Live Cinema

Summarize Mia Makela's five essential elements of Live Cinema, and relate these elements to the Live Cinema Explosion during Avant-Garde Night at the Lumina Theater.

The five essential elements of live cinema are space, time, projection, performance and participation.

Spaces refers to digital space as in how much room an object takes on your computer. Also it refers to desktop space or the programs and manners from which a VJ picks his videos from. Performance Space refers literally to the location of the performance and has an effect on the performance as a whole piece. Projection Space refers to the location of the projectors. Am I being too obvious? Physical Space, which is not as obvious, is the distance between the audience and the performers. In Lumina I am not too sure about the activities related to digital or desktop space, but the performance space was Lumina Theater, the projection space was from behind the theater and from the sides and there was basically very little Physical Space.

Time refers to the difference in seeing live cinema being seen live versus the act of viewing a film that has already been made. Both carry with them specific advantages and and disadvantages. The other way the writer refers to time is through the use of loops, which effect both viewers response and film maker response. In Lumina many people left during the films, because they did not feel compelled to sit through films they did enjoy, yet during Live Cinema less people left feeling obligated to stay, one consequence of "live cinema versus usual cinema."

Projection refers to spatial projection, meaning how the place you are in effects your viewing of the film. Also it refers to Media Facade, a concept I relate best to seeing a piece in the Guggenheim museum which is simply a call for peace in various languages hanging from the wall. At our presentation the idea of projection was not something that was obvious to me at the time. Yes we projected from various projectors throughout the room, but there was something very traditional about the literal space of the place we were in. I have to say this concept is extremely interesting, but I think projection doesn't really need its own category. Would it not fit more precisely in the category of Space? I am probably not right, just a causal observation on my part.

Performance refers, to well, the performers. In the case of live cinema the VJ's who work behind the laptops. Also it is refers to a concept the writer calls "liveness." Basically how the well "live" nature of the things, causes the things effect. HMMMM...maybe that only makes sense in my brain. Gesteral interfaces are the ways in which the performers become a part of the creation with the use of their bodies., with things like sensors. In Lumina there was certainly a profound sense of vitality, a code word for "liveness" throughout the performance and I personally think our VJ's did a fine job.

Participation is quite simply the way the audience responds and interacts with the piece. In Lumina the some of the audience was given instruments to make make "music" with. This added to the awareness and power of the piece.

What are the challenges facing "laptop performers" in relation to audience expectations about "liveness" and performance? How are some artists addressing these challenges?

Audiences have come to expect that films are made before performances of them and there is a sort of desire for the artist to prove that what they are making is in fact, live cinema. In London a group called Slug projects both the performance and the performer to insure a truly live experience. However, considering that this may affect the audience to not fully appreciate the full effect of the show by focusing on the proving process; another group actually shows the audience live and records it in order to make the process both of proving liveness and fully being engaged without having the burden of proving its liveness. That last sentence, had it included longer words, may be well worthy of Fried's approval.

Interesting read. Easier to understand the some things we have read. However, despite her passion for her craft and despite the amazing feeling I got upon seeing live cinema, I am still not sure if we should really call it "film." Sure it utilizes methods of film makers and the physical stuff of film, but their is something about it that is too different, too unique, to be called "film." Perhaps I say this because in my heart of hearts, despite both enjoying and appreciating my own live cinema experience, I can't beat the feeling of seeing a good ol' fashioned film. Live cinema is fun, but for me on a personal level its not the same experience. Live cinema is the roller coaster, and the cinema I love is the penetrating, powerful stuff the haunts your dreams and lives in you not from showy liveness, but from the quiet and assured cinematic presence. I am positive, in an attempt to not sound like Freid, that some people do honestly feel the reverse is true for them in their own lives. The only reason I say this, is that I just do not think they are in the same category. Yes, I know this article is about drawing distinctions, but I think perhaps, and I am fully aware of the dogmatic nature of what I am saying, that maybe we should just call them both something else. Cinema and Live VJ performance? Well, I will work on the absurd and pointless practce of defining art into subcategories later.

Avant-Garde Cienma Night

I really had a great time at the avant-garde cinema night. My favorite film was the stock broker film, though I fear we may have offended certain Asian members of the audience. My least favorite film was There is A Pervert in the Pool. It simply doesn't interest me at all. I thought, to put it too simply, it was lame.

Cinema explosion was an amazing time that I wish I could have been more involved with. It reminded of something like it must have felt like to be a member of the early avant-garde community in the Village. Maybe its not always easy to understand the films that came from that era, but seeing something like Live Cinema Explosion in action and allowing the audience to be involved in its creation, felt exciting and new. Perhaps that feeling, as base and simple as it is, is the reason why early avant-garde artists even made films to start with. I know that is a gross overstatement, but I feel closer to those artists now.

And some stuff about Tomb Raider...or why I wasted the entire 13th year of my life

What are the general claims about the film as a rejection of modernist aesthetics? (anti-art, feminism, etc.)

First of all Wess says that Awesh uses a system of deconstruction and defamaliaraztion. In other words she take the everyday video game character of Laura Croft and plays with our presumptions of what it means to be Laura, or what means to play a video game. Like all postmodernist her work would be seen as frivolous to modernist and in some ways anti-feminist.

How does he support these general claims with evidence from the film itself?

He mentions certain aspects from within the film, like the voice over narration. The most striking part seems to be the way Ahwesh keeps letting Laura die. As a viewer this is both frustrating and interesting. Also he compared the film to Maya Deren's masterpiece Meshes in the Afternoon.

To what degree does the analysis correspond with your own?

For the first time in the whole article his presumptions about feminism actually make sense. The rest of what he said all sounded pretty in line with what we have learned so far in the class. This is a small point, but while I understand after he explains it the connection between Deren and Ahwesh, I think that maybe this is too much of a jump. It is jump seemingly based on nothing, which while interesting, makes me question how sound his conclusions are. Also to claim that Meshes in the Afternoon, one the few avant-garde films that I passionately love is dated, well that is just wrong.

Oh the little differences: Early 70's avant-garde vs. No Wave

What are some similarities and differences between the American avant-garde of the early 1970s and the Punk or No Wave film making in the late 1970s? Address the following areas:

Aesthetic similarities and differences (which filmmakers do the cite as influences, which filmmakers do they reject?)

The member's of the No Wave part of cinema found inspiration from the likes of French directors like Goddard, Truffaut and Rohmer. This artists, instead of rejecting of traditional Hollywood narrative, took them and altered them to meet their own unique auteur principle. Early 1970's is different as it is a rejection of all things Hollywood and the brain child of the art world and the academy.

Technological similarities and differences

Both styles of cinema depended on cheapness, which I will mention later. However what makes them so different is the advent and use of a new camera, the Super 8. The Super 8 shots on near the same quality as the average home video and is just as easy to operate. Early 70's avant-garde has become more, shall we say "fancy," where as the the new technology allowed for the very Fluxus type idea that anyone could make film.

Economic similarities and differences

As I said earlier both depended somewhat on cheap means of creation. However, punk creation was even cheaper. The super 8 made is possible for almost anyone to create works of punk art. Of course as we have learned "art" is to many folks, a relative term.

Social similarities and differences

The art of early 70's avant-garde was considered by many to extremely formalized. Punks, as they so often do, chose to reject this. No Wave cinema is often more angry. Its anger is directed at society in general but more accurately at the art world which pins art into black boxes and demands that it follows its rule. However like early 70's avant garde some punks were in fact considered with the production and style of their films. To put it in another way, while punks may have tried harder to make political and social statements, it would be over stepping to say the early 70's avant-garde film makers were not doing the same thing in their own unique ways.