1 Lecture 5: Our Media, Our Selves Professor Victoria Meng How do the media affect who we are?

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Lecture 5:Lecture 5:Our Media, Our SelvesOur Media, Our Selves

Professor Victoria Meng

How do the media affect who we are?How do the media affect who we are?

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Lecture OutlineLecture Outline

• Vivian Sobchack’s “The Scene of the Screen”

• Optical illusions website

• Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly

• Selections from The Animatrix

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Reading ReviewReading Review

“The Scene of the Screen,”

from Carnal Thoughts

by Vivian Sobchack

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Review: Marshall McLuhan Review: Marshall McLuhan and Don Ihdeand Don Ihde

• Media extend human abilities.

• Media change the terms of our interactions with the world.

• Media shape what we can express and perceive.

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

Photographic,

Cinematic, and

Electronic (New)

Media

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Review: Terry FlewReview: Terry Flew

The three levels of technology:

1.Tools (objects)

2.Techniques (skills)

3.Context (institutions)

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

“—we are all part of a moving-image culture, and we live cinematic and electronic lives.”

Sobchack, p. 136

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

“As our aesthetic forms and representations of ‘reality’ become externally realized and then unsettled first by photography, then cinema, and now electronic media, our values and evaluative criteria of what counts in our lives are also unsettled and transformed.”

Sobchack, p. 136

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

Elizabeth I (1533-1603) Elizabeth II (1926-present)Elizabeth II (1926-present)

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

pp. 137 – 140.

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

Photographic media

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

Photographic media

• extend the range of our eyes.

- Distant places without travel

- Past events

- Technology-aided explorations

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

Photographic media

• extend the range of our eyes.

• extend the range of our memories.

- Rachel’s childhood photographs in Blade Runner

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

Photographic media

• extend the range of our eyes.

• extend the range of our memories.

• preserve only an instant in time.

- Nostalgia; “being-that-has been”

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

Photographic media

• extend the range of our eyes.

• extend the range of our memories.

• preserve only an instant in time.

• can be held, transferred, and copied.

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

Cinematic media

http://www.gifmania.co.uk/cinema/projector/projector.gif

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

Cinematic media

• also extend our eyes and mind.

• also can be transferred and copied.

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

Cinematic media

• also extend our eyes and mind.

• also can be transferred and copied.

How long did you first look at the cartoon projector? How often did you look back at it, instead of looking at the still slide?

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

Cinematic media

• also extend our eyes and mind.

• also can be transferred and copied.

• move! They make it easy to feel like we are “there” in the action.

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

Eyes Movies

Near and faraway sights

Close-ups and long shots

Body and head motions

Tracking and panning shots

Staring and glancing

Slow and fast editing

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

The cinematic medium “…signifies its own materialized agency, intentionality, and subjectivity.” (p.147) Watching a movie is like seeing out of someone else’s head.

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

Electronic media

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

Electronic media

• extends our ability to switch from activity to activity instantaneously.

• can re-present other kinds of media.

• promotes a diffusion of our attention.

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”“Indeed, the electronic is phenomenologi-cally experienced not as a discrete, intentional, body-centered mediation and projection in space, but rather as a simultaneous, dispersed, and insubstantial transmission across a network or web that is constituted spatially more as a materially flimsy latticework of nodal points than as the stable ground of embodied experience.”

Sobchack, p. 154.

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

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““The Scene of the Screen”The Scene of the Screen”

VivianSobchack,Film and media theorist

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Optical Illusions WebsiteOptical Illusions Website

Prof. Meng’s picks: motion induced blindness, biological motion, and rotating face mask.

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Screening: Screening: A Scanner DarklyA Scanner Darkly

• Photographic media:Nostalgia and objectification

• Cinematic media:Suspense and identification

• Electronic mediaFreedom and displacement

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Screening: selections from Screening: selections from The AnimatrixThe Animatrix

End of Lecture 5End of Lecture 5

Next Lecture: Miracle Workers:

What tasks can/should media do?31