#grahame weinbren

[rrrauschen]

Roberta Friedman & Grahame Weinbren, {1982} Cheap Imitations Part V/VI: Terms of Analysis

[k-owens-209]

MA Blog - Week 11 - Are You Actually Awake When You Watch TV?

For this week, I have read the chapter “Philosophies and Critical Histories of Avant-Garde Film and Current Practice” from “Experimental Film and Video: An Anthology.” Here, Grahame Weinbren (2006) discusses how he explores his films and applies historical context to the concept of experimental film. In his previous works, he has used a dream like format to reflect the human mind (Weinbren, 2006). Experimental films are often reactionary, which is the basis of avant garde films (Weinbren, 2006). These films, according to Weinbren (2006), may require previous education in order to analyze it. This education however, does not necessarily need to be historical (Weinbren, 2006). They can be cultural, spiritual, psychological, and so on (Weinbren, 2006). Due to the requirement of having a contextual understanding, experimental films often break the rules set by structural films, making experimental films feel more like a fever dream (Weinbren, 2006).

There is the reason why Terri Francis dedicated a section of her writing to experimental film in “Close- Up: Afrosurrealism Introduction: The No-Theory Chant of Afrosurrealism.” The film genre has close ties to Afrosurrealism, especially Black experimental films. Both the film genre and the art genre produce a product that can feel out of body for the average viewer. To make a narrative piece that is based within the Afrosurreal, it would be helpful for me to incorporate some of the strategies from Experimental Film. This is also why I often referenced ENA as one of my points of inspiration, despite not being regarded as an Afrosurreal piece. I would argue that it fits into experimental films since its perspective and behaviors subvert the viewer’s expectations. I want the viewers to experience surrealism in a way that makes them think and converse with others.

For my training day, I actually started looking at ways to animate. One of the characters I planned on having is a little cartoon-like in nature. It has been a while since I talked to my committee members. After I complete the Pre-production folder, I plan on meeting with my committee members to update them on my work.

Source:

Weinbren, G. (2006). Post future past perfect. In Experimental film and video: An anthology (pp. 3–73). Indiana University Press. 

[byneddiedingo]

Michael Winslow in Alphabet City (Amos Poe, 1984)

Cast: Vincent Spano, Michael Winslow, Kate Vernon, Jami Gertz, Zohra Lampert, Raymond Serra, Kenny Marino, Danny Jordano, Tom Mardirosian. Screenplay: Gregory K. Heller, Amos Poe. Cinematography: Oliver Wood. Production design: M. Nord Haggerty. Film editing: Graham Weinbren. Music: Nile Rodgers. 

In 1984, a cop show called Miami Vice revolutionized its genre with hip music and lots of style, transforming the city where it was set into a place where even wickedness looked good. In the same year, director Amos Poe tried to do something similar for the gangster movie in New York's Lower East Side with a movie called Alphabet City. He cast a 20-something actor, Vincent Spano, as Johnny, a 19-year-old sharp-dressing factotum for the mob, and sent him cruising the city streets in a limited edition Pontiac Trans Am to the music of Nile Rodgers. The movie's streets are hosed-down and shiny and the city lights are haloed by a fog filter. Johnny has a wife/partner/companion named Angie (Kate Vernon), who does abstract expressionist paintings and tends to their infant daughter in the loft where they live. He cruises about, collecting from drug dealers like Lippy (Michael Winslow) and club owners who pay the mob protection. But then the mob boss wants Johnny to torch an apartment building, which is a problem because Johnny's sister, Sophia (Jami Gertz), and his mother (Zohra Lampert) live there. We learn that Sophia is a professional party girl and Mama spends her time ironing while her slob of a boyfriend snoozes on the sofa before the TV, and Johnny has some trouble persuading them to vacate. So he decides to quit the mob and tries to persuade Angie that they should take the baby and run. Naturally, the mob sends out hit men and Johnny has to deal with them. And that's pretty much it. Spano has real presence, and Winslow creates an amusingly quirky character for Lippy, but the clichés are as pervasive as the lens-created fog that blurs the streetlights. Alphabet City is worth watching only as an example of the high '80s style that MTV made ubiquitous, but if you want to see that the reruns of Miami Vice are more worth watching.

[artisresistance-blog]

“Language of New Media” Essay

”Language of New Media” is a book written by Lev Manovich. Born in 1960 in Moscow where he studied painting, architecture, computer science, and semiotics. At the age of 21 he moved to NYC. His interests shifted from still image and physical 3D space to virtual space, moving images, and the use of computers in media. While in New York he received an M.A. in Experimental Psychology (New York Uni, 1988) and additionally worked professionally in 3D computer animation from 1984 to 1992.

His 1993 Ph.D. dissertation in Visual and Cultural Studies, The Engineering of Vision from Contructivism to Computers, traced the origins of computer media, relating it to the avant-garde art of the 1920s. His Language of New Media, which in many instances is connected to his Ph.D. thesis, is structured according to the principles of a computer: the chapters gradually advance the reader from five very basic principles of the underlying code via the interface, the operations and forms to surface phenomena, literally to the surface of the computer (screen).

Numerical Representation

All new media objects are composed of digital code =>

- They can be described mathematically

- They are a subject to algorithmic manipulation

Converting continuous data into a numerical representation is called digitization.

2. Modularity

Media elements are represented as collections of discrete samples (pixels, polygons, etc). They are assembled into larger-scale objects but they continue to maintain their separate identity. Deleting parts of a new media object does not render its meaningless. The modular structure of new media makes such deletion and substitution of parts particularly easy.

3. Automation

Numerical coding of media and modular structure of a media object allow to automate many operations involved in media creation, manipulation and access. Thus human intentionally can be removed from the creative process, at least in part.

4. Variability

A new media object can exist in different, potentially infinite, versions. This is another consequence of numerical coding of media and modular structure of a media object.

// “Do we want, or need, such freedom? As the pioneer of interactive filmmaking Graham Weinbren argued in relation to interactive media, making a choice involves a moral responsibility. By passing these choices to the user, the author also passes the responsibility to represent the world and the human condition in it.//

5. Transcoding

(In computer science, the term "transcoding" itself signifies movement of data between formats.). "Reconceptualization" which occurs during computerization, the transformation of media into computer data. The mapping of concepts such as plot, sentence, family portrait, or summer blockbuster into the computer's text, packet, pixel, or other data structure, creates a composite "blend of human and computer meanings".

REPRESENTATION VERSUS:

The term “representation” is used in oppositions to other terms. Depending which term it is opposed to, the meaning of “representation” changes.

Representation VS simulation:

Post-Renaissance painting, film, radar and television VS technologies which aim to completely “immerse” the viewer within the virtual universe: Baroque Jesuit churches, nineteenth century panorama, twentieth century movie theaters.

Representation VS control:

The opposition between depth and surface: a computer screen as a window into an illusionistic space versus computer screen as a flat control panel.

Representation VS action: technologies for creating illusions (fashion, realist paintings, military decoys, film montage, digital compositing) VS technologies used to allow the viewer to manipulate reality through representations (maps, architectural drawings, x-ray, telepresence).

Representation VS communication: representational technologies (film, audio and video magnetic tape, digital storage formats) VS real-time communication technologies, i.e. everything which begins with “tele” (telegraph, telephone, telex, television, telepresence).

Visual illusionism vs simulation: traditional techniques and technologies which aim to create visual resemblance of reality: perspectival painting, cinema, panorama vs various computer methods for modeling aspects of reality beyond its visual appearance: movement of physical objects, shape changes over time in natural phenomena (water surface, smoke), motivations, behavior, speech and language comprehension in human beings.

ON TEXT

Text is unique among other media types. It is both a media type among others, but it’s also a meta-language of computer media, a code in which all other media are represented. However the relationship of the text to itself, the relationship of the source and the reference in, let’s say, webpage situation is different - instead of a “master-slave” relationship (hierarchy) it is equal to each other - this is the idea of hyperlinking on page.

[millenniumfilmjnl]

Irina Patkanian, Socrates of Kamchatka (2016). frame enlargement. From Grahame Weinbren's review of Ann Arbor Film Festival & Oberhausen Kurzfilmtage in Millennium Film Journal No 66, publishing in October.

[aneddoticamagazinestuff]

VIDEOPLACE - Myron Krueger

New Post has been published on https://www.aneddoticamagazine.com/videoplace-myron-krueger/

VIDEOPLACE - Myron Krueger

Myron Krueger is one of the pioneers of virtual reality and interactive art.

While earning a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Krueger worked on a number of early interactive computer artworks. In 1969, he collaborated with Dan Sandin, Jerry Erdman and Richard Venezky on a computer controlled environment called “glowflow,”

a computer-controlled light sound environment that responded to the people within it. Krueger went on to develop Metaplay,

Source: Söke Dinkla – Pioniere Interaktiver Kunst. Von 1970 bis heute: Myron Krueger, Jeffrey Shaw, David Rokeby, Lynn Hershman, Grahame Weinbren, Ken Feingold. ZKM Edition, Cantz: Ostfildern 1997, 272 Seiten, zahlr. Abb. ISBN: 3 89322 923 X

an integration of visuals, sounds, and responsive techniques into a single framework. In this, the computer was used to create a unique real-time relationship between the participants in the gallery and the artist in another building. In 1971, his “Psychic space” used a sensory floor to perceive the participants’ movements around the environment. A later project, “Videoplace,” was funded by the National Endowment for the arts and a two-way exhibit was shown at the Milwaukee Art Museum in 1975.

“Videoplace” has been exhibited widely in both art and science contexts in the United States and Canada, and it was also shown in Japan. It was included in the SIGGRAPH Art Show in 1985 and 1990. “Videoplace” was also the featured exhibit at SIGCHI (Computer-Human Interaction Conference) in 1985 and 1989, and at the 1990 Ars Electronica Festival. Instead of taking the virtual reality track of head-mounted display and data glove (which would come later in the 1980s), he investigated projections onto walls.

Krueger later used the hardware from Videoplace for another piece, Small Planet. In this work, participants are able to fly over a small, computer-generated, 3D planet. Flying is done by holding one’s arms out, like a child pretending to fly, and leaning left or right and moving up or down.

He envisioned the art of interactivity, as opposed to art that happens to be interactive. That is, the idea that exploring the space of interactions between humans and computers was interesting. The focus was on the possibilities of interaction itself, rather than on an art project, which happens to have some response to the user. Though his work was somewhat unheralded in mainstream VR thinking for many years as it moved down a path that culminated in the “goggles ‘n gloves” archetype, his legacy has experienced greater interest as more recent technological approaches (such as CAVE and Powerwall implementations) move toward the unencumbered interaction approaches championed by Krueger.

(from Wikipedia)

Myron Krueger’s Critter

Myron Krueger presents his “Critter” and creativity machine at a technology and art conference at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff, Alberta, in early 1986.

96

Myron Krueger – Videoplace, Responsive Environment, 1972-1990s

Myron Krueger is one of the original pioneers of virtual reality and interactive art. Beginning in 1969, Krueger developed the prototypes for what would eventually be called Virtual Reality.

Myron Kreuger – Video Place – 1989

Videoplace (1985)

Thought this might be timely with all the buzz about Microsoft’s “Kinect.” Here’s some much earlier computer vision and interaction work done by Myron Krueger at the University of Connecticut’s Artificial Reality Lab. Of course it’s comparatively crude, but keep in mind this was built on technology from a quarter century ago!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4DUIeXSEpk

In the mid-1970s, Myron Krueger established an artificial reality laboratory called the Videoplace. His idea with the Videoplace was the creation of an artificial reality that surrounded the users, and responded to their movements and actions, without being encumbered by the use of goggles or gloves. The work done in the lab would form the basis of his much cited 1983 book Artificial Reality. The Videoplace (or VIDEOPLACE as Krueger would have it), was the culmination of several iterations of artificial reality systems: GLOWFLOW, METAPLAY, and PSYCHIC SPACE; each offering improvements over the previous installation until VIDEOPLACE was a full blown artificial reality lab at the University of Connecticut.

The Videoplace used projectors, video cameras, special purpose hardware, and onscreen silhouettes of the users to place the users within an interactive environment. Users in separate rooms in the lab were able to interact with one another through this technology. The movements of the users recorded on video were analyzed and transferred to the silhouette representations of the users in the Artificial Reality environment. By the users being able to visually see the results of their actions on screen, through the use of the crude but effective colored silhouettes, the users had a sense of presence while interacting with onscreen objects and other users even though there was no direct tactile feedback available. The sense of presence was enough that users pulled away when their silhouettes intersected with those of other users. (from Wikipedia)

  http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/videoplace/

[anthologyfilmarchives]

Join us tonight for IMAGE MACHINES, celebrating @millennium_film_journal No. 64! The title of the Fall 2016 issue of MFJ – IMAGE MACHINES – invites readers to consider artists’ moving image as an interplay between the activities and intentions of filmmakers and the variety of machines and methods employed in the creation of their works. Tonight's show is curated by Anita Spooner and Grahame Weinbren.

[khloaris]

#Repost @mfw1966 ・・・ MFW/MFJ ‘Pat O’Neill’ installation design, creation and construction. FREAK FLAG FEST June 15-17. MFW and MFJournal together will present literary excerpts, installation art, films and performances on experimental filmmaker Pat O’Neill. Location: ‘The Brooklyn Kitchen’. Event organizer: KHLOARIS. Installation and performance directed by Jane Public. Film selections, publications and readings curated by Grahame Weinbren #experimentalcinema #avantgarde #filmmaking #performanceart #nysca #millenniumfilmjournal #filmcriticism ————————————————— TOMORROW #khloaris #freakflagfest #freaks #film #music #art #food #installation @freakflagfest @horrorboobs @lovidlovid @talibamnyc (at The Brooklyn Kitchen)

[mydailyresearchblog]

11/10

- Read essays/articles in Artificial Darkness

- Architecture On Screen and Off, In Time and Our ~ Grahame Weinbren

- Millenarian Cinema, Steven Jacobs

- Shot a couple colour rolls

- bought a few books, read first few interviews in Wolfgang Tillmans bk

- sent Tlife 6.2 to Spam to print

[htranitdaspring2017-blog]

Reading #1 INTRODUCTION from Digital Art by Christiane Paul

The article was well organized, and I like how it gave an informative background on digital art before talking more about the artists and the art itself. I would like to see more images along with the texts. If the body of the texts was shorter or got broken down into smaller paragraphs, then I would’ve focus more on reading the article.

Key Points of Interest #1

“The digital revolution is a revolution of instant random access”---Grahame Weinbren  

I really like this quote because I think it describes digital art and web based media very well. The memes, gifs, YouTube videos, and google images are digital revolutions that are available to anyone to use and manipulate. Many people uses these materials (images, gifs, memes, and videos) to post on social media on a regular basis.

Key Points of Interest #2

Net art should only be presented online because ‘it belongs on the internet’.

I think art should be appreciated, therefore it needs an audience. Art tends to be in a museum or a gallery. Net art does belongs on the internet because it was made online, but that does not mean it cannot be display in a museum or a gallery. Personally, if I view an art work through a picture or a screen it does not have the same effect as if I view it in person; such as, Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings. You have to be up close and personally to see all of the relationships between lines and space, textures, and the movements of the paint drips.  

[jujubedigitalart]

Grahame Weinbren, Sonata (1991-1993)

“A viewer's first impression of Sonata is generally by way of its two tower-mounted monitors. After a while, however, one grows aware that the images portrayed on these screens are actually controlled by the person seated at the installation's third monitor, which is the interactive display. There, pointing to areas on the screen brings up images - some clearly referring to the tale-in-hand, some seeming to lead on to other stories. In all, there are three major narrative strands to the work. Although the piece takes its name from Tolstoy's novella 'The Kreutzer Sonata' (the story of a man, Lev Pozdnyshev, who during the course of train ride through a snowy landscape, recounts the tale of the murder of his wife, for which he was exonerated in a court of law), an equal amount of time is spent on a dramatisation of elements from the tale of Judith (the Biblical heroine who saved her people from the threatening army of Nebuchadnezzar by beheading his general, Holofernes, in his own bed). Alongside these, the viewer may also find a series of vivid scenes recalling primal events in the life of The Wolf Man, Freud's most famous case history, commonly known under his patient's pseudonym. The three stories all have common ground around sex, gender, violence and power; two featuring men who have terrible problems with women, or revolving around what the artist provocatively calls 'crimes of passion'. Both the Judith and Tolstoy tales retain their original chronologies, while the cluster of stories, texts and images around the Wolf Man are presented disjunctively, reverberating throughout the work.”

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/sonata/

[kulturkammer]

[lindyhoppingdragon]

imagine eating a dessert while watching this

[millenniumfilmjnl]

Re:art 14 opening Saturday Sept 9. Includes "Terms of Analysis" and "Murray and Max Talk About Money" by Roberta Friedman & Grahame Weinbren. First public screening of new transfers from 16mm to glorious HD. 630 Flushing Ave 3rd floor. #grahameweinbren @friedman.roberta @kiernanjoanna #grahameweinbren #filmmakingisnotatangiblething #videoinstallation #work&money

[millenniumfilmjnl]

Re:art 14 opening Saturday Sept 9. Includes "Terms of Analysis" and "Murray and Max Talk About Money" by Roberta Friedman & Grahame Weinbren. First public screening of new transfers from 16mm to glorious HD. 630 Flushing Ave 3rd floor. #grahameweinbren @friedman.roberta @kiernanjoanna

[kulturkammer]