[Reader-list] Congratulations ( Or, Pure Envy!!!)

Tue Jul 2 23:31:12 IST 2002

Dear All,

Let us get together, whether we know of it or not (especially if we don't know of it: a case of blind congratulation that matches curiosity), to congratulate the Raqs Media Collective on what they did in a recent "exhibition" in Germany.

I post here (in the dominant spirit of this List, as approved by senior academics) a review.

This review talks about Documenta 11. (What the hell is that, we might ask?).

As a prologue, I'd like to re-present a particular section of the review (sincerely, but also strangely in the bureaucratic spirit of this List, a spirit that comes and goes, much like a ghost, ensuring all the while that it is there, this spirit of doxological control):

"One great new media project that I did see at Documenta was OPUS 
(softwareand accompanying theoretical package) by Raqs Media Collective (New
Delhi). Unveiled in Kassel, OPUS is definitely the most interesting new
media project I have encountered in quite a while. It is a sophisticated,
both theoretically and technically, system for multi-user cultural
authorship in a digital network environment. Do take a look at the site
and check their new concept of "Rescension" (in OPUS Manual) that 
offers avery interesting way to address the difficult issues of authorship in 
our"remix" culture. OPUS raises the bar for all future practical and
theoretical work dealing with digital authorship."

Now, the reviewer Lev Manovich, takes over (Is he an Under-secretary of culture? Let's think on it)

Lev Manovich

Welcome to the Multiplex: Documenta 11,  New Generation Film Festival
(Lyon),  LA Film Festival¹s New Technology Forum
-----------------------------------------------------------------

I was struggling how to fill 1000 words talking about Documenta 11, 
when I
was hit with a solution: why not talk about all three festivals I 
attended
this June: Documenta 11 in Kassel; New Generation, the first edition of 
a
brand-new film festival in Lyon; and Los Angeles Film Festival¹s New
Technology Forum. Since all three events focused on new (or not so new)
directions in moving image production and distribution, this will be 
the
focus of this review.

Just as the last time when I went to se Documenta 10 (1997), attending 
the
new Documenta left me with the same feeling: what¹s the big deal? On 
any
given day in New York or London you can just go to whatever museum and
gallery shows happen to be running and you will see as many first-rate
works by as many brand-name and ³emerging² artists. Of course it is 
nice
to go to Documenta parties (although it¹s not Venice) and to sit in a 
cafe
outside the main exhibition hall trying to recognize the cultural
celebrities going in: here is Stuart Hallhere is Walid Ra¹ad whose 
Atlas
Group presented one of the smartest and though-provoking projects of 
the
whole Documenta.

While the new Documenta makes a real effort to open itself up to global
multi-culturalism, the results are quite contradictory. The show in 
Kassel
is presented as the final ³Fifth Platform,² with the first four 
platforms
having taken place during the preceding year in Vienna, Berlin, New 
Delhi,
St. Lucia and Laso focused on topics such as ³Creolite and 
Creolization²
and ³Under Siege: Four African Cities². Unfortunately one could not 
learn
anything about these previous four ³platforms² without buying the thick
catalog &shy; there were no references to them in the art show itself.

The long list of artists shown in Kassel included plenty of people 
outside
of Europe and US, like the group Igloolik Isuma Productions, whose film
Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) won a Prix D¹Or for best debut feature 
film
at Cannes 2001. However, looking at the spatial layout of Documenta
grounds it became clear that each of three key buildings gave the 
largest
central spaces to the older European or US white artists such as Allan
Sekula, Bernd and Hilla Becher, and Constant. I had the feeling that
Documenta curators put on mini-retrospectives of these artists, added 
more
big images of German photographers and conceptual 1970s artists, and 
then
filled the remaining smaller and peripheral spaces with actual
contemporary art.

Going through the show I also had the feeling I was in a kind of 
artist¹s
cinema multiplex. Although I have not counted, it felt that at least 
half
of all the Documenta artists presented ³video installations² which 
almost
all followed the same standard exhibition format: a projection 
presented
in a small room. At least in a commercial movie theatre you get
comfortable seats, Dolby surround sound, and you can bring in a coke, 
but
since Documenta was about ³serious art² and not the pleasures of mass
culture, a typical room had hard and uncomfortable benches. Somebody
pointed out to me that all video and film installations presented at
Documenta together added up to more than 600 hours of running time.
Somebody else noted that the size of video and film installation rooms
varied accordingly to the prestige of a an artist The films by Jonas 
Mekas
and Ulrike Ottinger, the veterans of experimental filmmaking, which 
were
between five and six hours each, were in larger rooms which had a few 
row
of comfortable chairs, like in a real movie theaters. Other videos were
stuck in small rooms with a single bench.

Given my interest in new forms of cinema I was attracted to a number of
multi-screen installations at Documenta, including works by such
heavyweights as Isaac Julien, Chantal Akerman, and Eija-Liisa Ahtila. I
thought that Ahtila¹s three screen installation worked the best: you 
feel
that she is seriously researching a new grammar for a multi-screen 
cinema.
(She is currently having a solo exhibition at the Tate in London).

One great new media project that I did see at Documenta was OPUS 
(software
and accompanying theoretical package) by Raqs Media Collective (New
Delhi). Unveiled in Kassel, OPUS is definitely the most interesting new
media project I have encountered in quite a while. It is a 
sophisticated,
both theoretically and technically, system for multi-user cultural
authorship in a digital network environment. Do take a look at the site
and check their new concept of "Rescension" (in OPUS Manual) that 
offers a
very interesting way to address the difficult issues of authorship in 
our
"remix" culture. OPUS raises the bar for all future practical and
theoretical work dealing with digital authorship.

The paradox of a an art show which became a multiplex movie theatre 
became
further apparent after I visited the brand new film festival in Lyon
called New Generation. Approximately one third of a festival was given 
to
artists¹ videos. However since this was a film festival rather than art
show, the short videos were packaged together in ninety minute programs
shown in a movie theatre &shy; in contrast to Documenta which followed the 
art
convention of giving each video its own room. For me, neither interface
makes much sense &shy; why not put all video on a computer server and set 
up
comfortable personal stations where viewers can access and watch any 
video
in any time, the way it was done already a few years ago in KIASMA 
museum
in Helsinki. KIASMA digitized a whole collection of Finnish video art
which was then put on museum servers accessible through PCs set up in a
special media room.

Next it was to a day of panels making up the New Technology Forum at 
the
Los Angeles Film Festival. After a conservative Documenta and a sleepy
Lyon DV marathon, here I finally some real cutting edge stuff - new
advances in machinema, video creation software running on cell phones,
Hollywood and military collaborating on new AI simulations, and the 
like.
Once again, I was given proof that creative techno-avant-garde is not 
in
Kassel, Lyon, and other traditional citadels of ³real culture² but in 
Los
Angeles, literally next door to Hollywood studios.

Katherine Anna Kang (Fountainhead Entertainment) talked about a
feature-length film her company is working on using a custom machinema
system. (For those who don't know, machinema is a subculture of amateur
filmmakers who use computer games as movie making tools. She called 
this
new kind of cinema ³machinemation.² Another paradigm that also uses
game-like real-time 3D scene generation was demonstrated by Jeff Rickel
from the University of Southern California¹s (USC) notorious Institute 
of
Creative Technologies. The institute was established a few years ago 
with
funding from the US Army to work on new types of military simulations
using Hollywood talent. Rickel showed a particular ³peacekeeping 
scenario.
² Written by a veteran Hollywood writer, the scene had three virtual
humans in a stressful situation. The goal of the simulation is to teach 
a
soldier what to do in an ambiguous situation. The scenario used 
high-end
AI that controls virtual humans¹ emotional expressions, speech, etc. If
traditionally simulations focused on machine operations (airplane, 
tank,
etc.) and battle action, USC work can be better thought of as 
interactive
narrative, where the user (the trainee) is presented with a dramatic
scenario with simulated humans.

Bart Cheever from D.FILM festival (the digital film festival running 
since
1997) presented the gems from Digital Silverlake mini-festival he 
curated
earlier this year. Created by artists, filmmakers and designers living 
in
Silverlake and other areas of East LA, the works in Digital Silverlake
represents the next stage in the evolution of moving image aesthetics. 
If
1995 article ³What is Digital Cinema² I defined digital cinema as
compositing live action + image processing + 2-D animation + 3-D
animation. Since then a new generation of designers who grew up with 
Flash
and Shockwave have started to make short films and music videos which 
add
typography and also privilege a 2-D flat look as key visual aesthetics. 
To
put this differently, while we see more and more ³hybrid² films, which 
use
plenty of compositing, 3D and 2D animation, but still have an overall
³film² look (i.e., they present us 3D photorealistic space) - such as
³Amelie² (2001) &shy; there is also now a different type of ³hybrid² film
which looks more like what we expect to find in illustration and 
graphic
design. I call this new type of digital cinema aesthetics ³Post-Flash
Cinema.²

Another digital cinema pioneer Jason Wishnow (who two years ago 
organized
the first festival of films for the Palm Pilot platform) suggested that 
a
movie trailer could be the prototype of a new genre appropriate to
micro-cinema running on cell phones, Palms, Pocket PCs, and similar
devices. He also discussed aesthetic features that characterized
micro-cinema during the one hundred years of its history (from 
Kinetoscope
to Palm) such as close-ups and loops.

On a distribution side, Ira Deutschman (Emerging Pictures) talked about
his company¹s plan to have 200 digital movie theatres in three years by
placing digital projectors in already existing but under-utilized
screening spaces such as museums. In his system, digital film files 
will
be downloaded to a local server installed in a theatre, since the files
will be too big to download in real time.

In June, I found the cutting edge of moving image culture in Los 
Angeles.
However, I am spending the next three months in Berlin, and I am sure I
will see enough for another report by the end of the summer.

---------------------------------
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