What Is Digital Ginema?

Lea Manouich

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Cinema, the Art of the IndexThus far, most disctrssions of cinema in the digital age have focused on chepossibilities ofinteractive narrative. It is not hard to understand why: sincethe majority of viewers and critics equate cinema with storytelling, cligital

media are understood as somerhing that will let cinema tell its stories in anew way. Yet as exciting as the ideas of a viewer participating in a story,

choosing different paths through the narrative space, and inceracting with

characters may be, they address only one aspect of cinema that is neither

unique nor, as many will argue, essential to it: narrarive.

The challenge that digital media pose ro cinema extends far beyond

the issue oí narrative. Digital media redslÊne tllq vqry idçqtity of,ciqeqìa

In a Hollywood symposium on the digitization of the cinema, one of the

participants provocatively referred ro movies ut "flglgigg]' and to human

actors as "organics" and "goft fuzzies."r Âs these rerms accurately suggest,

what used to be cinema's defining characteristics have become just the de-fault options, with many others available. \üíhen one can "enrer" a virtual

three-dimensional space, viewing flat images projected on the screen is

hardly the only option. \7hen, given enough time and money, almosr every-

thing can be simulated in a computer, @possibilitv.

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This "crisis" of cinema's identity also affects the terms and the categories

used to theorize about cinema's past. French film theorisr Christian lVÍetz

wrote in the 1970s that "Most films shot today, good or bad, original or nor,'commelc:ia!'e1 not, hu.rJï,; ;t_" tnir -."rtrt. rn

a sollgftgger-gg.qrç_,"''? In identiS'ing fictional films as a "supergenre" oftwentieth-century cinema, Metz did not bocher to mention another charac-

teristic of this genre because at that time it was roo obvious: 6ctional films

are lìae action fil-t,T*çç.q fil-r .on ifiqd photogrupli.

age of computer simulation and digital compositing, invoking this live-

action characteristic becomes crucial in defrning the specificity oftwentieth-

century cinema, From the perspective ofa future historian ofvisual culture.

the difíerences between classical Hollywood films, European art films, and

avant-garde films (apart from abstract ones) may appear to be less significant

than this common feature: thev relied on lens-based recordings of reality.

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Virtual Marilyn, the digital synthespian.Courtesy of Scott Billups.

This essay is concerned with the effect ofthe so-called digital revolution on

cinema, as defined by its "supergenre" as fictional live-action film.r

During cinema's history, a whole repertoire of techniques (lighting, art

direction, the use ofdifferent film stocks and lenses, etc.) was developed to

modifi the basic record obtained by a film apparatus. And yet behind even

the most stylized cinematic images we can discern the bluntness, the steril-

ity, the banality of early nineteenth-century photographs-No matter how

complex its stylistic innovations, the cinema has found its base in these

deposits of reality, these samples obtained by a methodical and prosaic pro-

cess. Cinema emerged oÌrc of the same impulse that engendered naturalism,

courr stenography, and wax museums. Cinema is the g-"g.gft{rg-ig.dç5;, it

an attempt to make art out of a footprint,

Even for Andrey TarkovskS film-painter par excellence, cinema's identiry

lay in its ability to record reality. Once, during a public discussion in Mos-

cow sometime in the 1970s, he was asked whether he was interested in

making abstract films. He replied that there can be no such thing. Cinema's

most basic gesture is to open the shutter and to start the frlm rolling,

recording whatever happens to be in front of the lens. For Tarkovsky, an

abstract cinema was thus impossible.

But what happens to cinema's indexical identitv if it is now possible to--

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disital paint program; to cut, bend, stretch and stitch dt.gili?".i-fi1.$ r1!1&el-:'into,rçooç=sh-ing" rhar-has-p-erf-eç-t-ph-ç,r-ographic ^çrEdib,ility,,?-i!lto_y.gb:!-y.,en9YglqçlqqllY*flesdl '

This essay will address the meaning of these changes in the filmmaking

process from the point of view of the larger cultural history of the moving

image. Seen in this context, the manual construction of images in digital

cinema represents a return to nineteenth-century precinematic nractices"

when images were hand-painted and hand-animated. Ât the turn of the

twentieth century, cinema was to delegate these manual techniques to ani-

mation and deÊne itself as a recording medium. As cinema enters the digital

age, these techniques are again becoming commonplace in the Êlmmaking

process. Consequently cinçqra can no -longqr be,c!çg!y Cft-ç-tftgqllkd--ft9ll-

1!lgll19t: I! -i9 q9 lgagcraalqdçxlçal nqediq çeçlrqglogv but, rather, a sub-

geug-gf.Eingnc.

This argument will be developed in three stages. I will first follow a

historical trajectory from nineteenth-centÌrry techniques for creating mov-

ing images to twentieth-century cinema and animation. Next I will arrive

ar a definition of digital cinema by abstracting the common features and

interface metaphors of a variety of computer softwares and hardwares that

are currencly replacing traditional 6lm technology. Seen together, these fea-

tures and metaphors suggest a distinct logic of a digital moving image. This

logic subordinates the photographic and che cinematic to the painterly and

the graphic, destroying cinema's identity as a media art. Finally I will exam-

ine different production contexts that already use digital moving images-

Hollywood films, music videos, CD-ROM games and agsv/61ks-in eçdg1

to see if and how this logic has begun to manifest itself.

A Brief Archaeology of Moving PicturesAs testified by its original names (kinetoscope, cinematograph, moving pic-

tures), cinema was understood, from its birth, @that finally succeeded in creati ncing illusion of dynamic reality.

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If we approach cinema in this way (rather than as the art of audiovisualnarrative, or the art of a projected image, or the art of coilective sDecra-torship, etc.), we can see it superseding previous techniques for creating anddisplaying moving images.

These eadier techniques shared a number of common characteristics.First, rhey all relied on hand-painted or hand_drawn images. The magiclantern slides were painte-d at least until rhe 1g50s; so.\,vere the images usedin the Phenakisriscope, the Thaumatrope, the zootrope, the praxinoscope,the choreuroscope, and numerous orher nineteenth-century procinematicdevices. Even Muybridge's cerebra rcd, Zoopraxiscope lectures of the lgg0sfeatured not actual photographs but corored drawings painred afrer thep,hotographs.a

Not only were rhe images crealed manually, rhey were manually ani_.mated. In Robertson's phantasmagoriu, *@lantern operarors moved behind rhe screen in order to make projected im-ages appear ro advance and withdraw.r More often, an exhibitor used onlyhis hands, rarher than his whole body, to put the images into motion. Oneanimarion technique invorved using mechanical slides consisting of a num-ber of layers. An exhibitor wourd slide the layers to animate rhe image.6Anorher technique was ro move a long slide containìng separare imagesslowly in front of a magic rantern lens. Nineteenth-century optical roysenjoyed in private homes also required manual acrion ro creare movemenr:twiding the strings of the Thaumarrope, rotating the Zoorrope,s cylinder,turning the Vviscope! handle.

rt was nor until the rasr decade of the nineteenth century that the au-tomatic generation of images and their automatic projection were finailycombined. A mechanical eye became coupled with a mechanical heart; pho-tography mer rhe morof. As a result,"crnsrnz-a very particular regime ofthe visible-was born. Irregulariry, nonuniformity, the accident, and othertraces of the human body, which previously had inevitabry accompaniedmoving image exhibirions, were replaced by rhe uniformity of machinevision.T A machine that, like a conveyer bert, was now spitting our images,all having the same appearance, ail the same size, all moving ar rhe samespeed, like a line of marching soldiers.

cinema also eliminated the discrere character of both space and move-ment in moving images. Before cinema, the moving element was visuallyseparated from rhe static background, as in a mechanical slide show or Rev_

naud's Praxinoscope Theater (1892).8 The movement itself was limitecl inrange and affecred only a cleady defined figure rather than the whole image.Thus, typical acrions would include a bouncing ball, a raised hand or eyes,a butterÍly moving back and forth over the heads offascinated children-simple vecrors charted across still fields.

cinema's most immediate predecessors share somerhing else. As thenineteenth-century obsessioR with movement intensified, devices that couldanimate more rhan just a few images became increasingly popular. Âll of6hsrn-shs Zootrope, the Phonoscope, the Tachyscope, the Kinetoscope*

Hb!9@Jg sequences of images featuring complete actions thatcould be played repeatedly. The Thaumatrope (1825), in which a disk withtwo different images painted on each face was rapidly rotared by twirlinga strings artached ro ir, was in its essence a loop in its simplest form:two elements replacing one another in succession. In the zootrope (rg67)and its numerous variations, approximately a dozen images were arrangedaround the perimeter of a circle.e rhe Mutoscope, popular in Americathroughout the 1890s, increased the duration ofthe loop by placing alargernumber of images radially on an axle.ro Even Edison's Kinetoscope (rgg2-1896), the first modern cinematic machine to employ film, conrinued toartange images in a loop.tt Fifty feet of film translated to an approximatelytwenty-second-long presentation. The genre's porential development wascut short when cinema adopted a much longer narrative form.

From Animation to Cinemaonce the cinema was stabilized as a technologv, it cut all references to icsorigins in artifice. Everything rhat characrerized moving pictures before thetwentieth century-6hs manual construction of images, loop actions, thediscrete nature of space and movement-was delegated to cinema's bastardrelative, its supplement, its shadow: animation. ïwentieth-century anima-tion became a depository for nineteenth-century moving-image techniquesleft behind bv cinema.

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sparselyand j$egularlysampryp-Jhg jgf:t- jl!L-pli"g of -qrio" by u frl^ . Godut{t d.fi.ilto! qf

cinema as "truth 24 ftames per second"); and space constructed from sepa-

rate imaqe lavers.

In contrast, cinema works hard to erase any traces of its own production

process, including any indication that the images we see could have been

consrructed rather than recorded. It denies that the reality it shows often

does not exist outside of the Êlm image, the image that was arrived at by

photographing an already impossible space, which itself was put together

through the use of models, mirrors, and matte paintings, and which was

then combined with other images through optical printing. It pretends to

be a simple recording of an aheady existing reality-both to a viewer and

to itself.r2 Cinema's public image stressed the aura of reality "captured"

on film, thus implying that cinema was about photographing what existed

before the cameÍa, rather than about "creating the 'never-was"' of special

effects.tr Rear projection and blue screen photography, matte paintings

and glass shots, mirrors and miniatures, push development, oPtical effects,

and orher techniques that allowed filmmakers to constfuct and alter the

moving images, and thus could reveal that cinema was not really different

from animation, wefe pushed to cinema's periphery by its practitioners, his-

torians, and critics.ta

T-oday,wit!.-thç"cblfi-Lqd-rgiga*l-pçd-ia'çtrç!-ç-psrcigc-lizçA-rechniques

move to the center.

What Is Digital Ginema? visible sign of this shift is the new role that compurer-generated special

effects have come to play in Hollywood industry in the last few years' Many

recent blockbusters have been driven by special effecrs; feeding on rheir

popularity. Hollywood has even created a new Íninigenre- "fbg-Iguki"g

.of. . ." videos and books that reveal how special effects are created.

To illustrate some of the possibilities of digital filmmaking, I will make

reference to the use of special effects in a few recent, key Hollywood films'

Until recently, Hollywood studios were the only places that had the money

to pay for digital tools and for the labor involved in producing digital ef-

fects. However, the shift to digital media affects not iust Hollywood but

frlmmaking as a whole. As traditional film technology is universally being

replaced by digital technology, the logic of the frlmmaking process is being

redefined. \(hat I describe below are the new principles of digital filmmak-

ing that are equally valid for individual or collective film productiQns, re-

gardless of whether they are using the most expensive professional hardware/

software packages or their consumer equivalents.

Consider, then, the following principles of digital filmmaking:

l. Rather than filming physical reality, it is now possible to generate âlm-

like scenes directly in a computer with the help of 3D compurer animation.

Therefore, live-action foorage is displaced fiom its role as the only possible

material from which the finished film is constructed.

2. orce live-action footage is digitized (or directly recorded in a cligital

format), it loses its privileged indexical relationship to pro-filmic reality.

Th' lgrPgl",l,-d9:' "o-: -*'l-lg"l'"I-b-ç-ly9:l- il.-i-ig-'- o.agtlçc tlusccl'.h: p,b-gjger-p-I-çl*i-, *l i-*lg:--'i:i:-',+ il*1 "?1'-1!.Pl.o-8--'3-: ï9 3lJgererynl!çt-ifSd j.n-e-3-D-€sil2bics Package,_since they are Trgg fl.^T !h-.-f1-'material: pixels.4-q4pftels.19Êedlgss'-qf-qh4ryf,sl{rr.S"Lq.bg-ç*:i-ly gl"lglgd'

substituted one for another, and so on. Live-action footage is reduced to iust

a,nother sraúi+no ditreúmúú irn4Áèi th4iíili; è;ãied ma;üiit';" -

3. If live-action footage was left intact in traditional filmmaking, now it

functions as raw material for further Ç-Qlgpp{ging, animating, and-rlqryb-

-*A1!r a result, while retaining visual realism unique to the photographic

process, film obtains the plasticity that previously was possible only in

painting or animation. To use the suggestive title of a popular morphing

software, digitat frlmmakers work with "elastic reality." For example, the

opening shot of Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, Paramount Piccures, 1994;

special effects by Industrial Light and Magic) rracks an unusually long

and extremely incricate flight of a feather. To creare the shot, the real

feather was Êlmed against a blue background in different positions; this

marerial was rhen animated and composited against shots of a landscape.16

The result: a new kind of realism, that can be described as "something which

is intended to look exactly as ifir could have happened, although it reaÌly

could not."

l. Previously, ediring and special effecrs were strictly sepafare activities.

An editor worked on ordering sequences of images together; any interven-

tion wirhin an image was handled by special-effects specialists. The com-

puter collapses this distinction. The manipulation of individual images via a

paint program or algorithmic image processing becomes as easy as arranging

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sequences of images in time. Both simply involve "cut and paste.,' As thisbasic corrrputer command exemplifies, modification of digital images (orother digitized data) is not sensitive to disrincrions oftime and space or ofdifferences ofscale. Thus, reordering sequences of images in rime, composit-ing them together in space, modifring parts of an individual image, andchanging individual pixels become rhe same operarion, conceptually andpractically

J. Given the preceding principles, we can define digital film in rhis way:

digital film = live-action material * painting * image processing * compositing

. * 2D computer animation * 3D computer animarion.

Live-action material can be recorded either on film or video or directly ina digital formar.rT Painting, image processing, and compurer animation arethe processes of modifying already exisrenr images as well as of creating newones. In fact, the very distinction berween crearion and modification, so clearin film-based media (shooting versus darkroom processes in photography,production versus posrproduction in cinema), no longer applies to digitalcinema, since each image, regardless of its origin, goes through a number ofprograms before making it to rhe final film.'8

Let us summarize the principles discussed thus far. Live-action foorage isnow onÌy raw material to be manipulated by hand: animated, combinedwith 3D compurer-generated scenes, and painted over. The final images areconstructed manually from different elements; and all the elements are ei-ther created entirely from scratch or modified by hand.

lüle can finally answer rhe quesrion "\7hat is digital cinema?,' Digitalcinema is a particular case of animation that uses live-action footage as oneof its many elements. Í

This ca' be reread in view of the history of the movin g image sketchedearlier. Manual consrrucrion and animation of images gave birth ro cinemaand slipped into the margins . . . only to reappear as the fouqdation of digitalcinema. The history of rhe moving image thus makes a full circle. Bomfromaninwtion, cinema pasbed anim.ation to ìts boundary, only to becomc one particularcase of anination in tbe end.

The relationship between "normal" filmmaking and special effects issimilarly reversed. special effecrs, which involved human intervention inro

machine-recorded footage and which were therefore delegated to cinema's

periphery throughout its history become the norm of digital filmmaking.

The same applies to the relationship between production and postpro-

duction. Cinema traditionally involved arcanging physical reality to be

filmed through the use of sets, models, art direction, cinematography, and so

on. Occasional manipulation of recorded 6lm (for instance, through optical

printing) was negligible compared with the extensive manipulation of real-

iry in front of a camera. In digital filmmaking, qhot footage is no longer the

6nal point but just raw material to be manipulated in a computer, where

the real construction of a scene will take place. In short, the production

becomes just the first stage of postproduction.

The following examples illustrate this shift from rearranging reality to

rearranging its images. From the analog en'. fot a scene in Zabriskie Point

Q970), Michelangelo Antonioni, trying to achieve a particulady saturated

coloE ordered a freld of gnss to be painted. From the digital era: to create

the launch sequeoce íà Apollt ti (Universal , 199); special effects by Digital

Domain), the crew shot footage at the original location of the launch at Cape

Canaveral. The artists at Digital Domain scanned the film and altered it

on computer workstations, removing recent buildings, adding grass to the

launch pad, and painting the skies to make them more dramatic. This

altered film was then mapped onto 3D planes to create a virtual set that

was animated to match a 1SO-degree dolly movement of a camera follow-

ing a rising rocket.te

The last example brings us to yet another conceptualization of digital

çinsma-4s painting. In his book-length study of digital photographyìüTilliam J. Mitchell focuses our attention on what he calls the inherent

mutability of a digital image:

The essential characteristic ofdigital information is that it can be manipulated easily

and very rapidly by computer. It is simply a matter of substituting new digits for

old. . . . Computational tools for transforming, combining, altering, and analyzingzimages are as essential to the digital artist as brushes and pigments to a painter.2n

As Mitchell points out, this inherent mutability erases the difference be-

t_y,reen a photograph ald__e-p4lnínC. Since a film is a series of photographs,-it is appropriate to extend Mitchell s argument to digital film. \7ith an

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Composited faunch sequence from Apollo 73.Publicity photo from Universal Studios.

artist being able to easily manipulate digitized footage either as a whole or

frame by kame, a film in a general sense becomes a series of paintings.2t

Hand-paindng digitizêd film frames, made possible by a computer, is

probably the most dramatic example of the new status of cinema. No longer

strictly locked in the photographic, it opens itselftoward the painterly. It is

also the most obvious example of the return of cinema to its nineteenth-

century origins-in this case, to hand-crafted images of magic lantern

slides, the Phenakistiscope, the Zootrope.

\7e usually think of computerization as automation, but here the result

is the reverse: what previously was automatically recorded by a camera now

has to be painted one frame at a time. But not just a dozen images, as in

the nineteenth century but thousands and thousands. \íe can draw another

parallel with the practice, common in the eady days of silent cinema, of

manually tinting 6lm frames in different colors according to a scene's

mood." Today, some of the most visually sophisticated digital effects are

often achieved by using the same simple method: painstakingly altering

thousands of frames by hand. The frames are painted over eicher to create

mattes (hand-drawn matte extraction) or to change the images directly, as

in Forest Ganp, where President Kennedy was made to speak new sentences

by altering the shape oí his lips, one frame at a time.23 In principle, given

enough time and money, one can create what will be the ultimate digital

Êlm: ninety minutes of I29,60O frames completely painted by hand from

scratch, but indistinguishable in appearance from live photography.'a

Multimedia as "Primitive" Digital Ginema3D animation, compositing, mapping, paint retouching: in commercial cin-

ema, these radical new techniques are mostly used to solve technical prob-

lems while traditional cinematic language is preserved unchanged. Frames

are hand-painted to remove wires that supported an actor during shooting;

a flock of birds is added to a landscape; a city street is filled with crowds of

simulated extras. Âlthough most Hollywood releases now involve digitally

manipulated scenes, the use of computers is always carefully hidden."

Commercial narrative cinema continues to hold on to the classical realist

sryle where images function as unretouched photographic records of some

events that took place in front of the camera.26 Cinema refuses to give up its

unique cinema effect, an effect that, according to Christian Metz's penetrat-

j€3

ing analysis made in the 1970s, depends upon narrarive form, the reality

effect, and cinemai architectural arrangemenr all working rogerher.2T

Toward the end of his essay, Metz wonders wherher in the future nonnar-rative films may become more numerous; if rhis happens, he suggests that

cinema will no longer need to manufacrure its reality effect. Electronic and

digital media have aheady brought about this rransformation. Since the1980s, new cinematic forms have emerged thar are not linear narratives,that are exhibired on a reievision or a computer screen rarher rhan in a movie

thsagsl-and that simultaneously give up cinematic realism.

YT_!"9._g$qç_fq:sr?EigfslLÊhqç_r$b_e_lqqqqyiqgg.Probablynorby accident, the qenre of music video came into exisrence at exactlv the

- . . . - 1

.tT. *h." .I..tqoni yi,çç9 were ellellg =9-ditì1g.studio1.Importantly, just as music videos ofren incorporate narratives within rhem,

but are not linear narrarives from start to finish, so they rely on film (or

video) images, but change them beyond rhe norms of traditional cinematicrealism. The manipulation of images through hand-painting and image pro-

cessing, hidden in Hollywood cinema, is brought into the open on a televi-

sion screen. Similady, the consrruction of an image from heterogeneous

sources is not subordinated to the goal ofphotorealism but funcrions as anaesthetic stratesy. r!g€Sgl9._9f!g*Içgd:f !:tFTl ilglg14gqry for -e4pls-ing ntllelo*u!.new-possibilities-_oj-manipulatjn&phüograshicimaermadcpossible by eoolpu-@:!*t slilr_rgjhe-lpeçs_be-qwee-gghe_2_Daadrhe{D_.c1191t!ggf qptry1tCpelsulc,pheraerapb!.Lr€el-rjlry$gUgg:_In shorr, it is a living and constantly expanding rexrbookfor digital cinema.

A detailed analysis of the evolution of music video imagery (or, moregenerally, broadcast graphics in rhe electronic age) deserves a separare rrear-ment, and I will not try to take it"up here. Insread, I will discuss anorhernew cinematic nonnamative form, CD-ROM games, which, in contrast to

music videos, relied on the computer for storage and distribution from thevery beginning. And, unlike music video designers who were consciouslypushing traditional film or video images into something new, the designers

of CD-ROMs arrived at a new visual language unintenrionally, while at-tempting to emulate traditional cinema.

In the late 1980s, {pgle beean to promore the concept of computer mul-

timedia; and in 1991 it released e"t.kft-. *ftware to enable an ordinarypersonal computer to play movies. HoweveE for the nexr few years rhe com-

puter did not perform its new role very well. First, CD-ROMs could not

hold anything close to the length of a standard theatrical film. Second, the

computer would not smoothly play a movie larger than the size of a stamp.

Finally, the movies had to be compressed, which degraded their visual ap-

pearaoce. Only in the case oí still images was the computer able to display

photographic-type detail at full screen size.

Because of these particular hardware limitations, the designers of CD-

ROMs had to invent a differàt kind of cinematic language in which a targe

of strategies, such as discrete motion, loops, and superimposition, pre-

viously used in nineteenth-century moving-image presentations, in twenti-

eth-century animation, and in the avant-garde tradition of graphic cinema,

were applied to photographic or synthetic images. !!is Qpgggg;yÍr_úe=sized cinematic illusionism and the aesthetics of graphic collage, with its

- -cba'Tj1ilt'.:--l.I':g:lg',y ^4 dilgg!,ir"it .graphic, divorced when cine@qratç jg[ays,---:..- -.-.-*.-g9Ì-3ggq 9q qçgTlgryI$

The graphic also met the cinematic. The designers of CD-ROMs were

aware of the techniques of twentieth-century cinematography and film edit-

ing, but they had to adapt these techniques both to an interactive format

and to hardware limitations. Âs a result, the techniques oímodern cinema

and of nineteenth-century moving image have merged in a {rgf.byb;:idlanguagg.

'W'e can trace the development of this language by analyzing a few well-

known CD-ROM titles. The best-selling game Myst (Broderbund, 1993)

unfolds its narrative strictly through still images, a practice that takes us

back to magic lantern shows (and to Chris Wtatker's !:algt_Ò.28 But in other

ways Myst relies on the techniques of twentieth-century cinema. For in-

stance, the CD-ROM uses simulated camera turns to switch from one image

ro the next. It also çmploys the basic technique of film editing to sub-jectively speed up or slow down time. In the course of the game, the user

moves around a fictional island by clicking on a mouse. Each click advances

a virtual camera forward, revealing a new view of a3D environment. \íhen

the user begins to descend into the underground chambers, the spatial dis-

tance between the points of view of each two consecutive views decreases

sharply. If earlier the user was able to cross a whole island with just a few

clicks, now ir takes a dozen clicks to get to the bottom of the stairsl In other

lEs-

words, just as in traditional cinema, Myst slows down time to create suspenseand tension.

rn Myo, miniature animations are somerimes embedded within the stillimages. In the next best-selling CD-ROM, 7th Guat(yirgin Games, 1993),the user is presented with video clips of live acrors superimposed over staticbackgrounds created with 3D compurer graphics. The clips are looped, andthe moving human figures clearly stand our against the backgrounds. Bothof these features connect ihe visual language of Ttlt Guest to nineteenth-century procinematic devices and rwentieth-century carroons rather thanto cinematic verisimilirude. But like Myst, 7th Gaest also evokes distinctlymodern cinematic codes. The environment where all action takes place (aninterior of a house) is rendered by using a wide-angle lens; ro move from oneview to rhe next, a cameta follows a complex curve, as though mounted ona virtual dolly.

Next, consider the CD-ROM UruUryry( _(Sony Images oft, I99J),Produced to complement rhe fiction film of theiame title, marketed noras a "game" bur as an "interactive movie," and featuring full-screen videothroughout, it comes closer ro cinemaric realism than the previous cD-RoMs-yet it is still quite distinct from it. $fith all action shot against agreen screen and then composited wirh graphic backgrounds, its visual styleexists within a space berween cinema and collage.

Ir would not be entirely inappropriate to read this short history of rhedigital moving image as a releological developmenr thar replays the emer-gence of cinema a century eadier. Indeed, as computers'speed keeps increas-ing, the cD-RoM designers have been able ro go from a slide show formatto rhe superimposition of small moving elemenrs over sraric backgrounds,an<J finally to full-frame moving images. This evorurion repeats the nine-teenth-cenrury progression: from sequences of srill images (magic lanternslide presentations) ro characrers moving over staric backgrounds (for in-stance, in Reynaud's Praxinoscope Theater) to full motion (the Lumières'cinematograph). Moreover, rhe introduction of euickTime in 1991 can becornpared with the introducrion of the Kinetoscope in 1g92: both were usedto presenr shorr loops, both featured images approximately two by threeinches in size, borh called for private viewing rather than collective exhibi-tion. Finally, the Lumières' first film screenings of 1895, which shockedtheir audiences with huge moving images, found their parallel in recenttitles in which the moving image-here full-screen, full-motion video-

finally6llstheentirecomputerscfeeo.Th'',.@

But this is only one reading. rü7.e no ronger think of the history of cinemaas a linear march roward only one possible language, or as a progressiontoward more and more accurate verisimilitude. Rather, we have come ro seeits history as a succession ofdistinct and equally expressive languages, eachwith its own aesrhetic variables, each new language closing off some of rhepossibilities of the previous one-a cultural logic not dissimilar to ThomasKuhni analysis of scientific paradigms.2e Similarly, instead of dismissingvisual strategies ofearly mulrimedia ritles as a result of technological limita-tions, we may want ro think of them as an alternative ro traditional cine-matic illusionism, as a beginning of digital cinema's new language.

For the computer/entertainment industry, these srrategies represent onlya temporary limitation, an annoying drawback that needs to be overcome.This is one imporrant difference between rhe siruation at the end of rhenineteenrh and the end of the twentieth centuries: if cinema was developingtoward the still open horizon of many possibilities, the developmenr of com-mercial multimedia, and of corresponding compurer hardware (compressionboards, storage formats such as Digital video Disc), is driven bv a clearlvdefined goal: the exact duplication of cinemaric realism. So de+qAqpglç{

an accident

The LoopA number of artists, however, have approached these srrategies not as limira-tions but as a source of new cinematic possibiliries. Âs an example, I willdiscuss the use of the loop in Jean-Louis Boissier's Frora petrinsutaris (L993)and Natalie Bookchin's Tlte Databank of tbe Eaeryday (1996).ro

As already mentioned, all nineteenth-cenrury procinematic devices, upto Edison's Kinetoscope, were based on shorr loops. As ,,the sevenrh art"began to marure, it banished the loop to the low-art realms of the ins*uc-tional film, the pornographic peepshow, and the animated carroon. In con-trast, narrarive cinema has avoided repetitions; like modern \(/esrernfictional forms in general, it put forward a notion of human exisrence as alinear progression through numerous unique evenrs.

cinema's birth from a loop form was reenacted at leasr once during itshistory. In one of the sequences of the revorutionary sovier monrage film, Á

/ 8t-

Man witlt a Mouìe Canaa (I929),DzlgaYertov shoqls us a cameraman stand-ing in the back of a moving automobile. Âs he is being carried forward bythe automobile, he cranks the handle of his camera. A loop, a repetirion

created by the circular movemenr of the handle, gives birth to a progression

ef svsnl5-4 ysry basic narrative that is also quintessenrially modern:. a cam-era moving through space recording whatever is in its parh. In whar seemsto be a reference to cinema's primql scene, these shots are intercut with theshots of a moving train. Vertov even restages the terror that the Lumières'film supposedly provoked in its audience; he positions his camera rightalong the train track so the rrain runs over our point of view a number oftimes, crushing us again and again.

Early digital movies share the same limitations of storage as nineteenth-

century procinematic devices. This is probably why rhe loop playback func-tion was built into the QuickTime inrerface, thus giving it the same weightas the VCR-style "play forward" function. So, in conrrast to films and video-tapes, QuickTime movies are supposed to be played forward, backward, orlooped. Flora petrìnsalaris realizes some.of the possibilities contained in theloop form, suggesting a new temporal aesthetics for digital cinema.

The CD-ROM, which is based on Rousseau's Confessìons, opens with awhite screen containing a numbered list. Clicking on each item leads us roa screen c()ntaining two frames, positioned side by side. Both frames showthe same video loop but are slightly offser from each other in time. Thus,the image:; appearing in the left frame reappear in a moment on the rightand vice versa, as though an invisible wave is running through the screen.This wave soon becomes materialized: when we click on one of the frames,we are taken to a new screen showing a loop oí a rhythmically vibraring

water surface. As each mouse click reveals anorher loop, the viewer becomesan editor, trut not in a traditional sense. Rather rhan constructing a singularnarrative sequence and discarding material that is not used, here the viewer

brings to the forefront, one by one, numerous layers oflooped acrions rhat

seem to be taking place all at once, a multitude ofseparate but coexistingtemporalities. The viewer is not cutting but reshuffling. In a reversal ofVertov's sequence where a loop generated a narrative, the viewer's attemptto create a story in Flora petrinsularis leads to a loop.

The loop that structures Flora petrinsularis on a number of levels becomesa metaphor for human desire that can never achieve resolurion. It can be also

read as a comment on cinematic realism. \üflhat are the minimum conditions

necessary to create the impression of reality? As Boissier demgnstrates, in

the case of a Êeld of grass, or a close-up of a plant or a stream, just a few

looped frames become sufficient to produce the illusion of life and of linear

time.

Steven Neale describes how eady film demonstrated its authenticity by

representing moving nature: "\(hat was lacking [in photographsJ was the

wind, the very index of rcaI, natural movement. Hence the obsessive con-

temporary íascination, not just with movement, not just with scale, but also

with waves and sea spray, with smoke and spray."3l \(/hat for eady cinema

was its biggest pride and a6hisysrnsnl-a faithful documentation of na-

ture's movemsnl-[sçsrnss for Boissier a subject of ironic and melancholic

simulation. As the few frames are looped over and over, we see blades ofgrass

shifting slightly back and forth, rhythmically responding to the blowing of

nonexistent wind that is almost approximated by the noise of a computer

reading data from a CD-ROM.

Something else is being simulated here as well, perhaps unintentionally.

Ás you watch the CD-ROM, the computer periodically staggers, unable to

maintain a consistent data rate. Âs a result, the images on the screen move

in uneven bursts, slowing and speeding up with humanlike irregularity. It

is as though they are brought to life not by a digital machine but by a human

operator cranking the handle of the Zootrope a century and ahalf ago. . . .

If Flora petrìnwlarìs uses the loop to comment on cinema's visual realism,

Tbe Databank of tbe Eueryday suggests that the loop can be a new narrative

form appropriate for the computer age.ln an ironic manifesto that parodies

their avant-garde precursors from the earlier part ofthe century, Bookchin

reminds us that the loop gave birth not only to cinema but also to compÌrrer

programming. Programming involves altering the linear flow of data

through control stmctures, such as "iflchen" and "repeat/while"; rhe loop is

the most elementary of these control structures. Bookchin writes:

As digital media replaces [ricJ film and photography, it is only logical that the com-

puter program's loop should replace photography's frozen moment and cinema's

linear narrative. The Databank champions the loop as a new form ofdigital storytell-

ing; there is no true beginning or end, only a series ofthe loops with rheir endless

repetitions, halted by a user's selection or a pov',er shortage.32

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Flora petrínsulaús: the repetitive image.Jean-Louis Boissier and the ZKM.

The Databank of the Everyday: the loop as action and as code.Courtesy of Natalie Bookchin.

The computer program's loop makes its first "screen clebut" in one par-

ticularly effective image from The Databank of tbe Eueryday. The screen is

divided into two frames, one showing a video loop of a woman shaving herleg, the other a loop ofa compurer program in execution. Program state-ments repeating over and over mirror the woman's arm methodicallymoving back and fonh. This image represenrs one of the first attempts incomputer art to apply a Brechtian strategy; rhat is, to show rhe mechanismsby which the computer produces its illusions as a parr of the artwork.

Stripped of its usual inrerface, the computer turns our to be another versionof Ford's factory, with a loop as its conveyer belt.

Like Boissier, Bookchin explores alternatives ro cinemaric montage, inher case replacing its traditional sequential mode with a spatial one. Ford'sassembly line relied on rhe separarion of the production process into a setof repetitive, sequential, and simple activiries. The same principle madecomputer programming possible: a compurer program breaks a task inte aseries of elemental operations ro be executed one ar a rime. Cinema followedthis principle as well: ir replaced all orher modes of narration with a sequen-tial narrative, an assembly line ofshors that appear on rhe screen one at atime. A sequential narrative rurned our to be particularly incompatible witha spatialized narrative that played a prominent role in European visual cul-ture for centuries. From Giottot fresco cycle ar rhe Scrovegni Chapel ( I 30t-1306) in Padua to Gusrave Courbet's Burìal at 1mans (1850), artistspresented a multitude of separare events (which sometimes were even sepa-rated by time) within a single composition. In contrast to cinema's narrarive,here all the "shots" were accessible to a viewer at once.

Cinema has elaborated complex techniques of montage berween differentimages replacing each other in time, but rhe possibility of what can becalled "spatial montage" between simultaneously coexisting images vr'as norexplored. Tbe Databank of tbe Eueryday begins to explore this direction, thusopening up again the tradition ofsparialized narrative suppressed by cin-ema. In one section we are presented with a sequence of pairs of shom clipsof everyday actions that function as antonyms-for instance, opening andclosing a door, or pressing Up and Down buttons in an elevator. In anothersection the user can choreograph a number of miniature acrions appearingin small windows positioned rhroughour rhe screen.

! ç L

Gonclusion: From Kino-Eye to Kino'Brush

In the twentieth century, cinema has played two roles at once. Âs a media

technology, its role was ro caprure and to store visible reality' The dif6culty

of modifring images once they were recorded was exactly what gave cinema

its value as a document, assuring its authenticity. The rigidity of the 6lm

image has deflned the limirs of cinema as I defined it earlier-that is to

say, rhe super-genre of live-action narrative. Âlthough it includes within

itself a variety of styles-the result of the efforts of many directors, design-

ers, and cinematographsl5-ths5s styles share a strong family resemblance'

They are all children of the recording process that uses lenses, regular sam-

pling of time, and photographic media' They are all children of a machine

vision.

Themutabil ityofdigitaldataimpairsthevalueofcinemarecordingsas

documents of reality. In retrospect, we can see that twentieth-century cine-

ma's regime of visual realism, the result of automarically recording vis rel

rcality,was only an exception, an isolated accident in the history of visual

representation, which has always involved, and now again involves' the

manual construction of images. Cinema becomes a particular branch of

painting-painting in time' No longer a kino-eye, but a kino-brush'r3

The privileged role of the manual construction of images in digital cin-

ema is one example of a Larger trend: the return of pre-cinematic moving-

images techniques. Marginalized by the twentieth-century institution of

live-action narrative cinema that relegated them to the realms of animation

and special effects, these techniques reemerSe as the foundadon ofdigital

filmmaking. 'w'hat

was supplemenral to cinema becomes its norm; what

was at its boundaries comes into the center. Digital media return to us the

repressed of the cinema.

A, th. examples discussed in this essay suggest, the directions that were

closed off at the turn of the century when cinema came to dominate

the modern moving-image culture, ate agait beginning to be explored'

Moving-image culture is being redefined once more; cinematic realism is

being displaced from its dominant mode to become only one option

among many.ta

l-t z

tion to occur in our century" (84). And ro move one srep farther back, I have to

thank my daughter Shoshana for having given me the Foster volume to read some

years ago. Álthough I had briefly touched upon collage and montage as an analogy

ïn Hypertext: The Conuergence of Contemporary CriticalTheory andTuhnologr (Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), it was PierreJoris's Collage Betueen'Writing

and Painting, s'hich he posted on the discussion group Gchnoculture, that

prompted me to produce the rwo webs from which this es./ay derives. I7ithout

\üilliam S. Shipp, Norman Meyrowitz, and the ream thâr $lvetoped Intermedia at

Brown University's now-closed Institute for"Research in |lrformation and Scholar-

ship, I would have never had the opportunity to have with what remaios the

and withoutJ. David6nest hypertext and hypermedia system thus far

2. I have discussed the 6rst vear of's

existence in "Electronic Con-

Word: Text-Bated Compatìng, George P. Lando{and Paul Delaney, eds. (Cambridge,

MA: MIT Press, 1993), pp.237-249. II

3. The ideas of hypertext here presentedr'âerive from many of the standard writ-

ings on the subiect, which readers can frDâ in the bibliography of my Hypertext. I

would cite in particular Vannevar Bush's writings on the memex, most conveniently

found in From Mtmex to Hypertext: Van*fuar Bub and tbe Minls Maebine, James M.

Nyce and Paul Kahn, eds. (Boston: ic Press, 1991); Theodor H. Nelson,Compzter Lib/Drean Machìnes (Seattle/ Microsoft Press, 1987); Jay David Bolter,

Vrìtìng Space: Tbe Comptter in tbe Hiltory of Lìterucy (Hitlsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erl-

baum, 1991); and Nicole Yankelovièh, Norman Meyrowitz, and Andries van Dam,'Reading and $üriting the E

Lr-30.Book," IEEE Comp*ter 18 (Ocrober 1981):

Bolter, Michael Joyce, John Smith, and Mark .

distributed by Eastgate Systems, I would not

{. Those interested in the

pill want to consult Bolter's

developers of Storyspace,

the opportunity to have

oÍcontemporary crigical theory and hypertext

my books cited in note 3, as well as the following:

P. Ì.andow, ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University

A. Lanham, The Elqtronic Vord: Demoraey, Technology, and

ference Harpold, Psychoanalytic Digressions on the Subject ofHyper-

:ext," in Hypet'media and Studiu, Paul Delany and George P. Landow, eds.

Cambridge, MÁ: MIT

I Philsopbical Stady of

1 99 1 ), pp. 1 03-1 1 8; Mich ael Heim, E lurie Langaage:

Procesing (New Haven: Yale Universiry Press, 1987);

IyperlText/Tbnry,)ress, 1994); and Ri

rsity ofCh.icago Press, 1994). For general issues involving

Notes to Pages 151-155

I

be Artt (Chicago:

the relation oíinformation technology to cultute and ríught, I would recommend

int s and Visaal C ommuicatioxthe following as especially useful: \ülilliam M' Ivi

(NewYork: DaCapo, 1969); Alvin Kenat,Pri Technology, Lettert O SamwlJohn-

soz (Princeton: Princeton University Marshall Mcluhan, T he G uenbetg

G alaxy: T he Making of TYPograPb ic to: University ofToronto Press, 1962);

Iíalter J. Ong, OralitY and

uen, 1982).

The Tecbnologizixg of the lYorl (London: Meth-

t. H. !7. Janson'

Janson (New York:

of Vorld Art,3rd ed., rev. and enl. by Anthony F.

N. Âbrams, 1936), PP. 6$-684.

6. Shelley is PatchuorA Gii (1991) anà The "In Manoriam" Veb' John

Lanestedt George P. Iandow, eds. (1992), are available from Eastgate Sys-

tems, I Main St., W'atertown, MÁ, as are otheÍ webs discussed above' Those by

Marsh and Joshua Rappaport appear ín Vriting at the Edge (1995)' also

Eastgate.

Notes to Pages 155-174

I

Chapter 9: Vhat Is Digital Cinema?

This essay has gÍeatly benefrted from the suggestions and criticisms ofNatalie Book-

ch in 'Pe te rLunen Íe l d ,No rmanK le i n ,andV i v i anSobchack . I a l sowou ld l i ke to

acknowledge the pioneering work of Erkki Huhtamo on the connections between

early cinema and digital media, which stimulated my own interest in this topic'

1. Scott Billups, presentation during "Casting from Forest Lawn (Future ofPer-

íormers)" panel at "The Ârtists Rights Digital Technology Symposium '961' Los

Angeles, Directots Gúld of Àmerica, February 16' 1996' Billups was a major frgure

in bringing Hollywood and Silicon Valley together by way of the Âmerican Film

Instirute's Àpple Laboratory and Advanced Technologies Programs in the late 1980s

and early 1990s. see Paula Parisi, "The New Hollywood silicon stars," wred )

(December 199ï 142-l4i' 202-2lo'

2 . . .Supe r -gen re ' , i sa t r ans la t i ono f t heF tench ' ' ] r - gen re .Ch r i s t i anMe tz , . . The

Fiction Film and Its Spectator: Â Metapsychological Study"'in Apparatas' Theresa

Hak Kyung Cha, ed. (New York: Tânam Press, 1980): )7)409'

. ,Cinema,asdef ioedbyi ts. 'super-genre' 'of f ic t ional l ive-act ion6Im,belongsto

media arts, which, in contmst to traditional arts, rely on recordings ofreality as their

basis. Ânother rerm rhar is not as popular as "media arts," but Perhaps is more

precise, is "recording arts." For the use of this term' see James Monaco' Hou to Read

a Fìlm, rev.ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981)' p' 7'

4. Chatles À{usser,Tbe Emergence of Cinana: The American Screen to 1907 (Berkeley:

Universicy of California Press, 1990), pp.49-)0.

, . Ib id . , p . 2 ) .

6. C. !ü. Ceram, Archeology of tbe Cinema (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Iíodd,1965),pp.444J.

7 . The birth of cinema iri the 1890s was accompanied by an inreresting rransfor-mation: while the body as the generator of moving pictures disappeared, it simulta-

neously became their new subiect. Indeed, one ofrhe key themes ofthe early filmsproduced by Èdison .is a human body in motion: a man sneezing, the famous body-builder Sandow flexing his muscles, an athlete performing a somersaulr, a womandancing. Films of boxing matches played a key role in the commercial developmentof the Kinetoscope. See Musser, The Emergence of Cinntz, pp.72-79; David Rob-inson, From Peep Sbou to Palace: Tbe Bìrtb of Anerican Filz (New York: Columbiallniversity Press, 1996), pp. 4Ç48.

8. Robinson, From Peep Shou to Palace, p. 12.

9. This arrangement was previously used in magic lantern projections; it is de-

scribed in the second edition of Àlthanasius Kircher's An magna (1671). See Musser,Tbe Emagence of Cintma, pp.2l-22.

10. Ceram, Arcbeology of tÌte Cinnna, p. 740.

11. Musser, TheEnergenceof Cinena, p.78.

12. The extent of rhis lie is made clear by the 6lms of Ândy \?'arhol from the6rst part of the 1960s-perhaps the only real attempt ro create cinema withouta language.

13. Ihaveborrowedthisde6nit ionofrf, . . i" leffectsfromDavidSamuelson,Morion

P i c t *rc C ameru Tec b x i q ua (London : Focal Press, I 97 8).

14. The follow.ing examples illustrate this disavowal of special effects; others canbe easily found. The 6rst example is from popular discourse on cinema. Â sectionentitled "Making the Movies" in Kenneth ÌJf. Leish's Cìnema (New York: NewsweekBooks, 1974) contains short stories from the history of the movie industry. The

Notes to Pages 176-178

I

heroes ofthese stories are actors, directors, and producers; special effects artisrs arementioned only once.

The second example is from an academic source: Jacques Aumonr, Álain Bergara,Michel Marie, and Marc vernet, in their Aeshetìcs of Film, uans. Richard Neupert(Âustin: University of Texas Press, 1992), srare that ,.the goaÌ of our book isto summarize from a synthetic and didacric perspecrive the diverse theoreticalatremprs at examining these empirical notions [terms from the lexicon of 6lm tech-niciansl, including ideas like írame vs. shot, rerms from producion crews,vocabula-ries, the notion of identification produced by critical vocabulary etc.', (p. 7). Thefact that the text never menrions special-effects techniques reflects the general lackofany historical or theoretical interest in the topic by 6lm scholars. David Bordwelland Kristin Thompson's Filn Art: An Introdwion (4th ed.; New york: McGraw_Hill, 199r, which is used as a standard textbook in undergraduate 6lm classes, is alittle better: it devotes 3 out ofits 500 pages to special effects.

Finally, a relevant statistic: university ofcalifornia, san Diego's library conrains4,273 ritles cataloged under the subject "motion pictures" and only 16 under'.spe-cial effects cinematography."

Two important works addressing the larger cultural signifrcance ofspecial effectsby 6lm theoreticians, are vvian sobchack,,lcreaa ingspace: The American scince FictionFìln,2nd ed. (New York: Ungar, 1987); and Scott Bukatman, ..The Ártificial In6-nite," in Vinal Ditplay, Lynne Cooke and peter 'Sü'ollen,

eds. (Seattle: Bay press,1995). Norman Klein is working on a history of special effects to be publishedby Verso.

lJ. For a discussion of the subsumption o[ the photographic to the graphic, seePeter Lunenfeld, "Ârt Post-History: Digital photography & Electronic semiotics,"in the catalog Photograpby Aftn Pltotograplry: Mtmory and Reprueútatiln ìn tlte DigitalÁge, Hubertus von Amelunxen, Stefan Inglhaut, and Florian Rôtzer, eds. (Sydney:G*B Árts, 1996), pp. 92-98.

16' For a complete list of people at ILM who worked on this 6lm, see sIGGRApH'94Visul Proceedingt (New York: ÁCM SIGGRÁPH,1994),p. 19.

17. In this respec 1995 can be called the last year ofdigital media. Át the r99)National Ássociation of Broadcasrers convenrion, Ávid showed a working model ofa digital video camera that records nor on a videocassette but directly onto a harddrive' once digital cameras become widely used, we will no longer have any reasonto talk about digital media beca'se the process of digitization will be eliminated.

Notes to Pages 178-180-

18. Here is another, even more radical definition: digiral film = f(x,y,t). This de6-

nition would be greeted with joy by the proponents ofabstract animation. Since the

computer breaks down every frame into pixels, a complete 6lm can be deGned as a

fi:nction that, given the horizontal, vertical, and time location ofeach pixel, returns

its color. This is actually how a computer represents a 6lm, a representation that has

a surprising affinity with certain well-known practices in the avant-garde vision of

cinema! For a computer, a Êlm is an abstract ârrangement of colors and sounds

changing in time, rather than something structuÍed by "shots," "narrative," "actors,"

and so on.

19. See Barbara Robertson, "Digital Magic: Apollo l)," ConputerGralbìct Voily'v.

18, no.8 (August l)95):2;0.

20. Villiam J. Mitchell, Tbe Reconfgurd Eye: Visual Trath in tbe Post-photograpbic

Era(Cambúdge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), p. 7.

21. The full advantage of mapping time into 2D space, already present in Edison's

first cinema apparatus, is now realized: one can modifr events in time by literally

painting on a sequence offrames, treating them as a single image.

22. See Robinson, Fron Peep S bow to Palace, p. 165.

23. See "Industrial Light & Magic Alters History with MÁTÂDOR," promotion

material by Parallax Software, SIGGRAPH 95 Conference, Los Angeles, August

1995.

24. The reader who followed my analysis of the new possibilities of digital cinema

may wonder why I have stressed the parallels between digital cinema and the pre-

cinematic rechniques of the nineteenth century but did not mention twentieth-

century avant-gatde 6lmmaking. Did not the avant-garde 6lmmakers explote many

ofthese new possibilities? To take the notion ofcinema as painting, Len Lye, one of

the pioneers ofabstract animation, was painting directly on frlm as early as 1915; he

was followed by Norman Mclaren and Stan Brackage, the latter extensively

covering shot lootage with dots, scratches, splattered paint, smears, and lines in an

attempt to turn his films into equivalents of Âbstract Expressionst painting. More

generally, one of the major impulses in all of avant-garde filmmaking, from Leger to

Godard, was to combine the cinematic, the painterly, and the graphic-by using

live-action footage and animation within one 6lm or even a single frame, by alter-

ing this footage in a variety of ways, or by juxtaposing printed texts and 6lmed

images.

Notes to Pages 180-183 183

I explore the notion that the avant-garde anticipated digitar aesthetics in mywork, Tlte Engineering of Vilion fron Clnt*rcrìairm to Virtaal Realìty (Austin: Theuniversity ofTexas Press, forthcoming); here I would like to bring up one pointparticularly relevanr for this essay. sühen the avant-garde filmmakers collaged mul-tiple images within a single frame, or painted and scratched 6lm, or revolted againstthe indexical identity of cinema in other ways, they were working againsr "normal"

filmmaking procedures and the intended uses oí 6lm technology. Film stock, forexample, wírs not designed to be painted on. Thus, they operated on the peripheryof commercial cinema not only aesthetically but also technically.

one general effect of the digital revolution is that avanr-garde aesthetic srrate-gies became embedded in the commands and interface metaphors of computer soft-ware. In short, tbe aaant-garde became materialìzcd in a clmprlter. Digital cinematechnology is a case in point. The avant-garde strategy ofcollage reemerged as a "cut

and paste" command, the most basic operation one can perform on digital data. Theidea ofpainting on 6lm became embedded in painr firncrions offilm-editing soft-ware' The avant-garde move to combine animation, printed texts, and live-actionfootage is repeated in the convergence ofanimarion, title generation, pa.int, compos-iting, and editing systems into single all-in-one packages. Finally, another move rocombine a number of 6lm images within one frame (for instance, in r*ger's L924Balht Mitbaniqre or in Vertov's 1929 A Man uith a Mwie Camaa) also becomelegitimized by technology, since all editing software, including photoshop, pre-

miere, Aíter Effects, Flame, and cineon, by default assumes that a digitat imageconsists of a number of separate image layers. Âll in all, what used to be exceptionsfor traditional cinema became the normal, intended techniques of digital 6lmmak-ing, embedded in technology design itself.

For the experiments in painting on film by Lye, Mclaren, and Brackage, seeRobert Russett and cecile starc, Expdmental Aninurion (New york: van NostrandReinhold, 1976), pp. 6t-71, tt7-t28; and p. Adams SitneS Visionary Filn, 2nded. (Oxford: Oxford Universiry Press), pp. 130, 136-227.

25. Paula Parisi reported: "Â decade ago, only an intrepid few, led by George Lu-cas's Industrial Light and Magic, were doing high-quality digital work. Now com-puter imaging is considered an indispensable production rool for all films, from thesmallest drama to the largesr visual extravaganza." parisi, ,,The

Neq, HollvwoodSilicon Stars," p. 144.

26. Thereíore, one way in which the fantastic is justified in contemporary Holly-wood cinema is through the.introduction of var.ious nonhuman characters such asaliens, mutants, and robots. \7e never notice the pure arbitrariness oftheir colorfuland mutating bodies, the beams of energy emanating from their eyes, the whirlpools

Notes to Page

Eil

ofpatticles spinning from theit wings, because they are made perceptually consis-

tent with the set, that is, they look like somerhing that could have existed in a three-

dimensional space and therefore could have been photographed.

27. Metz, "The Fiction Film and Its Spectator."

28. This twenty-eight-minute 6lm, made in 1962, is composed of still frames nar-

rativized in time, with one very brief live-action sequence. For documentarion, see

Chris Market, I^a Jetíz: Cìné-roman (New York: Zone Books, 1992).

29. Thomas S. Kuhn,Tbe Strxctttre of Sciextifu Rewlations, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Univer-

sity ofChicago Press, 1970).

30. Flora petrinstlarjr is included in the compilation CD-ROM, Áftintac, 1 (K^ils-

rune, Germany: ZKMlCenter for Art and Media, 1994).

31. Steven Neile, Cinema and Tubnolop (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

1981),p. )2.

32. Natalie Bookchin, The Databank of the Eaeryday, artist's statement (1996), pub-

lished by the author. Although I was the videographer on this project, I feet that

Bookchin's piece is so fully Ìesonant with the aÍguments I make here that I am

willing to accept the risk of commenting on it at length.

33. It was Dziga Vertov who coined the term "kino-eye" in the lp20s to describe

the cinematic apparatus's ability "to record and organize the individual characteris-

tics of life's phenomena into a whole, an essence, a conclusion." For Vertov, it was

the presentation of 6lm "facts," based as they were on materialist evidence, rhat

defined the very nature of the cinema. See Kno-Eye: Tbe'Vrìtìng of Dziga Vertn,

Ânnette Michelson, ed., Kevin O'Brien, trans. (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1984). The quotation is from "Ârtistic Drama and Kino-Eye" (originally pub-

l ished in 1924), p.47. r

34. This is the third in a series of essays on digital cinema. See "Cinema and Digital

Media," in Pa:pektiaen der MedienâznstlPerspatiaa of Mdia Art, Jeffrey Shav and

Hans Peter Schwarz, eds. (Cantz Verlag Ostfildern,1996); and "To Lie and to Áct:

Potemkins Villages, Cinema and Telepresence)' in Mythos laformation-'V'elcome to

tbe lVird Vorld. Ars Elutmnica 95, by Kaà Gebel and Peter W'eibel, eds. (Venna:

Springler-Verlag, 1995), pp. )43-348. See also Erkki Huhtamo, "Encapsulated

Bodies in Motion: Simulators and the Quest for Total Immersion," in Critical lssues

in Ehctronìc Media, Simon Penny, ed. (Albany: STINY Press, 1991), pp. lt9-186.

Notes to Pages 183-192

I