De/Mystifying Smartphone-Video through Vilém Flusser’s Quanta Jamie Jenkinson 64,028 words 1 Contents Abstract 3 Introduction 4 Methodology 21 In Practice: Structure (iPhone 4, 2011) 24 Film and Video Structural/Materialist Film 28 Technical Supports 35 “Moving Image” 38 The Instability of Digital Video 48 Unstable Methods in Structural Practice 54 Digital Duration 59 The ‘Coming into Presence’ of Film and Video 64 In Practice: Desert Rose (iPhone 6, 2016) and Elm (iPhone 6, 2016) 73 Smartphone-Video User-Video 2005-2010: Production and Distribution 81 User-Video 2010-2020: Video Hierarchy and the Poor Image 89 Smart Cameras and AI Aesthetics 97 Early Awareness of Video Automation 103 User Integration of 20th Century Avant-Garde Techniques 109 High Profile Usership 117 A Brief Survey of Distributed Camera Phone Video Practice 126 User Anonymity 129 In Practice: Symi (iPhone 7 Plus, 28/09/17-03/10/17) 135 Quanta Thinking in Quanta 145 Quantum Dialogues and Intersubjective user(s) 155 Thinking Machines, Soft Thought, and the ‘Something-New’ 162 Smartphone-Video as a Non-Polarised Quantum Dialogue 168 The Act of Recording 174 In-Camera Smartphone-Video 179 The Ritual Gestures in Smartphone-Video 181 Improvisation in Smartphone-Video 189 The Gesture of De/Mystification 195 In Practice: T-rex, Stone Circling, It’s Gonna be a Beast (iPhone 7 Plus, 13-15/08/19) 204 Conclusion 214 In Practice: Online Archive selection 219 Bibliography 220 Works 239 2 Abstract Videos made on smartphones are recognised in popular culture in a manner that is not reciprocated in media theory and fine art practice. The difference between smartphone-video and other film and video technology has been obscured within post-medium contexts such as “moving image,” where an ideological indifference creates new physical and psychological barriers between video ‘user’ and moving image ‘artist.’ This thesis considers smartphone-video as a significantly different gesture to other moving image technologies, which I raise through media theorist Vilém Flusser’s interpretation of “quanta,” and his interest in ‘the gesture of video’ as a “quantised phenomenon.” I approach these ideas through my own smartphone-videos, which are initially influenced by principles of Peter Gidal’s structural/materialist filmmaking. By readdressing Gidal’s methods of non-illusionist demystification, smartphone-video can be considered a very different gesture to filmmaking. Film becomes stable, causal, and Newtonian; while video becomes unstable, probable, and quantum. Developments in digital imaging and computer processors highlight such quantum mechanics, which although complex, function in ways classical physics cannot explain. This thesis proposes how Flusser’s concept of quanta can account for the unstable qualities found in smartphone-video’s manner of operation when de/mystified through principles of Gidal’s structural/ materialist filmmaking. Such observations consider video's quantum instability through AI driven automation and user-friendly features that enable “quantum dialogues” between user and machine as decision-makers. Observing smartphone-videos as non-polarised quantum dialogues through improvisation in the act of recording, expresses Flusser’s theory of gestures, and elucidates his proto-decolonial efforts against “universal phenomena.” The gesture of smartphone-video encompasses much more than I had imagined, and subsequently — with the aid of Karen Barad — considerations are made to a de/mystification of video’s gesture, operating through proximity in an intra-subjective network of user(s). 3 Introduction We need to think in video. (Flusser, 2014a: 25) Video is understood in popular culture as a mode, tool, or function of many camera-integrated devices, and yet recognising this video remains an inconclusive subject of media theory. Within this field, video can be: ‘analogue’ though not digital (Spielmann, 2008: 72); ‘the digital’ as part of a broader ‘new media’ (Manovich, 2001: 68); ‘hybridised’ as indeterminate through relations to other predetermined media (Rodowick, 2007: 36); and/or ‘moving image’ as mediumless and/or ‘film’ under the post-medium condition (Kim, 2016: 71). It is outside this academic discourse where ‘video’ functions in practice as a social tool through its integration into various devices such as televisions, laptops, doorbells and dashboards etc., though most notably in the smartphone. The term video is commonplace within these tools, as ‘video mode,’ ‘video upload,’ ‘video call’ etc. Yet despite the proliferation of video devices and their widespread use, this video lacks a critical framework to acknowledge and understand videos made by users of such devices. This thesis represents an attempt to consider “smartphone-video” as a relevant topic of media theory, expanded upon through my ongoing smartphone-video experiments accompanying this thesis. In approaching 4 my understanding of smartphone-video, I adopt principles of Peter Gidal’s structural/materialist filmmaking as a means of demystifying video; and the concept of ‘quanta’ as interpreted by media theorist Vilém Flusser, and consider this as a process of de/mystification toward the end of the thesis. Structural/materialist filmmaking is commonly associated with Gidal and affiliated filmmakers at the London Filmmakers Cooperative (LFMC) from 1966. I have adopted principles from structural/ materialist practice (expanded upon below) as a means of ‘demystifying’ smartphone-video’s ‘coming into presence’ while upholding a ‘one to one relationship between viewer and viewed’ in a context relevant to the smartphone-user (Gidal, 2016: 37, 39; 1990: 1, 7). In filmmaking, these principles led to a non-illusionist clarification of film through a dialectical relationship between the physical material base of film’s celluloid strip and the image represented on the screen. Resulting ideas of ‘film as film,’ as a supposed medium specific investigation, have been interpreted as a definitive understanding of film as a ‘medium’ (20). I expand upon various problems with this understanding below, but it is this idea of a comparative ‘video as video’ that initially inspired my video practice through a naive investigation into what video might offer if these same principles were applied. There are various coexisting understandings of video in media theory. Some maintain that video can only exist as ‘analogue,’ as media theorist Yvonne Spielmann proposes in Video: The Reflexive Medium (2005). She writes, if ‘video merges into the matrix of computer media, another stage of the development of the media appears, which no longer belongs to the realm of video’ (72). Computer, or ‘digital video’ becomes part of a wider field of ‘digital media,’ which for some, such as Mary Ann Doane, is questioned as an ‘oxymoron’ (Doane, 2007: 143); while others, such as Lev Manovich, have claimed, ‘There is no such thing as “digital media”’ (Malevich, 2013: 152). Within 5 this complex and undulating field, it becomes difficult to identify the thing we make when in video mode on our smartphones, that are filed in video folders, and conform to video upload specifications. These issues run parallel to the prevailing post medium condition, where defining media on their own terms is undesirable. The post medium condition opposes the modernist position of medium specificity commonly associated with critic and essayist Clement Greenberg in the mid 20th century. Greenberg’s essentialist fetishisation of a medium’s essential form came to be dismissed by artists and critics for its rigid and elitist framework, ushering in the ‘post medium condition’ as notably proposed in critic and essayist Rosalind Krauss’ ‘“A Voyage on the North Sea”: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition’ (1999). More recently, in essays ‘The Guarantee of the Medium’ (2009) and book Under Blue Cup (2011), Krauss promotes a move towards ideas against the post medium condition under the term “technical support.” In the opening chapter of this thesis I challenge some of Krauss’ position, but the potential for a middle-ground between modernist essentialism and post-medium indifference becomes a useful means of positioning an understanding of smartphone-video outside of these polarising approaches. In media theory, video and the digital are discussed in terms of an ‘unstable’ quality (Spielmann, 2006: 58; Malevich, 2001: 84). This flexible/dynamic/variable/manipulatable quality has led some to questions the potential of establishing a definitive understanding of digital video (Kim, 2016: 96), which seems to ‘exude a fantasy of immateriality’ (Doane 2007: 143). It may then appear counterproductive to apply ‘materialist’ principles — those used to demystify the physical support of film’s celluloid — to video. This research takes a step back from this position by considering celluloid as the result of, rather than the reasoning for, a non-illusionist materialism. Video can be considered as a similarly illusionistic technical support in terms of representation. The importance is 6 not the physical materiality, but an illusion to be demystified. It is here that I adopt Vilém Flusser’s quanta as a crucial framework in considering the instability of video as capable of being demystified through structural/materialist principles; and where video begins to diverge dramatically from filmic thinking, and into the quantum concerns proposed by Flusser. Quanta is a problematic wording for many, as it holds connotations in various fields through computation, physics and pseudo-science.