Category: Film and Media Studies

New Book Reviews now online

PDFs for Amy Ione’s Reviews of Biology in the Grid: Graphic Design and the Envisioning of Life and From Melies to New Media: Spectral Projection now online.

From Melies to New Media: Spectral Projections by Wendy Haslem. Intellect Press, Bristol, U.K., 2019. 201 pp., illus. Paper. ISBN: 978-1783209897. (Reviewed by Amy Ione, Leonardo, Vol. 54, No. 3. PDF

Biology in the Grid: Graphic Design and the Envisioning of Life by Phillip Thurtle. University of Minnesota Press, Posthurnanities Volume 46, Minneapolis, MN, 2018. ISBN: 978-1517902773; ISBN: 1517902770. (Reviewed by Amy Ione, Leonardo, Volume 53, Number 3, 2020, pp. 343-346) PDF

Book Review: From Méliès to New Media: Spectral Projections

Reviewed by Amy Ione, August 2020
Leonardo Reviews, https://www.leonardo.info/review/2020/08/from-melies-to-new-media-spectral-projections

From Méliès to New Media: Spectral Projections is an exploration of the presence and importance of film history in contemporary digital culture. Using a media archaeology approach, the author, Wendy Haslem, aims to demonstrate that innovative new media forms are not only indebted to, but firmly embedded within the traditions and conventions of early film culture. Throughout the book Haslem presents an array of projects that deftly move through topics, like indexicality, semiotics, memory, and digital restoration to light, materiality/immateriality, creative experimentation, time and obsolescence. While the overall goal is to introduce a new language of cinema and an alternative approach to historiography, the net result is a good start but falls short. The study is strongest and most original when presenting contemporary projects and examples of spectacle. Haslem tells us:

“Many of the films that I explore in this book favour spectacle over realism, some prioritize non-linear, experimental narration over linear, classical narrative form. Many of the older (and some of the newer) films exhibit surfaces etched with markers of time, and as such, they provide a rich surface aesthetic to encounter and explore. My approach to writing on film has always been to try to explore the surface of the film itself. That means prioritizing the aesthetic, looking for moments where details of the spectacle reveal history. My tendency is to zoom into surface details, focusing on the traces of celluloid that remain present within a digital ecology. Material detail, surface, aesthetic and mise-en-scéne drive my film analysis. This is also an approach that prioritizes the senses. (p. 28)

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Leonardo Reviews Posted July 2020

Leonardo Reviews is pleased to announce this month’s reviews posting.

Soundtracking Germany: Popular Music and National Identity
by Melanie Schiller
Reviewed by Beate Peter

Planet of the Humans
by Jeff Gibbs, Director; Michael Moore, Executive Producer
Reviewed by George Gessert

What does Berkeley on lockdown look like from the sky?

Berkeley in Place,’ a short film created for Berkeleyside by Pedal Born Pictures shows the city of Berkeley seen from the sky as its residents shelter in place in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. (More on Pedal Born Pictures: https://www.pedalbornpictures.com/)

Berkeleyside is the award-winning, independent news site in Berkeley, California, reporting on the extraordinary diversity of people, issues, events, food and environment in Berkeley and the East Bay.

There is also a similar video of Florence: DRONE | Firenze deserta Coronavirus: i monumenti del centro storico / Quarantine in Florence, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=zTJvE7BIZTo&feature=emb_logo

RIP: Jonathan Miller (1934-2019)

Jonathan Miller (1934-2019) was an English theatre and opera director, actor, author, television presenter, humorist and medical doctor. After training in medicine and specializing in neurology in the late 1950s, he came to prominence in the early 1960s in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett. He died 27 November 2019 at the age of 85. Obituary here.

At the age of 12, at the St. Paul’s School, his lifelong friendship with Dr. Oliver Sacks began. Indeed, the neurologist’s journey to international fame began when Mr. Miller showed the original manuscript of Dr. Sacks’s book “Awakenings” to a London publisher.

Another noteworthy interdisciplinary project was in 1983 with “States of Mind.” He interviewed the art historian Ernst Gombrich, the philosopher and scientist Daniel Dennett and others about consciousness and the brain.

In 1978 he presented “The Body in Question,” a 13-part BBC series about human biology during which he performed an autopsy on a dead vagrant. The book from that series, The Body in Question, is available here.

Book Review: Biology in the Grid: Graphic Design and the Envisioning of Life by Phillip Thurtle

Reviewed by Amy Ione

As I began Phillip Thurtle’s well-researched Biology in the Grid: Graphic Design and the Envisioning of Life, I wondered how his “envisioning of life” would intersect with the abundant evidence that a complex array of grids have served as a foundational element in art, architecture, and design production throughout history. A few examples that quickly come to mind include those used to construct perfectly proportioned Egyptian and Aztec temples, Islamic and Buddhist art, Chuck Close’s stylized portraits, and the layout of medieval illuminated manuscripts. Rosalind Krauss’ 1978 statement that the surfacing of the grid in early twentieth century modernist art was an announcement of “modern art’s will to silence, its hostility to literature, to narrative, to discourse” [1] is also a part of the grid litany, although one that gives a negative cast to how we use grids to engage with objects in our world.

As it turns out, Biology in the Grid moves along a markedly different track. Despite his integration of graphic design, the entertainment industry, advertising, and cultural theory, the book is largely orthogonal to the long art and design trajectory. Thurtle sees grids as a framework within a biopolitical circumstance and makes the point that “living in the grid’ does not equalize us because all lives are not treated similarly despite the seeming uniformity of the form. In his words: Continue reading “Book Review: Biology in the Grid: Graphic Design and the Envisioning of Life by Phillip Thurtle”

EXHIBITION: Mana BSMT Presents: N. M. Brandreth’s Phantasmagoria’s Seeing Shadows

Apr. 26–Jun. 7, 2019
MORE INFORMATION

Have you ever glimpsed a movement out of the corner of your eye and turned to find nothing there? Have you ever bolted up the basement steps convinced that something was down there with you? Seeing Shadows attempts to visualize these sensations as photographic objects. Derived from Brandreth’s love for horror and the macabre, and from the histories of photography and film, these unique handmade works are at once seductive and utterly uncanny.

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Facebook Society: Losing Ourselves in Sharing Ourselves: Reviewed by Amy Ione

According to Roberto Simanowski, the author of Facebook Society: Losing Ourselves in Sharing Ourselves, this volume isn’t a book about Facebook. Rather his concern is what he calls Facebook society. His starting point is Facebook’s claim that it is building a “global community,” and his underlying assumption is that social-media platforms have altered social interaction, political life, and outlooks on the world, even for people who do not regularly use them. Bringing boundless enthusiasm to how Facebook and other social apps create community, this cultural studies perspective both celebrates networked society and offers a critique of problematic elements derived from digital communities, with a particular focus on our concept of the self.

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Conference: DIGITAL DIRECTIONS: Fundamentals of Creating and Managing Digital Collections

August 19-20, 2019
Overland Park, Kansas (Kansas City Metro Area)

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE: Are you ready to take on a digital preservation project or program, but have been unsure of how to begin? Or have you already begun an initiative and you want to confirm that you are on the right track? The Digital Directions conference delivers a comprehensive introduction to digitization and digital preservation during two days of in-person, focused instruction. Learn the fundamentals and return home ARMED WITH KNOWLEDGE.

Now in its 12th year, Digital Directions provides instruction on good practices and practical strategies for the creation, curation, and use of digital collections. Meet colleagues from institutions large and small who share similar challenges, and interact one-on-one with the faculty of national experts.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND? The Digital Directions conference is geared toward professionals working with digital collections at archives, libraries, museums, historical organizations, government agencies, corporate archives, and other organizations that steward digital collections. Students are also welcome, and a discounted registration rate is available.

REGISTER NOW and SAVE with the Early-bird Discount!

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