This module explores questions regarding the circulation of media, objects and technologies, the
economic and political infrastructures and conditions thereof, their inflection within everyday life
worlds, and the ideological understandings of diverse forms and processes that turn them into one
thing in one place and something different in another.
It explores the ways in which images, sounds, objects, and more abstract forms of ‘information’
circulate and shape perception and experience.
How do media form part and parcel of social movements and cultural and political practice?
What role do new, allegedly democratizing, media technologies play in providing access to users?
What kind of ‘worlds’ are conjured via commodity displays in movie theatres, galleries, museums and
internet sites?
What associations exists between text and image, lens, screen and page, and the sites of reception
from which we read media texts?
What are the socio-historic relations between mediums, technologies and cultural theories?
Definitions of Material Culture
The things we make reflect our beliefs about the world; the things around us affect the way that
we understand the world. There is an unending circularity to this
that implies less a circle and more a kind of wheel moving.
Material culture is the history and philosophy of objects and the myriad relationships between people and
things.
The rise of mass consumption was accompanied by a proliferation in objects and the
multiplication of meanings, practices, and “needs” associated with these things. Material Culture Studies
helps us to think about the objects, and the cultural, political, and economic systems that created them.
The American Institute for Conservation's definition for "cultural property" can loosely
substitute for material culture. “The legacy of our collective cultural heritage enriches our lives.
Each generation has a responsibility to maintain and to protect this heritage for the benefit of
succeeding generations. Conservation is the field dedicated to preserving cultural property objects, collections, specimens, structures, or sites identified as having artistic, historic,
scientific, religious, or social significance - for future generations.
Material Culture is the unpacking or mining of historic and contemporary objects to find the embedded ideas
and concepts that define the surrounding society.
Peirce identified three kinds of basic signs:
Symbol
the signifier is purely arbitrary or conventional (dependent on social and cultural
conventions); it does not resemble the signified.
Examples: alphabetical letters, numbers, traffic signs.
Icon
the signifier is perceived as resembling or imitating the signified, or being similar
to it in some of its qualities. Examples: a portrait, a model airplane.
Index
the signifier is not arbitrary but is directly connected in some way (physically or
causally) to the signified in a way that can be observed or inferred.
Examples: smoke (an index of fire), footprints (an index of a passing person),
photographs and films (the direct result of the imprint of light on a sensitized
surface).
Signs do not belong exclusively to one category: there is a great deal of overlap, and signs
often have characteristics of more than one of these types.
Example: A photographic portrait is both an index and an icon, because it is a direct trace of
the physical presence of the person (via light) and because it resembles that person.
Henri-Louis Bergson (1859–1941) was a major French philosopher, influential in the first half
of the 20th century.
Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness is the title of Henri
Bergson's doctoral thesis, first published in 1889.
Bergson became aware that since time was mobile, the moment one attempted to measure a
moment, it would be gone.
Duration = time. Time unfolds, every moment is new.
A moment of time can not persist in order to be added to other moments.
We can only recall a moment by remembering it and therefore instilling the new moment with a
recollection of what came before it and in doing so pass on to a newer moment that can only be
represented by a moment passed/past.
No two moments are identical, for the one will always contain the memory left it by the other.
Time is experiential.
We convert the notion of time into space; i.e. the clock, the sequential narrative, the cinematic
montage
.
We use two kinds of space, one kind in the material world and another kind in the conceptual
world where states of consciousness are symbolically represented in space.
Syntagma, a Greek word meaning "arrangement", a sequence of words in a particular syntactic
relationship to one another; a construction of grammatical units; a sentence.
Temporal media unfold in time. Static media are a single continuous unit.
An analogue is something that bears an analogy to something else.
An analogue is an analogan.
At first glance all analogical reproductions of reality; drawings, paintings, movies,
theatre performances seem to be a message without a code, a denotative message.
But each of these messages or utterances develops in an immediate or evident
fashion, beyond the analogical content itself, a supplementary message which is what
we commonly call the style of the reproduction.
Here we are concerned with a second meaning, whose signifier is a certain treatment
of the image as a result of the creator’s action, and whose signified, whether
aesthetic or ideological, refers to a certain "culture" of the society receiving the
message.
In short, all these imitative "arts" comprise two messages: a denoted message, which
is the analogon itself, and a connoted message, which is the way in which the society
represents, to a certain extent, what it thinks of the analogon.
Roland Barthes, The Responsibility of Forms
A hundred years after cinema's birth, cinematic ways of seeing the world, of
structuring time, of narrating a story, of linking one experience to the next, have
become the basic means by which computer users access and interact with all
cultural data.
In this respect, the computer fulfills the promise of cinema as a visual Esperanto.
One general effect of the digital revolution is that avant-garde aesthetic strategies
came to be embedded in the commands and interface metaphors of computer
software. In short, the avant-garde became materialized in a computer.
Digital cinema technology is a case in point.
The avant-garde strategy of collage reemerged as the "cut-and-paste" command, the
most basic operation one can perform on digital data.
The idea of painting on film became embedded in paint functions of film editing
software.
The avant-garde move to combine animation, printed texts, and live-action
footage is repeated in the convergence of animation, title generation, paint
compositing, and editing systems into all-in-one packages.
Lev Manvoich
Editing, or montage, is the key twentieth-century technology for
creating fake realities.
Theoreticians of cinema have distinguished between many kinds of
montage.
For the purpose of sketching an archeology of technologies of
simulation that led to digital compositing we will consider two basic
techniques.
The first technique is temporal montage: separate realities form
consecutive moments in time.
The second technique is montage within a shot.
It is the opposite of the first: separate realities form contingent parts of
a single image like the superimposition of images and multiple screens
or windows.
Lev Manovich
Composite image making – static and temporal.
Lev Manovich is a new media theorist and professor of Visual Arts, University of
California, San Diego, U.S. and European Graduate School in Saas-Fee,
Switzerland, where he teaches new media art and theory.
His best known book is The Language of New Media, which has been widely
reviewed and translated into Italian, Korean, Polish, Spanish, Lithuanian and
Chinese.
In his 2001 book, The Language of New Media, Manovich describes the general
principles underlying new media:
* Numerical representation: new media objects exist as data.
* Modularity: the different elements of new media exist independently.
* Automation: new media objects can be created and modified automatically.
* Variability: new media objects exist in multiple versions.
* Transcoding: The logic of the computer influences how we understand and
represent ourselves.
Manovich's 8 definitions of "new media" (2001)
1. New Media versus Cyberculture
2. New Media as Computer Technology Used as a Distribution Platform
3. New Media as Digital Data Controlled by Software
4. New Media as the Mix Between Existing Cultural Conventions and the Conventions of Software
5. New Media as the Aesthetics that Accompanies the Early Stage of Every New Modern Media and
Communication Technology
6. New Media as Faster Execution of Algorithms Previously Executed Manually or through Other Technologies
7. New Media as the Encoding of Modernist Avant-Garde; New Media as Metamedia
8. New Media as Parallel Articulation of Similar Ideas in Post-WWII Art and Modern Computing
Definition: REMEDIATION
The representation of one medium in another. A central idea for thinking about
'new' media since the concept of remediation suggests that all new media, in their
novel period, always 'remediate'; that is, incorporate or adapt previously existing
media.
Thus early cinema was based on existing theatrical conventions, computer games
remediate cinema, the World Wide Web remediates the magazine, etc. Originally
from Marshall McLuhan (1964: 23-24), but more recently usefully applied by
Bolter and Grusin (1999).
The concept of remediation itself is reminiscent of McLuhan: "'the "content' of
any medium is always another medium. The content of writing is speech, just as
the written word is the content of print, and print is the content of the telegraph."
Machinima is the use of real-time graphics rendering engines (a game engine),
mostly three-dimensional (3-D), to generate computer animation.
The term also refers to works that incorporate this animation technique.
Some machinima-based artists, sometimes called machinimists or machinimators, are
fan laborers and often use graphics engines from video games, a practice that arose
from the animated software introductions of the 1980s demoscene, Disney Interactive
Studios' 1992 video game Stunt Island, and 1990s recordings of gameplay in firstperson shooter (FPS) video games, such as id Software's Doom and Quake.
Originally, these recordings documented speedruns—attempts to complete a level as
quickly as possible—and multiplayer matches.
The addition of storylines to these films created "Quake movies". The more general
term machinima, a portmanteau (a new word formed by joining two others and
combining their meanings) of ‘machine cinema’, arose when the concept spread
beyond the Quake series to other games and software.
After this generalization, machinima appeared in mainstream media, including
television series and advertisements.
Machinima is the use of real-time graphics rendering engines (a game engine),
mostly three-dimensional (3-D), to generate computer animation.
The term also refers to works that incorporate this animation technique.
Some machinima-based artists, sometimes called machinimists or machinimators, are
fan laborers and often use graphics engines from video games, a practice that arose
from the animated software introductions of the 1980s demoscene, Disney Interactive
Studios' 1992 video game Stunt Island, and 1990s recordings of gameplay in firstperson shooter (FPS) video games, such as id Software's Doom and Quake.
Originally, these recordings documented speedruns—attempts to complete a level as
quickly as possible—and multiplayer matches.
The addition of storylines to these films created "Quake movies". The more general
term machinima, a portmanteau (a new word formed by joining two others and
combining their meanings) of ‘machine cinema’, arose when the concept spread
beyond the Quake series to other games and software.
After this generalization, machinima appeared in mainstream media, including
television series and advertisements.
The common feature of all these forms is the belief in some
necessary contact point between the medium and what it represents.
‘Metamedia’, as coined in the writings of Marshall McLuhan, refers
to new relationships between form and content in the development of
new technologies and new media. McLuhan's concept described the
totalizing effect of media.
Metamedia utilizes new media and focuses on collaboration across
traditional fields of study, melding everything from improvisational
theatre and performance art, to agile, adaptive software development
and smart mobs.
“The new avant-garde is no longer concerned with seeing or
representing the world in new ways but rather with accessing and
using in new ways previously accumulated media.
In this respect new media is post-media or meta-media, as it uses
old media as its primary material.“
Lev Manovitch
If we want to describe what new media does to old media with a single term, 'mapping' is a good candidate.
Software allows us to remap old media objects into new structures -- turning media into 'meta-media.
In contrast to media, meta-media acquires three new properties. First, with software, data can be translated
into another domain -- time into 2D space, 2D image into 3D space, sound into 2D image, and so on.
Second, media objects can be manipulated using GUI (Graphical User Interface) techniques such as: move,
transform, zoom, multiple views, filter, duplicate.
And third, media objects can now be 'processed' using standard techniques of computerized
data processing; search, sort, replace, etc.
A meta-media object contains both language and meta-language -- both the original media structure (a film,
an architectural space, a sound track) and the software tools that allow the user to generate descriptions of,
and to change, this structure.
Today it is the meta-media paradigm that is at the center of computer culture.
The logic of meta-media fits well with other key aesthetic paradigms of today – the remixing of previous
cultural forms of a given media (most visible in music, architecture, design, and fashion), and a second type of
remixing -- that of national cultural traditions now submerged into the medium of globalization (the terms
"postmodernism" and "globalization" can be used as aliases for these two remix paradigms.) Meta-media
then can be thought alongside these two types of remixing as a third type: the remixing of interfaces of
various cultural forms and of new software techniques -- in short, the remix of culture and computers.
SOFT CINEMA explores 4 ideas:
1."Algorithmic Cinema.”
Using a script and a system of rules defined by the authors, the software controls the screen
layout, the number of windows and their content. The authors can choose to exercise
minimal control leaving most choices to the software; alternatively they can specify exactly
what the viewer will see in a particular moment in time. Regardless, since the actual editing
is performed in real time by the program, the movies can run infinitely without ever exactly
repeating the same edits.
2. "Macro-cinema.”
If a computer user employs windows of different proportions and sizes, why not adopt the
similar aesthetics for cinema?
3. "Multimedia cinema.”
In Soft Cinema, video is used as only one type of representation among others: 2D
animation, motion graphics, 3D scenes, diagrams, maps, etc.
4. "Database Cinema.”
The media elements are selected from a large database to construct a potentially unlimited
number of different narrative films, or different versions of the same film. We also approach
database as a new representational form in its own right. Accordingly, we investigate
different ways to visualise Soft Cinema databases.
SOFT CINEMA explores 4 ideas:
1."Algorithmic Cinema.”
Using a script and a system of rules defined by the authors, the software controls the screen
layout, the number of windows and their content. The authors can choose to exercise
minimal control leaving most choices to the software; alternatively they can specify exactly
what the viewer will see in a particular moment in time. Regardless, since the actual editing
is performed in real time by the program, the movies can run infinitely without ever exactly
repeating the same edits.
2. "Macro-cinema.”
If a computer user employs windows of different proportions and sizes, why not adopt the
similar aesthetics for cinema?
3. "Multimedia cinema.”
In Soft Cinema, video is used as only one type of representation among others: 2D
animation, motion graphics, 3D scenes, diagrams, maps, etc.
4. "Database Cinema.”
The media elements are selected from a large database to construct a potentially unlimited
number of different narrative films, or different versions of the same film. We also approach
database as a new representational form in its own right. Accordingly, we investigate
different ways to visualise Soft Cinema databases.
SOFT CINEMA explores 4 ideas:
1."Algorithmic Cinema.”
Using a script and a system of rules defined by the authors, the software controls the screen
layout, the number of windows and their content. The authors can choose to exercise
minimal control leaving most choices to the software; alternatively they can specify exactly
what the viewer will see in a particular moment in time. Regardless, since the actual editing
is performed in real time by the program, the movies can run infinitely without ever exactly
repeating the same edits.
2. "Macro-cinema.”
If a computer user employs windows of different proportions and sizes, why not adopt the
similar aesthetics for cinema?
3. "Multimedia cinema.”
In Soft Cinema, video is used as only one type of representation among others:
2D animation, motion graphics, 3D scenes, diagrams, maps, music, sound, drawings,
photographs, text, color etc.
4. "Database Cinema.”
The media elements are selected from a large database to construct a potentially unlimited
number of different narrative films, or different versions of the same film. We also approach
database as a new representational form in its own right. Accordingly, we investigate
different ways to visualise Soft Cinema databases.
SOFT CINEMA explores 4 ideas:
1."Algorithmic Cinema.”
Using a script and a system of rules defined by the authors, the software controls the screen
layout, the number of windows and their content. The authors can choose to exercise
minimal control leaving most choices to the software; alternatively they can specify exactly
what the viewer will see in a particular moment in time. Regardless, since the actual editing
is performed in real time by the program, the movies can run infinitely without ever exactly
repeating the same edits.
2. "Macro-cinema.”
If a computer user employs windows of different proportions and sizes, why not adopt the
similar aesthetics for cinema?
3. "Multimedia cinema.”
In Soft Cinema, video is used as only one type of representation among others:
2D animation, motion graphics, 3D scenes, diagrams, maps, music, sound, drawings,
photographs, text, color etc.
4. "Database Cinema.”
The media elements are selected from a large database to construct a potentially unlimited
number of different narrative films, or different versions of the same film. The database is
approached as a new representational form in its own right. The authors investigate different
ways to visualise Soft Cinema databases.
Spatial montage represents an alternative to traditional cinematic temporal montage, replacing its traditional
sequential mode with a spatial one.
Cinema followed this logic of industrial production as well. It replaced all other modes of narration with a
sequential narrative, an assembly line of shots which appear on the screen one at a time.
A sequential narrative turned out to be particularly incompatible with a spatial narrative which played a
prominent role in visual culture for centuries. Artists presented a multitude of separate events within a single
space, be it the fictional space of a painting or the physical space which can be taken by the viewer all in once.
Each narrative event is framed separately but all of them can be viewed together in a single glance. In other
cases, different events are represented as taking place within a single pictorial space. Sometimes, events
which formed one narrative but separated by time were depicted within a single painting. More often, the
painting’s subject became an excuse to show a number of separate “micro-narratives” (for instance, works by
Hiëronymous Bosch and Peter Bruegel).
In addition to the montage dimensions already explored by cinema (differences in images' content,
composition, movement) we now have a new dimension: the position of the images in space in relation to
each other.
In addition, as images do not replace each other (as in cinema) but remain on the screen throughout the
movie, each new image is juxtaposed not just with one image which preceded it, but with all the other
images present on the screen.
The logic of replacement, characteristic of cinema, gives way to the logic of addition and co-existence. Time
becomes spatialized, distributed over the surface of the screen. In spatial montage, nothing is potentially
forgotten, nothing is erased.
Previsualization (also known as pre-rendering, preview or wireframe windows)
is a function to visualise complex scenes in movie before filming. It is also a
concept in still photography.
Previsualization is applied to techniques such as storyboarding, either in the
form of charcoal drawn sketches or in digital technology in the planning and
conceptual of movie scenery make up.
Visualization is a central topic in Ansel Adams' writings about photography,
where he defines it as "the ability to anticipate a finished image before making
the exposure”. The term previsualization has been attributed to Minor White who
divided visualization into previsualization, referring to visualization while
studying the subject; and postvisualization, referring to remembering the
visualized image at printing time.
The earliest planning technique, storyboards, have been used in one form or
another since the silent era. The term “storyboard” first came into use at Disney
Studios between 1928 and the early 1930s where the typical practice was to
present drawn panels of basic action, usually three to six sketches per vertical
page.
By the 1930s, storyboarding for live action films was common and a regular part
of studio art departments.
Disney Studios also created what became known as the Leica reel by filming storyboards and
editing them to a soundtrack of the completed film. This technique was essentially the
predecessor of modern computer previsualization.
Other prototyping techniques used in the 1930s were miniature sets often viewed with a
“periscope,” a small optical device with deep depth of field that a director could insert into a
miniature set to explore camera angles.
Set designers were also using a scenic technique called camera angle projection to create
perspective drawings from a plan and elevation blueprint. This allowed them to accurately depict
the set as seen by a lens of a specific focal length and film format.
In the 1970s, with the arrival of cost-effective video cameras and editing equipment, most
notably, Sony’s 3/4-inch video and U-Matic editing systems, animatics came into regular use at
ad agencies as a sales tool for television commercials and as a guide to the actual production of
the work.
An animatic is a video recorded version of a hand-drawn storyboard with very limited motion
added to convey camera movement or action, accompanied by a soundtrack.
Similar to the Leica reel, animatics were primarily used for live action commercials.
History teaches us that old media never die-and they don't even necessarily fade away.
What dies are simply the tools we use to access media content; the 8-track, the Beta
tape. These are what scholars call delivery technologies.
Delivery technologies become obsolete and get replaced; media, on the other hand,
evolve; recorded sound is the medium, CDs, MP3 files, and 8-track cassettes are
delivery technologies.
Historian Lisa Gitelman, offers a model of media that works on two levels:
1)on the first, a medium is a technology that enables communication.
2)on the second, a medium is a set of associated "protocols" or special and cultural
practices that have grown up around that technology.
Delivery systems are simply and only technologies; media are also cultural systems.
Delivery technologies come and go all the time, but media persist as layers within an
ever more complicated information and entertainment stratum.
History teaches us that old media never die-and they don't even necessarily fade away.
What dies are simply the tools we use to access media content; the 8-track, the Beta
tape. These are what scholars call delivery technologies.
Delivery technologies become obsolete and get replaced; media, on the other hand,
evolve; recorded sound is the medium, CDs, MP3 files, and 8-track cassettes are
delivery technologies.
Historian Lisa Gitelman, offers a model of media that works on two levels:
1) on the first, a medium is a technology that enables communication.
2) on the second, a medium is a set of associated "protocols" or special and cultural
practices that have grown up around that technology.
Delivery systems are simply and only technologies; media are also cultural systems.
Delivery technologies come and go all the time, but media persist as layers within an
ever more complicated information and entertainment stratum.
A medium's content may shift (as occurred when television displaced radio as a
storytelling medium, freeing radio to become the primary showcase for rock and roll in
the late 1950s and 1960s).
A medium’s audience may change (as occurs when comics move from a mainstream
medium in the 1950s to a niche medium today), and its social status may rise or fall
(as occurs when theater moves from a popular form to an elite one), but once a
medium establishes itself as satisfying some core human demand, it continues to
function within the larger system of communication options.
Printed words did not kill spoken words. Cinema did not kill theater. Television did not
kill radio.
Each old medium was forced to coexist with the emerging media.
Convergence is a plausible way of understanding the past several decades of media
change rather than the old digital revolution paradigm.
Old media are not being displaced. Rather, their functions and status are shifted by the
introduction of new technologies.
The implications of this distinction between media and delivery
systems become clearer as Gitelman elaborates on what she means by
"protocols."
She writes: "Protocols express a huge variety of social, economic, and material
relationships”.
So ‘telephony’ includes the salutation 'Hello?' (for English speakers, at least) and
includes the monthly billing cycle and includes the wires, cables, satellites, screens etc.
that materially connect our phones. . . .
Cinema includes everything from the sprocket holes that run along the sides of film to the
widely shared sense of being able to wait and see 'films' at home on video/DVD.
Protocols are not static; they shift and change as we produce and consume media.
Henry Jenkins – Convergence Culture
Convergence theory discusses the relationship between three concepts - media
convergence, participatory culture and collective intelligence.
Convergence is the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation
between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences.
Convergence is a word that describes technological, industrial, cultural, and social
changes in the ways media circulates within our culture. Convergence is not just
technological, but cultural.
Convergence describes the circulation of media content across different media systems
and multiple media platforms within competing media economies and national borders
that depend heavily on consumer’s active participation.
Convergence is not only a technological process bringing together multiple media
functions within the same devices but also represents a cultural shift as consumers are
encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media
content.
The term participatory culture contrasts with older notions of passive media spectatorship.
Consumption has become a collective process equated with
“collective intelligence” a term coined by French cyber theorist Pierre Levy.
Situated context – where you are during media reception.
Convergence doesn't just involve commercially produced materials and services traveling along
well-regulated and predictable circuits. It also occurs when people take media in their own
hands. Our lives, relationships, memories, fantasies, desires also flow across media
channels…mobile devices, social networking, podcasts, blogs….
The media environment is being shaped by two seemingly contradictory trends:
1
New media technologies have lowered production and distribution costs, expanded the
range of available delivery channels, and enabled consumers to archive, annotate,
appropriate and recirculate media content.
2
At the same time there is been a concentration of the ownership of mainstream
commercial media, with a small handful of multinational media conglomerates dominating
all sectors of the entertainment industry. Some fear that media is out of control, others that
it is too controlled.
The Death of the Author is an essay by the French literary critic and theorist Roland
Barthes.
Barthes's essay argues against traditional literary criticism's practice of incorporating the
intentions and biographical context of an author in an interpretation of a text, and instead
argues that writing and creator are unrelated.
The essay's first English-language publication was in the American journal Aspen, no. 5-6
in 1967; the French debut was in the magazine Manteia, no. 5. The essay later appeared
in an anthology of Barthes's essays, Image-Music-Text (1977)
In his essay, Barthes criticizes the method of reading and criticism that relies on aspects
of the author's identity - his or her political views, historical context, religion, ethnicity,
psychology, or other biographical or personal attributes — to distill meaning from the
author's work.
"To give a text an Author" and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it "is to
impose a limit on that text.”
Readers must thus separate a literary work from its creator in order to liberate the text
from interpretive tyranny. Each piece of writing contains multiple layers and meanings.
In a well-known quotation, Barthes draws an analogy between text and textiles, declaring
that a "text is a tissue [or fabric] of quotations," drawn from "innumerable centers of
culture," rather than from one, individual experience.
The essential meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the reader, rather than
the "passions" or "tastes" of the writer; "a text's unity lies not in its origins," or its creator,
"but in its destination," or its audience.
No longer the focus of creative influence, the author is merely a "scriptor" (a word
Barthes uses expressly to disrupt the traditional continuity of power between the terms
"author" and "authority"). The scriptor exists to produce but not to explain the work.
Every work is "eternally written here and now," with each re-reading, because the "origin"
of meaning lies exclusively in "language itself" and its impressions on the reader.
In 1968 Barthes announced 'the death of the author' and 'the birth of the reader', declaring that
'a text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination' (Barthes 1977, 148).
Barthes reader is the ‘body of mediation or medium’ for the texts effects to come into play.
The reader is not a passive vehicle, not an echo chamber, but rather the regent of the text.
The author then is an arranger or compiler of the ‘always already written’ likewise the text is,
then, 'a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture’.
Barthes' theory of the text, therefore, involves a theory of intertextuality, in that the text not only
sets in motion a plurality of meanings but is also woven out of numerous discourses and spun
from already existent meaning.
Barthes intertextual text is:
“woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages (antecedent or
contemporary), which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony.
The framing of texts by other texts has implications not only for their writers but also for their
readers.
Fredric Jameson argued that 'texts come before us as the always-already-read; we apprehend
them through the sedimented layers of previous interpretations.
Claude Lévi-Strauss's notion of the bricoleur who creates improvised structures by
appropriating pre-existing materials which are ready-to-hand is now fairly well-known
within cultural studies
Gerard Genette proposed the term 'transtextuality' as a more inclusive term than
'intertextuality' (Genette 1997).
He listed five subtypes:
1 - intertextuality: quotation, plagiarism, allusion;
2 - paratextuality: the relation between a text and its 'paratext' - that which surrounds
the main body of the text - such as titles, headings, prefaces, epigraphs, dedications,
acknowledgements, footnotes, illustrations, opening credits,
theme music, screen credits, trailers, etc.;
3 - architextuality: designation of a text as part of a genre.
4 - metatextuality: explicit or implicit critical commentary of one text on another.
5 – hypotextuality: the relation between a text and a preceding 'hypotext' - a text or
genre on which it is based but which it transforms, modifies, elaborates or extends
(including parody, spoof, sequel, translation).
6 - computer-based hypertextuality: text which can take the reader directly to other
texts (regardless of authorship or location). This kind of intertextuality disrupts the
conventional 'linearity' of texts. Reading such texts is seldom a question of following
standard sequences predetermined by their authors.
Transmedial Storytelling and Knowledge communities
Transmedia storytelling is a contemporary aesthetic that is emerged in response to media convergence, one
that places new demands on consumers and depends on the active participation of knowledge
communities.
Knowledge communities form around mutual intellectual interests; their members work together to forge
new knowledge often in realms where no traditional expertise exists; the pursuit of an assessment of
knowledge is at once communal and adversarial.
Transmedia storytelling is the art of World -Making. Consider the three Matrix films.
To fully experience any fictional world, consumers must assume the role of hunters and gatherers, chasing
down bits of the story across media channels, comparing notes with each other the online discussion
groups, and collaborating to ensure that everyone who invests time and effort will come away with a richer
entertainment experience.
Pierre Levy argues "no one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in
humanity.”
Collective intelligence refers to this ability of virtual communities to leverage the combined expertise of
their members. What we cannot know on our own we may now be able to know collectively.
And this organization of audiences into what Levy calls knowledge communities allows them to exert a
greater aggregate power in their negotiations with media producers.
He suggests that collective intelligence will gradually alter the ways commodity culture operates.
Umberto Eco asks what beyond being loved, transforms a film such as Casablanca (1942) into a cult artifact.
First, the work must come to us as a "completely furnished world so that its fans can quote characters and
episodes is if they were aspects of the private sectarian world"
Second, the work must be encyclopedic, containing a rich array of information that can be drilled, practice, and
mastered by devoted consumers.
"In order to transform a work into a cult object one must be able to break, dislocate, unhinge it so that one can
remember only parts of it, irrespective of their original relationship to the whole."
We experience the cult movie, he suggests, not as having "one central idea but many" as a disconnected series of
images, of peaks, of visual icebergs.
The cult film is made to be quoted, Eco contends, because it is made from quotes, archetypes, allusions, and
references drawn from a range of previous works.
Such material creates "a sort of intense emotion accompanied by the vague feeling of a déjà vu".
Eco-suggests, no film can be experienced with fresh eyes; all is read against other movies. This becomes the
normal way of enjoying movies.
Consider the Matrix Franchise: the Matrix is three movies and more….
The Animatrix 2003, is a 90 minute program of short animated films. The matrix is also a series
of comics from writers and artists. The matrix is also a number of computer games. Information
not available in the three original movies is offered in the multi-media narratives of the other
texts.
Those who realized there was relevant information in those other sources were suspicious of the
economic motives behind what is called synergistic storytelling.
The matrix franchise is also shaped by another level of synergy; ancillary products that create
cross promotion.
Current licensing arrangements ensure that most of these products are peripheral to what drew
us to the original story in the first place.
Under licensing, the central media company, most often the film producers, sells the rights to
manufacture products using its assets to an often unaffiliated third-party; the license limits what
can be done with the characters or concepts to protect the original property.
Transmedia story
The Transmedia story unfolds across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a
distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole.
In the ideal form of Transmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does best, so that the
story might be introduced in a film, expanded to television, novels, and comics; its world might be
explored by gameplay or experienced as an amusement park attraction.
Each franchise entry needs to be self-contained so you don't need to have seen the film to enjoy
the game, and vice versa.
Any given product is a point of entry into the franchise as a whole.
Reading across the media sustains a depth of experience that motivates more consumption.
The economic logic of a horizontally integrated entertainment industry is one where a single
company may have roots across all of the different media sectors and dictate the flow of content
across media.
Different media attract different market niches.
Corporate convergence
Three distinctive kinds of economic interests are at play in promoting these new cultural
exchanges:
1 - national or regional producers who see the global circulation of their products not
simply expanding their revenue stream but also as a source of national pride.
2 - multinational conglomerates who no longer define the production or distribution
decisions in national terms but seek to identify potentially valuable content and push
it into as many markets as possible.
3 - and niche distributors who search for distinctive content as a means of attracting
upscale consumers and differentiating themselves from stuff already on the market.
Corporate Hybridity
Corporate hybridity occurs when one cultural space, as in the case of a national media industry
absorbs and transforms elements from another; a hybrid work thus exist betwixt and between two
cultural traditions while providing a path that can be explored from both directions. Hybridity has
often been discussed as a strategy of the dispossessed as they struggle to resist or reshape the flow
of Western media into their culture – taking materials imposed from the outside but making them
their own.
Japanese culture critic Koichi Iwabuchi use the term de-odorizing to refer to the way that Japanese
"soft goods" are stripped of signs of their national origins to open them for global circulation.
In this context, the grassroots fan community still plays an important role, educating international
viewers to the cultural references and genre traditions defining these products on their websites
and newsletters.
The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the emergence of fansubbing, the amateur translation and
subtitling of Japanese animation.
At that time fansubbing had been critical to the growth of Anime fandom in the West.
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references (hyperlinks) to other
text that the reader can immediately access. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables,
images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the underlying concept defining the structure
of the World Wide Web.
According to the most basic definition, a hypertext can be seen as a series of pages (or nodes)
connected with each other in a non-linear way by means of different links. More precisely, we can think of
a hypertext as a potentially unlimited net of nodes and links; each of these nodes is a complex portion of
a text which can contain any of the following:
information on a certain domain of a possible world, or of a portion of a world;
a set of commands instructing the reader/user on how to view the information contained in the node,
or on how to jump, via one link, to another node;
a set of commands allowing the reader/user to go from one node to another;
a set of commands allowing the reader/user to create new nodes and new links.
Access to the content – mostly multimedial – constituting the node can be either linear or non-linear.
Moreover, both the multimedial information of different nodes, and the relationships existing among those
nodes can be easily changed and expanded. In other words, a fundamental characteristic of hypertexts is
their being dynamic: hypertexts, within certain limits and conditions specified by their authors, are
interactive and re-shapeable according to the needs, tastes, and capabilities of the readers/users.
As a result, the readers/users become co-authors in all respects.
Robert Stam uses the term post-celluloid to refer to the computerization or digitization of media
and suggest that the term adaptation, within the context of cinema studies, must be considered in
the light of these technological changes.
Stam further argues that since digital media potentially incorporate all previous media into a vast
cyber archive, it makes less sense to think in media specific terms.
Novels, films, and adaptations take their place alongside one another as relative co-equal neighbors
or collaborators rather than as father and son or master and slave.
Stan writes that it is questionable whether strict fidelity is possible. And adaptation is automatically
different and original due to the change of medium.
Stam’s argument has been debated by new media commentators such as David Thorburn and Henry
Jenkins who argue that to comprehend the aesthetics of transition, we must resist notions of media
purity, recognizing that each medium is touched by an in turn touches its neighbors and rivals.
And we must also reject static definitions of media, resisting the idea that a communications system
may adhere to a definite form.
Fan culture: Culture that is produced by fans and other amateurs for circulation through
an underground economy and that draws much of its content from the commercial culture.
Fan fiction: Sometimes called “fanfic”, a term originally referring to any prose retelling of
stories and characters drawn from mass-media content, but deployed by LucasArts in its
establishment of a policy for digital filmmakers that excludes works seeking to expand"
their fictional universe.
Storyworld: "Diegetic," in the cinema, typically refers to the internal world created by the
story that the characters themselves experience and encounter: the narrative "space" that
includes all the parts of the story, both those that are and those that are not actually shown
on the screen (such as events that have led up to the present action; people who are
being talked about; or events that are presumed to have happened elsewhere or before).
Transmedial storytelling: Stories that unfold across mulliple media platforms, with each
medium making distinctive contributions to an understanding of the world, a more
integrated approach to franchise development than models based on urtexts (The original
text of a musical score, literary work or film) and its ancillary products.
Narrative pleasure stems from the desire to know what will happen next, to have that gap
opened and closed, again and again, until the resolution of the story.
Initial Glossary
Bible – The term bible originates in television and is also employed in the comic book and
game industry. Almost every television series has a “bible,” a document for the use of the
production team that spells out the character’s biographies and personalities, conveying
the conventions of the series.
Canonical narrative – the narrative or core concept from which other narratives are
derived.
Narrative “universes” such as Doctor Who and Star Wars treat contributions from many
media and authors as authorized elements of a vast fictional quilt.
An “unfolding text” contains a number of distinct series in different media usually with
different creators and intended audiences. It adapts to meet the changing demands of its
audience over time.
It may be a successful series of comics, a series of films, an animated television series, a
computer game, or all of the above, operating in a “multiverse” with one main character
acting as separate individuals in separate, but parallel, mediated environments made by
separate production teams for specific target audiences, within the periphery of a “bible”.
In transmedial storytelling content becomes invasive and permeates the audience’s
lifestyle.
Vast narratives: What makes a narrative vast.
J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Marvel's Spiderman, and the complex stories of such
television shows as Dr. Who, The Sopranos, and Lost all present vast fictional worlds.
Henry Darger's images of his Vivian Girls, trapped in an otherworldly battle for tens of
thousands of pages written by Darger in virtual seclusion over the course of his adult life.
A vast narrative may have varied content, spread across multiple media, The vast
narrative receives its designation not only due to the interior nature of the narrative, which
may span unusual lengths but it exceeds the usual expectations of extent we have for a
work of that form ( e.g. a three hundred page book, or a two-hour film.
While most television detective shows devote one episode to one investigation, The Wire,
for example, can stretch a case out over a season, and the continuity of characters and
settings puts demands on a viewer’s memory that other shows rarely make.
The Harry Potter series of books is considered the authoritative source of that
fictional world even after the release of the films.
Lucasfilm delegates storytelling duties for Star Wars among books, movies, and
animated series, and each addition extends the fictional universe in new directions
in time and space.
Vast narratives can also be generative frameworks that allow for many
reconfigurations of the characters and settings over several instantiations, as in
computer role-playing games and their pencil-and-paper counterparts like
Dungeons & Dragons.
DC Comics has reintroduced the concept of the "multiverse" to its stories, allowing
differently branded versions of DC characters to appear in nonoverlapping (and
noncontradictory) story lines, considered to be happening in parallel universes.
A story is a succession of events, often identified as micro-propositions, segments or
narrative cells, episodes or themes. These narrative cells have variable dimensions and are
relatively autonomous from each other. In order to create a story it is necessary to connect
such cells with each other by means of logical, causal and temporal links, and according to
some general principles able to both guarantee their development and their movement, and,
at the same time, to orient and justify the whole story.
Umberto Eco 1979
Non-narrative Hypertexts; we can classify as non-narrative, all those hypertexts whose
segments are not (or do not seem to be) parts of the fabula.
NOTE: Fabula and syuzhet are terms originating in Russian Formalism and employed in
narratology that describe narrative construction. Syuzhet is an employment of narrative and
fabula is the chronological order of the retold events. The fabula is the raw material of a
story, and syuzhet, the way a story is organized; the plot.
It is then possible to speak of non-narrative hypertexts when referring to encyclopedias,
dictionaries, manuals, scientific or critical essays, and, in general, most of the texts created
for the Internet and present on the Internet. In this category should also be included both
non-narrative texts directly devised and created as hypertexts, and linearly structured texts
(originally existing mainly in printed form) that, for various reasons, have been “hypertextualized” in order to be accessed via computer.
A hypernarrative on the other hand, “is a succession of events, often identified as
micropropositions, segments or narrative cells, episodes or themes. These narrative cells have
variable dimensions and are relatively autonomous from each other.” And hypernarratives are
“all those hypertexts in which the segments are (or seem to be) parts of fabula or a story.
A hypernarrative requires the following: (1) a set of stories, (2) the structure to be followed, and
(3) a seemingly creative interface to match the theme or the stories and the language.
Hypernarrative is a mode of narration that encourages creative, active viewing, rather than
passive consumption of what has been produced by a conventional artist or producer.
Hypernarratives encourage interactivity. This contrasts sharply with classic realist narratives
which are less demanding and encourage passivity.
The goal is to make the spectator no longer a consumer, but a producer of the work.
Allegory is a figurative mode of representation conveying a meaning other than
the literal.
An allegory is a device that can be presented in literary form, such as a poem or
novel, or in visual form, such as in painting or sculpture.
As a literary device, an allegory in its most general sense is an extended
metaphor.
As an artistic device, an allegory is a visual symbolic representation.
An example of a simple visual allegory is the image of the grim reaper. Viewers
understand that the image of the grim reaper is a symbolic representation of
death.
Since meaningful narratives are nearly always applicable to larger issues,
allegories may be read into many stories, sometimes distorting their author's overt
meaning.
In fiction, revisionism is the retelling of a story or type of story with
substantial alterations in character or environment, to "revise" the view shown
in the original work. Unlike most usages of the term revisionism, this is not
generally considered negative.
Visual and artistic rhetoric, therefore, refers to the way in which images, both
small and large, subtle and obvious, are distributed throughout any number of
visible modes of communication (television, magazines, internet, film, etc).
The art of composing writing is called rhetoric, so when we apply these
concepts to pictures, it is called visual rhetoric. It is how images impact an
audience for the persuasive purpose of the image-maker's intent.
Visual rhetoric also examines the relationship between images and writing.
Visual rhetoric is pervasive, in part, because it is powerful. Visual messages
are volatile, eliciting positive and negative responses simultaneously.
A Motif is
1. a recurring subject, theme, idea, etc., esp. in a literary, artistic, or musical work.
2. a distinctive and recurring form, shape, figure, etc., in a design, as in a painting or on wallpaper.
3. a dominant idea or feature.
As a trope a motif is something symbolic that keeps turning up in order to reinforce the main theme of
the work.
Usually, this is a physical item, although a motif may show itself in other ways such as through
dialogue.
It may even be a double motif: a pattern on somebody's sofa, an emblem on the heroine's shirt or a
bumper sticker on the hero's car.
Motifs are employed in three different ways:
A single object, or a collection of extremely similar objects, that appear(s) many times throughout the
course of the play/film/book.
A collection of related objects or symbols that appear over and over again. Generally the most
popular option, as it marks the motifs as significant, but puts the emphasis firmly on the theme.
An assortment of objects that don't seem to be related, but on closer inspection have an underlying
resemblance that serve the theme. For example, a black cat, spilled salt and an umbrella left open
indoors all point to the theme of bad luck
A motif differs from a theme in that a theme is an idea set forth by a text, where a motif is a recurring
element which symbolizes that idea.
Jungian Archetypes
Carl Gustav Jung developed an understanding of archetypes as being “ancient or archaic images that
derive from the collective unconscious.” The archetypes are also referred to as innate universal psychic
dispositions which form the substrate from which the basic symbols or representations of unconscious
experience emerge.
Archetypes can be used for a sense of understanding as well as for a state of treatment.
"The archetype is a tendency to form such representations of a motif - representations that can vary a
great deal in detail without losing their basic pattern.
Collective unconscious is a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carl Jung.
It is proposed to be a part of the unconscious mind, expressed in humanity and all life forms with nervous
systems, and describes how the structure of the psyche autonomously organizes experience.
Jung distinguished the collective unconscious from the personal unconscious, in that the personal
unconscious is a personal reservoir of experience unique to each individual, while the collective
unconscious collects and organizes those personal experiences in a similar way with each member of a
particular species.
Roland Barthes said that 'no sooner is a form seen than it must resemble something: humanity seems
doomed to analogy'
The ubiquity of tropes in visual as well as verbal forms can be seen as reflecting our fundamentally
relational understanding of reality. Reality is framed within systems of analogy.
Figures of speech enable us to see one thing in terms of another. As with paradigm and syntagm, tropes
'orchestrate the interactions of signifiers and signifieds' in discourse.
A trope such as metaphor can be regarded as new sign formed from the signifier of one sign and the
signified of another. The signifier thus stands for a different signified; the new signified replaces the usual
one. As I will illustrate, the tropes differ in the nature of these substitutions.
Tropes generate 'imagery' with connotations over and above any 'literal' meaning. Once we employ a
trope, our utterance becomes part of a much larger system of associations which is beyond our control.
In linguistics, trope is a rhetorical figure of speech that consists of a play on words, i.e., using a word in a
way other than what is considered its literal or normal form. The other major category of figures of speech
is the scheme, which involves changing the pattern of words in a sentence.
Some type of tropes are;
metaphor — an explanation of an object or idea through juxtaposition of disparate things with a similar
characteristic, such as describing a courageous person as having a "heart of a lion”.
metonymy — a trope through proximity or correspondence, for example referring to actions of the U.S.
President as "actions of the White House".
irony — creating a trope through implying the opposite of the standard meaning, such as describing a
bad situation as "good times".
synecdoche — related to metonymy and metaphor, creates a play on words by referring to something
with a related concept: for example, referring to the whole with the name of a part, such as "hired hands"
for workers; a part with the name of the whole, such as "the law" for police officers; the general with the
specific, such as "bread" for food; the specific with the general, such as "cat" for a lion; or an object with
the material it is made from, such as "bricks and mortar" for a building.
allegory - A sustained metaphor continued through whole sentences or even through a whole discourse.
Metaphors need not be verbal. Advertisers frequently use visual metaphors, as in this ad for Smirnoff
vodka.
In this example from a men's magazine, the metaphor suggests that (Smirnoff enables you to see that)
women (or perhaps some women) are nutcrackers (the code of related Smirnoff ads marks this as
humour).
Visual metaphor can also involve a function of 'transference', transferring certain qualities from one sign
to another. In the Chanel advertisement, two key signifiers are juxtaposed. The image of Catherine
Deneuve signifies French chic, sophistication, and glamour. The image of the bottle simply signifies
Chanel No. 5 perfume. At the bottom of the ad, in large letters, the name of the perfume is repeated in its
distinctive typographical style, making a link between the two key signifiers. The aim, of course, is for the
viewer to transfer the qualities signified by the actress to the perfume, thus substituting one signified for
another, and creating a new metaphorical sign.
Metonyms may be visual as well as verbal.
Metonymy can be applied to an object that
is visibly present but which represents
another object or subject to which it is
related but which is absent.
This ad for pensions in a women's
magazine asked the reader to arrange four
images in order of importance: each image
was metonymic, standing for related
activities (such as shopping bags for
material goods).
A metaphorical term is connected with that
for which it is substituted on the basis of
similarity, metonymy is based on contiguity
or closeness.
Metonymy does not require transposition
(an imaginative leap) from one domain to
another as metaphor does.
In film, a pair of consecutive shots is metaphorical when there is an implied
comparison of the two shots. For instance, a shot of an aeroplane followed by a shot of
a bird flying would be metaphorical, implying that the aeroplane is (or is like) a bird.
Metaphor is based on apparent unrelatedness, metonymy is a function which involves
using one signified to stand for another signified which is directly related to it or closely
associated with it in some way. Metonyms are based on various indexical relationships
between signifieds, notably the substitution of effect for cause.
Metonymy is the evocation of the whole by a connection.
The idea of narrative prose and film being essentially metonymic has encountered a
large following, among literary scholars, and film semioticians. The classical Hollywood
clichés are often described as metonymic (e.g. the falling calendar pages, the driving
wheels of the railroad engine) or synecdochic (e.g. close shots of marching feet to
represent an army).
True metonymies are secondary indexical signs: they relate two pre-existing signs by
means of their respective contents, which means that a sign present in the syntagmatic
chain serves to invoke another sign which is absent from it.
Extended Metaphor
An extended metaphor sets up a principal subject with several subsidiary subjects or
comparisons.
Essentially the subject is developed at great length, occurring frequently in or throughout a
work.
Think of the rose petals in American Beauty.
These metaphors stay with us long after the movie. Like the sled in Citizen Kane, they
work as visual synopses, remembered for their story content and emotional power. Often
featured on movie posters, metaphors arrest us, instantly messaging a story idea in a
single image.
Extended metaphors, those that run alongside a character or plotline, can carry a great
deal of the story load. They can enter a scene with stealth or a loud bang. They have an
elasticity that allows the writer to add a layer of signifying pictures that is closest in
analogy to laying a track of visual music.
Two Kinds of Metaphors
Most screenplays use two kinds of metaphors. static and dynamic.
A static metaphor is a metaphor whose meaning is obvious and constant like using red to signify sexuality. It
usually reflects one characteristic and one character. It doesn't get tangled in other elements of the story. When
static, its dramatic value is limited.
A dynamic metaphor is one that is mapped out much like a plotline. It has a beginning, middle and end. Its
meaning is clearly established in its first use and provides new information as the movie continues. It is often
entangled with other characters and/or found in new situations or locations. In fact, its messaging potential is
precise because multiple characters interact with it, it's juxtaposed against different ideas, and appears
throughout the movie.
A dynamic metaphor may be represented by any number of objects. It might be portable, stationary, a wardrobe
item or a prop. Regardless, each time another character interacts with it, we learn something about that
character with respect to the metaphor, but also as compared to other characters in the film.
What is especially useful is how well a dynamic metaphor can externalize the interior world of a character. This
is because in interacting with the metaphor, the character is unaware of what is being revealed. This provides a
kind of psychological truth that is arresting for the "pureness" of the character reveal it produces.
Metaphors have plotlines. They don't happen accidentally, but are planted, consciously constructed just like the
action and dialogue that they run alongside.
In photographic and filmic media a close-up is a
simple synecdoche - a part representing the whole.
Indeed, the formal frame of any visual image (painting,
drawing, photograph, film or television frame)
functions as a synecdoche in that it suggests that what
is being offered is a 'slice-of-life', and that the world
outside the frame is carrying on in the same manner
as the world depicted within it.
Synecdoche invites or expects the viewer to 'fill in
the gaps' and advertisements frequently employ
this trope.
The Nissan ad shown here was part of a campaign
targetting a new model of car primarily at women
drivers (the Micra). The ad is synecdochic in
several ways: it is a close-up and we can mentally
expand the frame; it is a 'cover-up' and the
magazine's readers can use their imaginations; it
is also a frozen moment and we can infer the
preceding events.
Deixis is reference by means of an expression whose interpretation is
relative to the (usually) extralinguistic context of the utterance, such as;
who is speaking
the time or place of speaking
the gestures of the speaker, or
the current location in the discourse.
Deixis contextualizes enunciations.
I am here.
He is going over there.
She is walking across the room.
Diegesis, is the telling of the story by a narrator; the author narrates
action indirectly and describes what is in the characters' minds and
emotions. The narrator may speak as a particular character or may be
the invisible narrator or even the all-knowing narrator who speaks from
above in the form of commenting on the action or the characters.
Diegesis is the reporting or narration of events, contrasted with mimesis,
which is the imitative representation of them: so a character in a play
who performs a certain action is engaged in mimesis, but if she recounts
some earlier action, she is practising diegesis.
Mimesis shows, rather than tells, by means of directly represented
action that is enacted.
The distinct is often cast as that between ‘showing’ (mimises) and
‘telling (diegesis)’.
In “The Responsibility of Forms”, Roland Barthes reintroduces the word Diegesis
to us in an adjectival form, Diegetic, in order to distinguish between ideas, images
or thoughts that are “shown” as opposed to those which are “told”.
In photography, a diegetic horizon would be a background that speaks
volumes to the viewer according to his own interpretation rather than
one that conveys an unmistakable message to anyone who sees it.
This could just as easily be “diegetic landscape”, “diegetic seascape” or
diegetic structures”.
In cinema, a “diegetic world” is the state of mind that a viewer might be mentally
transported to as he watches and becomes lost in a particularly
interesting or intriguing film.
A “diegetic break” is the point where a film allows the viewer to reflexively return
to reality, as in the moments immediately following a horror scene or a love scene.
"Diegetic" typically refers to the internal world created by the story that the characters
themselves experience and encounter: the narrative "space" that includes all the parts
of the story, both those that are and those that are not actually shown on the screen
(such as events that have led up to the present action; people who are being talked
about; or events that are presumed to have happened elsewhere).
The elements of a film can be "diegetic" or "non-diegetic.”
These terms are most commonly used in reference to sound in a film, but can apply to
other elements. For example, an insert shot that depicts something that is neither
taking place in the world of the film, nor is seen, imagined, or thought by a character, is
a non-diegetic insert.
Titles, subtitles, and voice-over narration (with some exceptions) are also non-diegetic.
sliding signifiers
Lacan's famous essay on 'The Agency of the Letter in
the Unconscious or Reason since Freud’ introduced
the notion of 'sliding signifiers.'
Because each sign has a (metaphoric)
signified/representation and other, independent
material and semiotic qualities, it is capable of
becoming detached from its conventional signified
and contributing to a new constellation of meanings.
This, in effect, is how new meaning ('hapax') is born through a 'reverse logic' where some metonymical
aspect becomes the basis for an 'empty center of
meaning' that Lacan identifies with the 'sinthom’(a
'constellation' of signifiers that circulate around an
empty center).
Sinthoms are different from symbols because of their
'open-ended' meaning. Sinthoms involve the act of
interpretation along with the
'enactment of meaning’.
The Marlboro Man illustrates how it is possible for a cowboy, a
metonymical part of the larger ensemble of rural western
landscapes, to become a 'hapax' phenomenon, a signifier
pointing to something ('Marlboro Country') that did not formerly
exist and still does not 'really' exist.
In general, signifiers slide until they are 'fixed' or 'quilted'
(Lacan's preferred term) by a metaphoric constellation that
frames and determines more or less permanent signifying
relationships.
With a frame of reference and defined point-of-view, the quilted
metaphor seems to be a projection of some authoritative source
(such as the mythical Marlboro Country Values).
The non-existence of a real Marlboro Country works better than
if there were really such a place.
Another example of the empty center of signification is Coke.
Guaranteed not to quench thirst but increase it, emptied of
calories and caffeine in some forms, Coke has nothing to be but
'It', as the commercials emphasize.
Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen wrote Reading Images (1990) and The Grammar of Visual Design
(1996). The aim of both these publications is to develop a ‘grammar’ of images, a socially-based theory of
visual representation.
This is a kind of visual discourse approach which aims, in common with many functional linguistic models, to
link form with meaning, and where linguistic and visual “grammatical forms [are seen] as resources for
encoding interpretations of experience and forms of social (inter)action”
Kress and van Leeuwen draw on the general theory of language and communication developed by M.A.K.
Halliday, quoting Halliday’s assertion that “grammar goes beyond formal rules of correctness. It is a means
of representing patterns of experience … It enables human beings to present a mental picture of reality, to
make sense of their experience of what goes on around them and inside them”
Kress and van Leeuwen place themselves at variance with Barthes' (1977) view of the meaning of the
image, and do not totally accept his notion of dependency between image and verbal text, where he
suggests that the meaning of images are related to and mostly dependent on language for ‘fixing’ their
meanings.
They argue that while Barthes' essay on image-text relations explains elements of the communicative
relationship between the two codes, it fails to recognise that "the visual component of a text is an
independently organised and structured message — connected with verbal text, but in no way dependent
on it. And similarly the other way round.”
Further, both these modes are realisations of social semiotic systems, wherein the meanings which all
communicators (whatever the code) choose to express are seen to be social in nature, and arise out of the
culture in which they are situated.
Kress and van Leeuwen posit that reading (or viewing) a visual involves two kinds of participants: the
interactive participants, and the represented participants.
The interactive participants are the participants who are interacting with each other in the act of reading a
visual, one being the graphic designer/photographer/artist/filmmaker, and the other, the viewer. This category
represents the social relations between the viewer and the visual.
The represented participants is all the elements or entities that are actually present in the visual, whether
animate or inanimate, elements which represent the situation shown, the intertextual, the current world-view,
or states of being in the world.
Kress and van Leeuwen also assert that reading (or viewing) a visual involves reading a structurally coherent
arrangement of elements which combines and integrates these two kinds of participants, thus representing the
structuring of the current world-view.
Kress and van Leeuwen are clearly assuming that the visual mode draws upon the same semantic system as
does language and that "everything [which can be] said about the semiotic code of language can be said, in
terms specific to it, about the semiotic code of pictures”
Kress and Van Leeuwen draw a parallel with the grammar of written language saying that:
‘Just as grammars of language describe how words combine in clauses, sentences and texts, so our visual
'grammar' will describe the way in which depicted people, places and things combine in visual statements ...’
(1996)
The authors have a number of key assumptions:
· The grammar of visual design plays a vital role in the production of meaning.
· The visual means of communication are rational expressions of cultural meanings.
· Visual language is culturally specific (no ‘universal’ grammar).
· Visual communication is amenable to rational accounts and analysis.
British linguist M.A.K. Halliday says that language fulfills three primary functions which he
calls metafunctions.
These are:
· The ideational metafunction—language represents the world (and aspects of the experiential world).
· The interpersonal metafunction—language constructs social relations (the interaction between
sign-makers and sign-readers).
· The textual metafunction—language forms texts (and makes sense both internally and externally).
Kress and van Leeuwen extend this to all semiotic systems including the visual so that, visual communication, like
language, represents the world and constructs social relations and different compositional arrangements allow
the realisation of different textual meanings.
Signs create narratives, classifications and analytical processes.
Many texts consist of a number of different semiotic codes (for example, written language plus images—as in
magazines; or written language, images and music/sound—as in film).
Kress and van Leeuwen refer to these as composite texts.
Kress and van Leeuwen say that the meaning(s) of these texts should be considered as a whole rather than as
the sum of the meanings of the parts. In other words, what a text means is the result of the impact of a number
of different semiotic systems interacting with each other.
Kress and van Leeuwen believe that the integration of these different semiotic systems is the work of an
overarching code.
They describe two such integration codes:
· layout - the code of spatial composition, and
· rhythm - the code of temporal composition.
The former (layout) operates in texts in which all elements are spatially co-present (e.g paintings, magazines
pages) and the latter in texts which unfold over time (e.g. film, TV, websites).
Jens E. Kjeldsen
“I will argue that visual rhetorical figures, meaning both tropes and figures, are not only ornamental, but also
support the creation of arguments/meaning.”
My claim is that rhetorical figures direct the audience to read meaning into individual texts that are
predominately pictorially mediated.
Pictures are ambiguous, but rhetorical figures can help delimit the possible interpretations, thus evoking the
intended arguments.
Picture components function as visual cues that evoke intended meanings, premises and lines of reasoning.
The power of pictorial rhetoric lies in the semiotic ability of pictures to communicate simultaneously through
conventional, iconic, and sometimes also indexical codes. The full rhetorical potential of pictures is thus
exercised when their discursive ability to create utterances, propositions, and arguments is united with their
aesthetic materiality and sensual immediacy (experientiality).
Pictorial rhetoric, draws upon four rhetorical qualities of pictures.
The first quality is the power to create presence (evidentia).
Since antiquity, orators have attempted to create evidentia by presenting events to the audience as if they
were seeing them with their own eyes.
Presence acts directly on our sensibility, it makes present what is actually absent, while words may elicit mental
images, material pictures actually place the events visually in front of the audience is if they were unfolding
before their eyes.
The ability to create presence supports the second rhetorical quality of pictures: their potential for realism and
indexical documentation.
Pictorial realism constitutes the ability of pictures to present something as though it is really itself.
Pictorial representation appears as pure presentation.
The third quality of pictures is there potential for immediacy in perception.
While listening or reading requires a temporal reception, pictures may be perceived and understood in a brief
instant.
"Site is par excellence the sense of the simultaneous or coordinated, and thereby of the extensive." Hans Jonas.
This immediacy is closely connected to the fourth rhetorical quality of pictures.
Their potential for semantic condensation, which I suggest is the basis for the possibility of ‘visual argumentation’.
Semantic condensation is similar to Freud's psychological concept of condensation in the dream world, which
signifies the condensing of many different ideas into one.
The appeal of jokes and cartoons is the concentrating and condensing of several ideas, thoughts or content into one
decisive moment.”Grombrich, 1978.
A Theory of Adaptation – Linda Hutchcheon
When we call work an adaptation, we openly announce its overt relationship to another work or works. It is
what Gerard Genette calls a text in the "second-degree", created and then received in relation to a prior text.
This is why adaptation studies are so often comparative studies.
"This is one reason why an adaptation has its own aura, its own presence in time and space, and its unique
existence at the place where it happens to be." Walter Benjamin.
For a long time, "Fidelity criticism" was the critical orthodoxy in adaptation studies, especially when dealing
with canonical works.
As George Bluestone pointed out, when the film becomes a financial or critical success, the question of its
faithfulness is given hardly any thought.
Fidelity discourse is based on the implied assumption that adapters aim is simply two reproduce the adapted
text.
Adaptation is repetition, but repetition without replication.
Adaptations such as ‘’film remakes can even be seen as mixed in intent: "contested homage".
A Theory of Adaptation – Linda Hutchcheon
The phenomena of adaptation can be defined from three distinct but interrelated perspectives:
First, seen as a formal entity or product, an adaptation is an announced and extensive transposition of a
particular work or works. This transcoding can involve a shift of medium or genre, or change of frame and
therefore context: telling the same story from a different point of view for instance, can create a manifestly
different interpretation. Transposition can also mean a shift in ontology from the real to the fictional. Film
biographies/docudramas.
Second, as a process of creation, the active adaptation always involves both re-interpretation and then recreation, this has been called both appropriation and salvaging, depending on your perspective.
Adapters may be motivated to preserve stories that are worth knowing but will not necessarily speak to a
new audience without “creative reanimation”. A contemporary contextualisation of the adaptation using
current technology and actors.
Third, seen from the perspective of its process of reception, adaptation is a form of intertextuality: we
experience adaptations (as adaptations) a palimpsest through our memory of other works that resonate
through repetition with variation.
A palimpsest is a manuscript page from a scroll or book from which the text has been scraped off and which
can be used again. Often times the original text leaves a trace.
Adaptation is:
An acknowledged transposition of a recognizable other work or works.
A creative and an interpretive act of salvaging/appropriation.
An extended intertextual engagement with the adapted work.
Therefore an adaptation is a derivation that is not derivative – a work that is second without
being secondary.
It is its own palimpsestic thing.