Future Cinema

CinemaThe classical cinema can be defined as collective experience of one fixed stable projector projecting a moving image on one screen in one room. Therefore each change of one of these factors, for example multiple screens, panorama screens, moving projections, different rooms, is already an expansion of the contemporary practices of cinema.

The classical cinema can be defined as collective experience of one fixed stable projector projecting a moving image on one screen in one room. Therefore each change of one of these factors, for example multiple screens, panorama screens, moving projections, different rooms, is already an expansion of the contemporary practices of cinema.

The conditions of cinematographic art have changed radically over the past years. On the verge of a material revolution new possibilities of camera and production techniques have emerged that also allow new modes of narration and image languages.

The conditions of cinematographic art have changed radically over the past years. On the verge of a material revolution new possibilities of camera and production techniques have emerged that also allow new modes of narration and image languages.

» FUTURE CINEMA is the first major international exhibition of current art practice in the domain of video, film, computer and web based installations that embody and anticipate new cinematic techniques and modes of expression.

» FUTURE CINEMA is the first major international exhibition of current art practice in the domain of video, film, computer and web based installations that embody and anticipate new cinematic techniques and modes of expression.

» Eija-Liisa Ahtila :: CONSOLATION SERVICE, 1999Consolation Service follows a young finnish couple, Anni and J-P, as they make public their decision to divorce. It is set in early spring in Helsinki, with its frozen landscape on the cusp of thawing.

» Eija-Liisa Ahtila :: CONSOLATION SERVICE, 1999Consolation Service follows a young finnish couple, Anni and J-P, as they make public their decision to divorce. It is set in early spring in Helsinki, with its frozen landscape on the cusp of thawing.

» Judith Barry :: Imagination, Dead Imagine, 1991For Imagination, dead imagine [1991] an androgynous head is projected as if contained within a mirrored Minimalist cube. Sounds of the head slowly breathing fill the space. The head is serene, waiting. Suddenly a substance pours over it from all sides, drenching it in what appears to be a bodily fluid. The spectator wants to turn away, but cannot. Horror at the repulsive nature of the substances is replaced by fascination with their beauty as they apparently change into majestic but abstract landscapes

» Judith Barry :: Imagination, Dead Imagine, 1991For Imagination, dead imagine [1991] an androgynous head is projected as if contained within a mirrored Minimalist cube. Sounds of the head slowly breathing fill the space. The head is serene, waiting. Suddenly a substance pours over it from all sides, drenching it in what appears to be a bodily fluid. The spectator wants to turn away, but cannot. Horror at the repulsive nature of the substances is replaced by fascination with their beauty as they apparently change into majestic but abstract landscapes

» Maurice Benayoun :: So.So.So. (Somebody, Somewhere, Sometime) , 2002So.So.So. is an interactive installation by Maurice Benayoun that plunges the onlooker in the middle of the moment the one of photography which reveals a complex network of characteristic signs from our own experience of reality. What the visitor finds with the help of VR binoculars is a series of spherical panoramas which depict a moment, the same one, at 7.47 in the morning in different places involving different persons in different situations.

» Maurice Benayoun :: So.So.So. (Somebody, Somewhere, Sometime) , 2002So.So.So. is an interactive installation by Maurice Benayoun that plunges the onlooker in the middle of the moment the one of photography which reveals a complex network of characteristic signs from our own experience of reality. What the visitor finds with the help of VR binoculars is a series of spherical panoramas which depict a moment, the same one, at 7.47 in the morning in different places involving different persons in different situations.

» Jean-Louis Boissier :: La Morale Sensitive , 2001La Morale sensitive takes its title from a philosophical project that Rousseau never completed, concerning the process of learning and experimentation through the phenomenon of perception. Using images taken for Rousseau’s real life works. By moving a hand in a smooth gesture over the table, visitors can displace the images and produce an act of visual montage. Every move excites, evokes, and causes the selection and extraction of another word, a text excerpt and a new video association.

» Jean-Louis Boissier :: La Morale Sensitive , 2001La Morale sensitive takes its title from a philosophical project that Rousseau never completed, concerning the process of learning and experimentation through the phenomenon of perception. Using images taken for Rousseau’s real life works. By moving a hand in a smooth gesture over the table, visitors can displace the images and produce an act of visual montage. Every move excites, evokes, and causes the selection and extraction of another word, a text excerpt and a new video association.

» Max Dean :: Mist, 2002; Mist is a video projection on three screens, arranged in a shallow horseshoe configuration that emulates the physical shape of Niagara Falls. There are six different apparitions. The order of the video sequences of each woman's legs' appearances is set up to be at random, creating both anticipation and perhaps frustration, as a computer orders the playing of all six clips before reshuffling and re-presenting the six sequences. One may have to watch the same pair of legs doing their stint several times, or else wait a while to glimpse again the performance of a pair particularly fancied.

» Max Dean :: Mist, 2002; Mist is a video projection on three screens, arranged in a shallow horseshoe configuration that emulates the physical shape of Niagara Falls. There are six different apparitions. The order of the video sequences of each woman's legs' appearances is set up to be at random, creating both anticipation and perhaps frustration, as a computer orders the playing of all six clips before reshuffling and re-presenting the six sequences. One may have to watch the same pair of legs doing their stint several times, or else wait a while to glimpse again the performance of a pair particularly fancied.

» Perry Hoberman :: Let*s Make a Monster, 2001Perry Hoberman’s performance accompanies Kiasma’s extensive summer exhibition, Future Cinema. In addition to his installations, Perry Hoberman, a media artist from New York, has used classic cinematic elements in his art. During this live performance Hoberman will be mixing a new collage from Hollywood horror movies

» Perry Hoberman :: Let*s Make a Monster, 2001Perry Hoberman’s performance accompanies Kiasma’s extensive summer exhibition, Future Cinema. In addition to his installations, Perry Hoberman, a media artist from New York, has used classic cinematic elements in his art. During this live performance Hoberman will be mixing a new collage from Hollywood horror movies

» Perry Hoberman :: The Sub-Division of the Electric Light, 1996The Sub-Division of the Electric Light is a nostalgia machine allowing the viewer to move from room to room and operate ancient machine and slide projectors loaded with audio-visual footage of strangely shifting scenarios. This active intervention into the flow of time itself creates a landscape of the history of media while at the same time referring to the increasing speed of our present day consumption of new technologies and to the loss inherent in progress.

» Perry Hoberman :: The Sub-Division of the Electric Light, 1996The Sub-Division of the Electric Light is a nostalgia machine allowing the viewer to move from room to room and operate ancient machine and slide projectors loaded with audio-visual footage of strangely shifting scenarios. This active intervention into the flow of time itself creates a landscape of the history of media while at the same time referring to the increasing speed of our present day consumption of new technologies and to the loss inherent in progress.

» Ian Howard :: SweetStalking, 2001Sweet Stalking is an interactive work which requires the viewer to explore a narrative relationship played out by the main female character.Voyeurism, aspects of cinema verite and violent recording techniques, rather than recording violence, contribute to the sense of stalking the woman and stalking meaning in a relationship.

» Ian Howard :: SweetStalking, 2001Sweet Stalking is an interactive work which requires the viewer to explore a narrative relationship played out by the main female character.Voyeurism, aspects of cinema verite and violent recording techniques, rather than recording violence, contribute to the sense of stalking the woman and stalking meaning in a relationship.

» Isaac Julien :: Long Road to Mazatlan, 1999The presentation will consist of a related trilogy of video installations and a recent work, which Julien produced during a fall 1999 residency at Art Pace in San Antonio, Texas. A catalogue will be published to accompany the exhibition. This publication will be the most comprehensive book on Julien’s work and will bring together the artist’s writings for the first time.

» Isaac Julien :: Long Road to Mazatlan, 1999The presentation will consist of a related trilogy of video installations and a recent work, which Julien produced during a fall 1999 residency at Art Pace in San Antonio, Texas. A catalogue will be published to accompany the exhibition. This publication will be the most comprehensive book on Julien’s work and will bring together the artist’s writings for the first time.

» William Kentridge :: Overvloed, 1999William Kentridge’s dealing with the medium film is in a way a documentation of the actual production process. When the drawings are filmed in their continuous change they become animations as an ephemeral metaphor for memory, cognition and repression. Overvloed (Dutch: »flood«, »abundance«) was produced in 1999 as a site-specific work for the monumental Civic Hall in Amsterdam. The film was projected onto its vaulted baroque ceiling.

» William Kentridge :: Overvloed, 1999William Kentridge’s dealing with the medium film is in a way a documentation of the actual production process. When the drawings are filmed in their continuous change they become animations as an ephemeral metaphor for memory, cognition and repression. Overvloed (Dutch: »flood«, »abundance«) was produced in 1999 as a site-specific work for the monumental Civic Hall in Amsterdam. The film was projected onto its vaulted baroque ceiling.

» Julien Maire :: Demi-Pas, 2002"Demi-Pas" is a short film and is projected using a "reversed camera" technique. A projector has been converted to house micro-mechanisms that produce animated images using a principle similar to that of cinematography. "Demi-Pas" thus finds its own narrative methods, its own action and images, like a kind of projected theater. Real objects and photographic material are transposed within the projector. The film narrates a tale of one man's daily routine and highlighs both the simplicity and the complexity of this reality.

» Julien Maire :: Demi-Pas, 2002"Demi-Pas" is a short film and is projected using a "reversed camera" technique. A projector has been converted to house micro-mechanisms that produce animated images using a principle similar to that of cinematography. "Demi-Pas" thus finds its own narrative methods, its own action and images, like a kind of projected theater. Real objects and photographic material are transposed within the projector. The film narrates a tale of one man's daily routine and highlighs both the simplicity and the complexity of this reality.

» Michael Naimark :: Be Now Here, 1995-2002Be Now Here is an installation about landscape and public places. Visitors gain a strong sense of place by wearing 3-D glasses and stepping into an immersive virtual environment. The imagery is of public plazas on the UNESCO World Heritage Centre's list of endangered places - Jerusalem, Dubrovnik, Timbuktu, and Angkor, Cambodia – places both exotic and disturbing. The style is ambient, as if the imagery is live.

» Michael Naimark :: Be Now Here, 1995-2002Be Now Here is an installation about landscape and public places. Visitors gain a strong sense of place by wearing 3-D glasses and stepping into an immersive virtual environment. The imagery is of public plazas on the UNESCO World Heritage Centre's list of endangered places - Jerusalem, Dubrovnik, Timbuktu, and Angkor, Cambodia – places both exotic and disturbing. The style is ambient, as if the imagery is live.

» Mark Napier :: The Waiting Room, 2002"The Waiting Room" is a virtual space that 50 users share through the Internet. The visitors to the space are strangers, united by the software, the Internet, and the artwork itself. In this space the visitor becomes a participant in a moving painting. Their actions activate and shape the artwork.

» Mark Napier :: The Waiting Room, 2002"The Waiting Room" is a virtual space that 50 users share through the Internet. The visitors to the space are strangers, united by the software, the Internet, and the artwork itself. In this space the visitor becomes a participant in a moving painting. Their actions activate and shape the artwork.

» Jim Campbell :: Church on Fifth Avenue, 2001Illuminated Average #1 Hitchcock's Psycho , 2000

» Jim Campbell :: Church on Fifth Avenue, 2001Illuminated Average #1 Hitchcock's Psycho , 2000

» Bill Seaman :: The Exquisite Mechanism of Shivers, 199733 brief image and musical scenes are each based on a sentence of ten words. These »exquisite« image and sound compositions are mechanically combined, but internally organized by a poetic logic (»shivers«). »The fragmentary aspect of ›splinter‹ as well as the oscillation of ›trembles‹ release appropriate associations, as the coherences in meaning of the work are formed into sentences of oscillating sense from the 330 fragmentations of the menu.

» Bill Seaman :: The Exquisite Mechanism of Shivers, 199733 brief image and musical scenes are each based on a sentence of ten words. These »exquisite« image and sound compositions are mechanically combined, but internally organized by a poetic logic (»shivers«). »The fragmentary aspect of ›splinter‹ as well as the oscillation of ›trembles‹ release appropriate associations, as the coherences in meaning of the work are formed into sentences of oscillating sense from the 330 fragmentations of the menu.

» Maciej Wisniewski :: Instant Places, 2002Instant Places is a software fiction. It creates a network formed ad hoc to connect dispersed data places. These data places can stretch over multiple computers and multiple networks. They are not bound by geography, time and space. The installation at the ZKM consisted of two computers connected to the network

» Maciej Wisniewski :: Instant Places, 2002Instant Places is a software fiction. It creates a network formed ad hoc to connect dispersed data places. These data places can stretch over multiple computers and multiple networks. They are not bound by geography, time and space. The installation at the ZKM consisted of two computers connected to the network

» Soft(ware) Cinema is a dynamic computer-driven media installation. The viewers are presented with an infinite series of narrative films constructed on the fly by the custom software. Using the systems of rules defined by the author, the software decides what appears on the screen, where, and in which sequence; it also chooses music tracks. The elements are chosen from a media database which at present contains 4 hours of video and animation, 3 hours of voice over narration, and 5 hours of music.

» Soft(ware) Cinema is a dynamic computer-driven media installation. The viewers are presented with an infinite series of narrative films constructed on the fly by the custom software. Using the systems of rules defined by the author, the software decides what appears on the screen, where, and in which sequence; it also chooses music tracks. The elements are chosen from a media database which at present contains 4 hours of video and animation, 3 hours of voice over narration, and 5 hours of music.

SOFT CINEMA: FORM

» Soft Cinema explorers 4 ideas:

1. "Algorithmic Cinema."Using systems of rules, software controls both the layout of the screen (number and positions of frames) and the sequences of media elements which appear in these frames. 2. "Macro-cinema." Soft Cinema imagines how moving images may look when the Net will mature, and when unlimited bandwidth and very high resolution displays would become the norm.3. "Multimedia cinema." In Soft Cinema video is used as only one type of representation among others: 2D animation, motion graphics, 3D scenes, diagrams, etc.4. "Database Cinema." The media elements are selected from a large database to construct a potentially unlimited number of different narrative films.

» Soft Cinema explorers 4 ideas:

1. "Algorithmic Cinema."Using systems of rules, software controls both the layout of the screen (number and positions of frames) and the sequences of media elements which appear in these frames. 2. "Macro-cinema." Soft Cinema imagines how moving images may look when the Net will mature, and when unlimited bandwidth and very high resolution displays would become the norm.3. "Multimedia cinema." In Soft Cinema video is used as only one type of representation among others: 2D animation, motion graphics, 3D scenes, diagrams, etc.4. "Database Cinema." The media elements are selected from a large database to construct a potentially unlimited number of different narrative films.

Algorithmic» 1. The first is algorithmic editing of media materials. Each video clips used in

Soft Cinema is assigned keywords which describe both the "content" of a clip (geographical location, presence of people in the scene, etc.) and its "formal" properties (dominant color, dominant line orientation, contrast, camera movement, etc.). Some of the keywords are generated automatically using image processing software while others are input by hand. The program (written in LINGO) assembles the video track by selecting clips one after another using a system rules (i.e. an algorithm). Diffirent systems of rules are possible: for instance, selecting a clip which is closest in color or type of motion to the previous one; selecting a clip which matches the previous one party in content and party in color, repalcing only every other clip to create a kind of parallel montage sequence, and on on.

» 1. The first is algorithmic editing of media materials. Each video clips used in Soft Cinema is assigned keywords which describe both the "content" of a clip (geographical location, presence of people in the scene, etc.) and its "formal" properties (dominant color, dominant line orientation, contrast, camera movement, etc.). Some of the keywords are generated automatically using image processing software while others are input by hand. The program (written in LINGO) assembles the video track by selecting clips one after another using a system rules (i.e. an algorithm). Diffirent systems of rules are possible: for instance, selecting a clip which is closest in color or type of motion to the previous one; selecting a clip which matches the previous one party in content and party in color, repalcing only every other clip to create a kind of parallel montage sequence, and on on.

Algorithmic

Database

» 2. The second idea is database narrative. Rather than beginning with a script and then creating media elements which visualise it, I investigate a diffirent paradigm: starting with a large database and then generating narratives from it. In Soft Cinema, The media elements are selected from a database of a few hundred video clips to construct a potentially unlimited number of different short films.

» 2. The second idea is database narrative. Rather than beginning with a script and then creating media elements which visualise it, I investigate a diffirent paradigm: starting with a large database and then generating narratives from it. In Soft Cinema, The media elements are selected from a database of a few hundred video clips to construct a potentially unlimited number of different short films.

Database

Macro-Cinema» 3. The third idea is what they call macro-cinema. While filmmakers such as

Peter Greenaway and Mike Figgis have already used a multi-screen format for fiction films, thinking about the visual conventions of Graphical User Interface as used in computer culture gives us a different way to do macro-cinema. If a computer user employs windows of different proportions and sizes, why not adopt the similar aesthetics for cinema? In Soft Cinema, the generation of each video begins with the computer program semi-randomly breaking the screen into a number of square regions of different dimensions. During the playback different clips are assigned to different regions. In this way, software determines both temporal and spatial organization of a work, i.e. both sequencing of clips and their composition.

» 3. The third idea is what they call macro-cinema. While filmmakers such as Peter Greenaway and Mike Figgis have already used a multi-screen format for fiction films, thinking about the visual conventions of Graphical User Interface as used in computer culture gives us a different way to do macro-cinema. If a computer user employs windows of different proportions and sizes, why not adopt the similar aesthetics for cinema? In Soft Cinema, the generation of each video begins with the computer program semi-randomly breaking the screen into a number of square regions of different dimensions. During the playback different clips are assigned to different regions. In this way, software determines both temporal and spatial organization of a work, i.e. both sequencing of clips and their composition.

Multi-Media

» 4. The forth idea is to create a multi-media cinema. In Soft Cinema video is used as just one type of re presentation among others: 2D animation, motion graphics (i.e. animated text), stills, 3D scenes (as in computer games), diagrams, etc. In addition, Soft Cinema supplements a "normal" video image with other types of lens-based imaginary commonly used today by industry, science, medicine and military: the low resolution web cam image, an infrared image, edge-detected image as employed in computer vision, etc. While some music videos and artist videos already mix some of these different types of imagery in one work, Soft Cinema assigns each type of imagery to a separate window in order to dramatize the new status of ﾒ normal ﾓ video, photographic and film image today ﾐ no longer the dominant but just one source of visual information about reality among many others.

» 4. The forth idea is to create a multi-media cinema. In Soft Cinema video is used as just one type of re presentation among others: 2D animation, motion graphics (i.e. animated text), stills, 3D scenes (as in computer games), diagrams, etc. In addition, Soft Cinema supplements a "normal" video image with other types of lens-based imaginary commonly used today by industry, science, medicine and military: the low resolution web cam image, an infrared image, edge-detected image as employed in computer vision, etc. While some music videos and artist videos already mix some of these different types of imagery in one work, Soft Cinema assigns each type of imagery to a separate window in order to dramatize the new status of ﾒ normal ﾓ video, photographic and film image today ﾐ no longer the dominant but just one source of visual information about reality among many others.