CONTENTS

 
   about
   MICHAEL BETANCOURT NEWS
   movies: AESTHETICS
   movies: NEWS & REVIEWS
   movies: SHOWS & SCREENINGS
   random art notes
   random how-tos
   research: AVANT-GARDE MOVIES
   research: MOTION GRAPHICS
   research: VISUAL MUSIC
   theory: CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS
   theory: DIGITAL CAPITALISM
   theory: GLITCH & POSTDIGITAL
   theory: working notes

 

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archives begin in 1996

  

Realism in Photography

story © Michael Betancourt | published August 22, 1998 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  View Printable Version



movies: AESTHETICS

The most self-evident element of photography is also is its most commonly unconsidered: realism. It is that we find this to be a self-evident quality that leaves us with the feeling that of course photography is realist in depiction. Thats what photographs are. We think of photo-ids, the photo-finish, and the photographic memory. All present us with an essential tie to reality through their depiction. This is why we say of a photograph that it is what it shows. We dont really mean that a photograph of a dog really is that dog, but that it shows us how that dog really looks. The idea is that in some base (mechanical) fashion the photograph has captured the dog; the dog has been shot, the photograph is the trophy.




read more (218 words)



 
MOVIES AND STATICS

story © Michael Betancourt | published July 24, 1998 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  View Printable Version



research: AVANT-GARDE MOVIES

Much of what follows, while directed towards Movies, is equally applicable to Statics. 'Real time' is the key to distinguishing statics (movies) which move very slowly from actual movies-as-such. Many things move/change, but not in a fashion we can actually perceive.




read more (121 words)



 
Morphology and Structure

story © Michael Betancourt | published June 14, 1998 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  View Printable Version



research: AVANT-GARDE MOVIES
(1)
	a priori expressions are limited to the physical materials*; in extreme forms it is 
	hoped to produce a phenomenological experience of the physical presence of the 
	material as a material
				(*note link to Marxist theory, Greenbergian modernism)


	technological potentials			IMAGE
	of moving images				CAMERA
	(movies) describing				BASE
	areas of technological				EDITING
	advancement					PROJECTION
							SCREEN
							SOUND

		technological potentials always determine aesthetics
		in materials-oriented formalism; this is why development
		and expansion of materials is so important to that formalism
		understanding this formalism is a necessary condition for
		escaping from it

[this list of seven categories is sufficient to cover all formal
development of movies and statics in any support system, 
whether film, television, computer or any other medium as
yet undeveloped.]



read more (633 words)



 
survey answers

story © Michael Betancourt | published April 30, 1998 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  View Printable Version



movies: AESTHETICS

No idea what this was used for.

> For an essay I would like to do a survey, would people like to answer these > questions and email the responces?

What is this survey going to be used for in this essay? A content analysis for marketing purposes or what??

>>>>responses:

1. What do you think computer/ digital art is?

Art.

[It's also important to recognize that "computer art" historically encompases different things than "digital art" historically does, and conflating these two terms is both innacurate and misleading.]

2. Do you think computer/digital art is a valid form of art like painting and drawing etc?

What is an invalid form of art?

(Isn't this like asking "when is a dog not a dog?") I don't understand this question at all.

Do you mean "valid medium"? In which case I would like to know how you're defining "art"; such a question about appropriate and inappropriate media relates to notions of medium-based purity. (These notions were never historically valid, a point clearly side stepped by Greenberg and his followers if you are familiar with their criticism. Also, such definitions are currently very much doubted epistemically.)

3. What place do you think art has on the internet?

The internet could be a useful way for artists to present their work to an audience; it could also become an "open" museum accessible and accepting anyone's work. However, for it to do either of these it would need to be part of a culture that values art as something other than a commodity or a status-object that could be owned by an individual because there is only limited ability to own works presented on the internet, and it is impossible to understand the works presented through it except in terms of open series of multiples, much as with television. This is built into the technology (is the technology), rather than being a side effect of it, as with traditional printed matter.

The non-physical nature of materials presented on the internet (binary code) means that they are at once easily distributed, copied and owned by anyone who wishes to make a copy of the work in question. This defeats the conception of ownership in the sense of a unique object. If I have a file and I want to give it to a friend I simply make a copy and then there are 2 essentially identical files. Further, I can delete one of them and it makes no difference which because of their identical nature.

At the same time digital works can only be viewed through technology, that is, they require technology to remain digital works. Prints are not digital works; they are prints made from digital files, which is to say that they are essentially different.

4. Would you use computer/digital art?

Use it for what? Does art need to have a use? If that is the case, then you're disagreeing with Kant, and I would like to know what you base this disagreement upon.

[Do you mean "make" this work? If that is the question, then the answer is yes.]






 
Frame Change Rate

story © Michael Betancourt | published March 15, 1998 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  View Printable Version



research: AVANT-GARDE MOVIES

the speed at which an image changes conditions our experience of it as a temporal object: we can only see things in real time* to perceive changes happening in real time (life) we must produce movies which condense the real time into a sped-up version for gradual changes (real time) to become visible to us in real time
[* which is to say the speed at which we as humans live and interact]




read more (239 words)