Search

The modern viewer is familiar with the cinematic paradigm, in which he or she is fixed in a darkened auditorium. However, current audio-visual technologies introduce new viewing modes. This article explores the spatial properties of the projection system (projector, screen surface, projection beam and the viewer), during the transition from analogue to digital technology, with paradigms from the 1960s’ expanded cinema to current multimedia installations, in particular works defined as digitally expanded cinema. Our aim is to explore how the projection space can be combined with architectural space, using expanded cinema design principles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Time is precious to stand-up comedians. Jokes are told by the comedian and laughter is required as an immediate response. Failure to stay 'in the moment' will often result in a comedian losing their ability to read and manipulate their audience (Jaeger 2006: 123). They will be said to have 'died' on stage. This language of life and death is also central to the notion of time in performance. Live performance, traditionally, has been thought of as the physically co-present unfolding of a piece of artistic expression. Once mediatized, it becomes something else (Phelan 1993: 146), something 'dead'. This article discusses the ways in which comedians use technology to extend their act beyond the physically co-present moment of the performance and collaborate with media to create a timeless performance experience. Using examples of practice as research undertaken by the author and work by well-known comedians, the article argues that time can be flexible in video-fed performance, achieving both presence and directness in communication, that recorded media can shift the site of live performance to an indefinite future by relating itself to the present-tense situation of the viewer and that the framing and interactivity of online media present a live method of interacting with recorded media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice [...] We never look at one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are. (Berger 1983: 1) This statement denotes our searching nature, claiming that as viewers we are eager to make sense of what we see, constructing connections across our vision, piecing together fragments of information in search of meaning. We have a central vision that we use to focus on main events and a peripheral one that allows us to be drawn to other areas of interest. Today, in everyday life, there is a constant battle for our peripheral vision, we are continually distracted by a range of moving images. Each time we enter a public space or switch on our computer screens, advertisers have found a way to push their products on us, and now a plethora of moving images have become an accepted part of our experience. This article attempts to explore the aesthetics of this recent phenomenon of multi-imaging to see if there is a historical context in relation to storytelling and to find out what can be learnt from the past in order to help build strategies for creating narratives of the future. I examine a range of visual examples and review the technical and cultural aspects of stories that have been told using more than one image and attempt to draw comparisons. Starting with the visual storytelling of fourteenth century diptych religious paintings, I go on to look at the impact of perspective, then early film form, comparing its arrival to recent developments in digital technology, discuss Abel Gance's cinematic epic Napoleon (1927) and its relation to Russian montage. The avant-garde, Expanded Cinema, and internet art is also examined. The context of my work is practice as research and I discuss this in relation to the conception, writing, directing, editing and exhibition of my film Writ in Water (2009), a narrative film designed for three-screen presentation in a cinematic context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]