Conference, Screen Studies in the Age of Extended Reality & Synthetic Media, Trinity College Dublin, 2024
Call for Abstracts: Screen Studies in the Age of Extended Reality & Synthetic Media
An internati... more Call for Abstracts: Screen Studies in the Age of Extended Reality & Synthetic Media
An international conference to take place at Trinity College Dublin on June 4th-5th 2024, as part of the Irish Research Council Laureate Award project “From Cinematic Realism to Extended Reality: Reformulating Screen Studies at the Precipice of Hyper-reality” (2022-2026).
Keynote speaker: Professor Jenna Ng (Head of Creative Technologies and Professor of Digital Media and Culture at the University of York).
Through the simultaneous presence of graphically composed and materially existing elements, augme... more Through the simultaneous presence of graphically composed and materially existing elements, augmented reality (AR) offers ephemeral digital content that is the result of the momentary and, thus, unrepeatable alignment of a physical body and world and an AR system. Capturing the performative and embodied angles of screen-based AR through a combined lm-analytical and cognitive lens, this paper focuses on how interfaces, content, and AR-manipulated bodies serve as apparatus for cinematic composition as well as storytelling and user engagement. Observing interactions with AR lters and backgrounds, we re ect on how users' bodies and expressions that are mirrored on screen are translated into an immersive digital storyworld that exists in the temporal and spatial context of the AR experience and the related technology. AR lters and backgrounds' affective quality, thus, lies in bodily control and in the creative act of choosing and moderating body characteristics, postures, and positions in real time in relation to the surrounding digitally manipulated or recorded environment. By moderating the representations of bodies and spaces as well as their interplay, AR users actively shape the visual composition of the on-screen space and, thereby, the visual narrative.
Through the simultaneous presence of graphically composed and materially existing elements, augme... more Through the simultaneous presence of graphically composed and materially existing elements, augmented reality (AR) offers ephemeral digital content that is the result of the momentary and, thus, unrepeatable alignment of a physical body and world and an AR system. Capturing the performative and embodied angles of screen-based AR through a combined film-analytical and cognitive lens, this paper focuses on how interfaces, content, and AR-manipulated bodies serve as apparatus for cinematic composition as well as storytelling and user engagement. Observing interactions with AR filters and backgrounds, we reflect on how users' bodies and expressions that are mirrored on screen are translated into an immersive digital storyworld that exists in the temporal and spatial context of the AR experience and the related technology. AR filters and backgrounds' affective quality, thus, lies in bodily control and in the creative act of choosing and moderating body characteristics, postures, and positions in real time in relation to the surrounding digitally manipulated or recorded environment. By moderating the representations of bodies and spaces as well as their interplay, AR users actively shape the visual composition of the on-screen space and, thereby, the visual narrative.
Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 2023
The emergence in 2022 of surreal and grotesque image sets created using the free online AI text-t... more The emergence in 2022 of surreal and grotesque image sets created using the free online AI text-to-image generator DALL-E Mini (Craiyon) prompts our analysis of their aesthetic content and connections to preexisting media forms and trends in digital culture. DALL-E Mini uses an unfiltered database of images from the internet to create new images based on a user’s text prompt, often resulting in misshapen bodies and impossible scenarios. Despite its technological limitations, DALL-E Mini’s popularity as a meme-making tool is visible on social media platforms, where crowd-sourced images are shared and experimentation with the tool is encouraged. Through comparison with existing artistic practices and formats (creative automata, surrealism, body horror, celebrity memes), we argue that DALL-E Mini creations can be understood as human-AI co-creations and forms of aesthetic mimicry. Building on the ideas of surrealists such as André Breton, we propose that DALL-E Mini’s images, prompts and the grid interface adhere to surrealism’s historical interests in the unconscious, the uncanny, and the collaborative ‘exquisite corpse’ parlour game. We also consider DALL-E Mini’s relevance to the category of ‘AI Arts’, Patricia De Vries’s call for more research that relates algorithms to the broader artistic and cultural contexts in which they are embedded (2020), and the ‘authoring’ of celebrity bodies as data (Kanai, 2016). Our theorisation of DALL-E Mini is supported by examples drawn from social media and personal experiments with the generator. Overall, we propose that internet users’ experimentation with DALL-E Mini corresponds with a cultural moment in which AI imaging technologies are eliciting excitement and anxiety. The outputs are revealed to be reliant on users’ pop cultural knowledge, with DALL-E Mini allowing for a playful, co-creative algorithmic practice, wherein contemporary anxieties about digital labour, (post)digital culture, biopolitics, and global issues are redirected into surreal visual storyworlds.
This book examines the centrality of dialogue to American independent cinema, arguing that it is ... more This book examines the centrality of dialogue to American independent cinema, arguing that it is impossible to separate small budgets from the old adage that ‘talk is cheap’. Focusing on the 1980s until the present, particularly on films by writer-directors like Jim Jarmusch, Noah Baumbach and Richard Linklater, the book demonstrates dialogue’s ability to engage audiences and bind together the narrative, aesthetic and performative elements of selected cinema. When compared to the dialogue norms of more mainstream cinema, the verbal styles of these independent writer-directors are found to be marked by alternations between various extremes, particularly those of naturalism and hyper-stylization, and between the poles of efficiency and excess. More broadly, these writer-directors are used as case studies that allow for an understanding of how dialogue functions in verbally experimental cinema, which, this book contends, is more often found in ‘independent’ or ‘art’ cinema. In question...
This dossier revisits the slippery complexity of screen voices, specifically by prioritising prac... more This dossier revisits the slippery complexity of screen voices, specifically by prioritising practices of vocal return and refashioning, voice doubling and dissemination, verbal tiers, folds and modulation. Contributions examine vocal remix and dubbing, film festival translation, podcasting, accent manoeuvring and manipulation. Uniting the essays is an understanding of screen voice as malleable tool, one that is capable of being altered not only at the moment it is produced but whenever it is deemed practical or politically beneficial to do so. By revealing how verbal-vocal expressions are re-made by translators, exhibitors and creatives, the dossier details the varied stages, layers and flows involved in constructing, circulating and hearing screen voices.
Conference, Screen Studies in the Age of Extended Reality & Synthetic Media, Trinity College Dublin, 2024
Call for Abstracts: Screen Studies in the Age of Extended Reality & Synthetic Media
An internati... more Call for Abstracts: Screen Studies in the Age of Extended Reality & Synthetic Media
An international conference to take place at Trinity College Dublin on June 4th-5th 2024, as part of the Irish Research Council Laureate Award project “From Cinematic Realism to Extended Reality: Reformulating Screen Studies at the Precipice of Hyper-reality” (2022-2026).
Keynote speaker: Professor Jenna Ng (Head of Creative Technologies and Professor of Digital Media and Culture at the University of York).
Through the simultaneous presence of graphically composed and materially existing elements, augme... more Through the simultaneous presence of graphically composed and materially existing elements, augmented reality (AR) offers ephemeral digital content that is the result of the momentary and, thus, unrepeatable alignment of a physical body and world and an AR system. Capturing the performative and embodied angles of screen-based AR through a combined lm-analytical and cognitive lens, this paper focuses on how interfaces, content, and AR-manipulated bodies serve as apparatus for cinematic composition as well as storytelling and user engagement. Observing interactions with AR lters and backgrounds, we re ect on how users' bodies and expressions that are mirrored on screen are translated into an immersive digital storyworld that exists in the temporal and spatial context of the AR experience and the related technology. AR lters and backgrounds' affective quality, thus, lies in bodily control and in the creative act of choosing and moderating body characteristics, postures, and positions in real time in relation to the surrounding digitally manipulated or recorded environment. By moderating the representations of bodies and spaces as well as their interplay, AR users actively shape the visual composition of the on-screen space and, thereby, the visual narrative.
Through the simultaneous presence of graphically composed and materially existing elements, augme... more Through the simultaneous presence of graphically composed and materially existing elements, augmented reality (AR) offers ephemeral digital content that is the result of the momentary and, thus, unrepeatable alignment of a physical body and world and an AR system. Capturing the performative and embodied angles of screen-based AR through a combined film-analytical and cognitive lens, this paper focuses on how interfaces, content, and AR-manipulated bodies serve as apparatus for cinematic composition as well as storytelling and user engagement. Observing interactions with AR filters and backgrounds, we reflect on how users' bodies and expressions that are mirrored on screen are translated into an immersive digital storyworld that exists in the temporal and spatial context of the AR experience and the related technology. AR filters and backgrounds' affective quality, thus, lies in bodily control and in the creative act of choosing and moderating body characteristics, postures, and positions in real time in relation to the surrounding digitally manipulated or recorded environment. By moderating the representations of bodies and spaces as well as their interplay, AR users actively shape the visual composition of the on-screen space and, thereby, the visual narrative.
Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 2023
The emergence in 2022 of surreal and grotesque image sets created using the free online AI text-t... more The emergence in 2022 of surreal and grotesque image sets created using the free online AI text-to-image generator DALL-E Mini (Craiyon) prompts our analysis of their aesthetic content and connections to preexisting media forms and trends in digital culture. DALL-E Mini uses an unfiltered database of images from the internet to create new images based on a user’s text prompt, often resulting in misshapen bodies and impossible scenarios. Despite its technological limitations, DALL-E Mini’s popularity as a meme-making tool is visible on social media platforms, where crowd-sourced images are shared and experimentation with the tool is encouraged. Through comparison with existing artistic practices and formats (creative automata, surrealism, body horror, celebrity memes), we argue that DALL-E Mini creations can be understood as human-AI co-creations and forms of aesthetic mimicry. Building on the ideas of surrealists such as André Breton, we propose that DALL-E Mini’s images, prompts and the grid interface adhere to surrealism’s historical interests in the unconscious, the uncanny, and the collaborative ‘exquisite corpse’ parlour game. We also consider DALL-E Mini’s relevance to the category of ‘AI Arts’, Patricia De Vries’s call for more research that relates algorithms to the broader artistic and cultural contexts in which they are embedded (2020), and the ‘authoring’ of celebrity bodies as data (Kanai, 2016). Our theorisation of DALL-E Mini is supported by examples drawn from social media and personal experiments with the generator. Overall, we propose that internet users’ experimentation with DALL-E Mini corresponds with a cultural moment in which AI imaging technologies are eliciting excitement and anxiety. The outputs are revealed to be reliant on users’ pop cultural knowledge, with DALL-E Mini allowing for a playful, co-creative algorithmic practice, wherein contemporary anxieties about digital labour, (post)digital culture, biopolitics, and global issues are redirected into surreal visual storyworlds.
This book examines the centrality of dialogue to American independent cinema, arguing that it is ... more This book examines the centrality of dialogue to American independent cinema, arguing that it is impossible to separate small budgets from the old adage that ‘talk is cheap’. Focusing on the 1980s until the present, particularly on films by writer-directors like Jim Jarmusch, Noah Baumbach and Richard Linklater, the book demonstrates dialogue’s ability to engage audiences and bind together the narrative, aesthetic and performative elements of selected cinema. When compared to the dialogue norms of more mainstream cinema, the verbal styles of these independent writer-directors are found to be marked by alternations between various extremes, particularly those of naturalism and hyper-stylization, and between the poles of efficiency and excess. More broadly, these writer-directors are used as case studies that allow for an understanding of how dialogue functions in verbally experimental cinema, which, this book contends, is more often found in ‘independent’ or ‘art’ cinema. In question...
This dossier revisits the slippery complexity of screen voices, specifically by prioritising prac... more This dossier revisits the slippery complexity of screen voices, specifically by prioritising practices of vocal return and refashioning, voice doubling and dissemination, verbal tiers, folds and modulation. Contributions examine vocal remix and dubbing, film festival translation, podcasting, accent manoeuvring and manipulation. Uniting the essays is an understanding of screen voice as malleable tool, one that is capable of being altered not only at the moment it is produced but whenever it is deemed practical or politically beneficial to do so. By revealing how verbal-vocal expressions are re-made by translators, exhibitors and creatives, the dossier details the varied stages, layers and flows involved in constructing, circulating and hearing screen voices.
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An international conference to take place at Trinity College Dublin on June 4th-5th 2024, as part of the Irish Research Council Laureate Award project “From Cinematic Realism to Extended Reality: Reformulating Screen
Studies at the Precipice of Hyper-reality” (2022-2026).
Keynote speaker:
Professor Jenna Ng (Head of Creative Technologies and Professor of Digital Media and Culture at the University of York).
An international conference to take place at Trinity College Dublin on June 4th-5th 2024, as part of the Irish Research Council Laureate Award project “From Cinematic Realism to Extended Reality: Reformulating Screen
Studies at the Precipice of Hyper-reality” (2022-2026).
Keynote speaker:
Professor Jenna Ng (Head of Creative Technologies and Professor of Digital Media and Culture at the University of York).