propose that the most appropriate way to do this is by taking the whole cinematographic circuit into account – that is, the complete set of socio-technical operations that are involved in the medium, as remote as they might seem to be from actual cinematographic practices. I depart from the definition of circulation as a socio-technical continuum of the production, distribution, exhibition and evaluation of movies, explaining how these activities might be enacted in three different technological regimes: film, video and digital computation. Then, following an account of the early history of the pirate film society Cine Falcatrua (2003-2005), I show how the specificity of the medium is constituted and preserved throughout its technical progress. Acknowledging the limits of traditional film and screen studies to deal with these questions, I attempt to find an alternative research approach by engaging in practice-based investigation using curatorial strategies. By bringing together and analysing different film and art pieces in an exhibition entitled Denied Distances (2009), I propose a framework that allows an understanding of how media technology are defined in relation to one another, exposing how seemingly expanded practices such as installations and performances might be contained within conventional cinematographic apparatus. I conclude by suggesting that, in order to keep up with the ever-changing nature of the medium, the study of cinema would profit from engaging the extremes of scientific criticism and art practice. 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 8 Preface: A History of Cinemas 9 Introduction 14 PART I: PROLEGOMENA FOR THE STUDY OF THE CINEMATOGRAPHIC CIRCUIT 19 Prologue: For an institutional characterization of media technology 20 Chapter 1: What is a movie? 24 Introduction 24 1. Blind Optics 25 2. Cinema as an open circuit 29 3. The movie as a closed form 33 3.1. Manufacturing wholeness (in the Russian avant-garde and After Effects) 37 3.2. Temporal continuity and film montage 38 3.3. Spatial integrity and digital compositing 41 3.4. The continuity and integrity of circulation 45 4. A genealogy of the apparatus 46 4.1. Origins: situated experience and the propagation of ideology 46 4.2. Reflexive construction of norms and behaviour 48 4.3. Functionaries and programmers 51 5. The image: abstraction of the world/ interruption of the mechanism 55 5.1. Techniques of abstraction 56 5.2. The historical dimension of technique 57 5.3. The technical materiality of the image 60 Conclusion 63 Chapter 2: Movie circulation in the established cinematographic apparatus 65 Introduction 65 1. Photographic Film 67 1.1. Technical reproducibility and the final cut 67 1.2. The commoditisation of experience (in the example of the novel) 68 1.3. Circulation in a regime of mechanical reproduction (the case of the film) 70 1.4. The model image and the conditions for film history 73 2. Electromagnetic video 75 2.1. Electronic transmission and the intensification of movie circulation 75 2.2. The crystallization of differences: release windows and the edit-for-TV 80 2.3. The normalization of medial practices: home video and prerecorded tapes 83 2.4. The Movie and the conditions for medial hierarchy 86 3. Digital computation 89 3.1. The illusion of immateriality and “superfluous” means 89 3.2. Making-ofs 91 3.3. The Director’s Cut 92 Conclusion 94 Chapter 3: Executable images 96 Introduction 96 1. Principles of computation 97 1.1. Early computers and software abstractions 97 4 1.2. The visual performance of the system and user interaction 100 1.3. The image in the computer: possibilities of the model image 105 1.4. The movie through networks: the peer-to-peer multiplication of forms 106 1.5. Code and the conditions of property 112 1.5.1. Data standards and protocol 114 1.5.2. Copyrights and licensing 116 2. Circulation across different technologies 123 2.1. A concatenation of projections 123 2.2. The surface: abstraction of the circuit/ interruption of reality 127 Conclusion 130 Chapter 4: Fixing apparatus, congealing practices 132 Introduction 132 1. Cine Falcatrua: rearranging traditional apparatus with inappropriate technology 133 2. The specificities of the medium as standards for circulation 143 2.1. Materiality: physical characteristics and signifying strategies 145 2.2. Automatisms: human-machine operations 150 2.3. Epistemological paradigms: conventions of understanding and imagination 158 2.3.1. On becoming traditional 158 2.3.2. Tradition as a source of imagination 160 2.3.3. Arrangements for implementing dissidence 163 2.3.4. Tradition as the source of authority 167 3. Impedance: medium specification and the resistance of the circuit 172 Conclusion 175 Chapter 5: The cinematographic circuit as a technical ensemble 177 Introduction 177 1. The history of cinema and its technical becoming 179 1.1. The normalization of technology according to the genesis of the medium 180 1.2. The invisible side of cinema and the primacy of multimedia 184 1.3. How cinema is constituted in history 190 2. Apparatus and Dispositifs 196 Conclusion 201 PART II: REARRANGING THE FIELD 203 Prologue: Projection studies 204 Introduction 204 1. Research as a practice embedded in the medium’s conventions 205 2. Disassembling dispositifs 209 2.1. Opening up the black boxes 213 2.2. Provoking anomalies 214 3. Reassembling the field 216 Conclusion 217 Chapter 6: Dispositifs in and within the Denied Distances exhibition 219 Introduction 219 1. Denied Distances, Critical Dispositifs 220 1.1. The high-impedance circumstances of Mostravídeo 220 1.2. The exhibition as a research method 222 1.3. About the topic of Denied Distances 225 2. First programme: The Thickness of the Screen 227 2.1. WVLNT – Getting into the flatness of photography 228 2.2. A Man. A Road. A River. – Escaping from the videographic grid 234 5 2.3. Flatland – Cutting across digital codification 236 2.4. I’ve Got a Guy Running – Direct control over the scene 238 2.5. The Girl Chewing Gum – Remote authority over the footage 240 2.6. Three Transitions – The absent artist within the surface 243 2.7. Paper Landscape – The present body through the dispositif 246 3. Second programme: From the Depth of Projection to the Extensions of the City 250 3.1. 4’22” – Compressing the space of projection in the screen 252 3.2. Horror Film I – Projected light from theatre to shadowplay 254 3.3. You and I, Horizontal (III) – The exploration of the space of projection 256 3.4. Augmented Sculptures & Urban Installations – The further crystallization of the space around projection 260 3.5. GRL: The Complete First Season – Dispositves as a negotiation of privacies 263 3.6. Relational Architecture – Rearranging apparatus in urban space 268 4. Third programme: The Density of the Circuit 274 4.1. Pirated Copy – A fictional ethnography of the pirate audience 275 4.2. Steal This Film – The experience of film distribution 277 Conclusion 280 Conclusion 286 Bibliography 291 Appendix: List of Websites and Online Works 305 6 List of Tables Table 3. 1: Movie circulation within different technological regimes ………… 119 List of Figures Figure 1. 1: still frame from a knife all blade (2008) ……………………………... 25 Figure 4. 1: The semi-nomadic condition of Cine Falcatrua: the public and the projection device come together in the same space.