Augmented Reality in Art: Aesthetics and Material for Expression
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Augmented Reality, taken in its widest definition, dominates the interactive gallery art scene.
In a line of flight begun with the electronic video image brought in to the gallery in the 1970's, AR art today
bases its interaction and engagement with the viewer on the simultaneous nature of the electric image combined
with the illussionistic mysteries of digital processing. In this essay, Rhodes seeks to begin the needed conversation about AR
art— what is the material of expression, what is the ground and what is the figure, and where does it depart from art history.
In the end, what is proposed, is the technological apparatus itself as a material of expression
Metonymy in the Moving Image: Multichannel Cinema
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Metonymy in the Image: Multichannel Cinema, attempts to establish the
fractured screen film form (variably called "split-screen," "picture-in-picture," "macro-cinema," "expanded cinema") as a distinct and important movement within cinema. Drawing from extensive
art practice experience in multichannel film, Rhodes analyzes the viewing
experience of multichannel cinema in terms of semiotics and Deleuzian
film theory. Rhodes begins with a survey of the different multichannel
mediums: video games, computer windows, traditional and experimental
film, and then centering on the feature film and Peter Greenaway's The
Pillow Book. The feature film becomes the object of analysis, and specifically
a critical comparison of the single channel narrative film form and the
multichannel.
The basic difference between forms, the replacement of shots in single
channel as opposed to the contiguous arrangement of shots in multichannel,
is put into terms of space and time. Here an interpretation of the importance
of these differences is given in terms of Henri Bergson, via Gilles Deleuze,
and a direct comparison is made between the multichannel form and Deleuze's
Time Image cut. The described opposition between "temporal montage" and "spatial montage" is then put in semiotic terms, and the opposition of metonymic and metaphoric
planes of meaning described, drawing from the writings of Roland Barthes
on the photograph, and Roman Jacobson. Here Rhodes intimates that multichannel
cinema can function as an imporant metalanguage through a more metonymic
communication with the viewer. Rhodes then returns to Bergson, and his
theory of perception, to analyze the experience of spectating the multichannel.
He proposes a special activity by the multichannel cinema audience, in
which they must create a virtual screen that combines all the images
presented into a whole. This creative act sets the multichannel spectating
process apart from the single channel, and again points towards the possibility
of a metalanguage system. Rhodes proposes this system as working within
a playspace, in between the screen and the framed channels. This playspace,
through the viewer's creative act, becomes a narrative arena that can
break through cliché.
A Semiotic Analysis of High Fashion Advertising
Medialogy.net — a new net criticism initiative
"Selfploitation": Participatory Pornography in Web 2.0
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'Selfploitation' is a term coined by a trilogy of internet 'porn' sites
published by the Australia based company GMBill PTY ltd., an "almost entirely women run" organization: ishotmyself.com, beautifulagony.com, and ifeelmyself.com. The first two consist entirely of self-produced porn (and/or 'erotica' as you will see), and ifeelmyself.com is an out-growth of these, where volunteers are produced into their own video porn vignettes. All three sites are built around the community structure of a blog: there are forums where members post messages to themselves, they speak of "sponsors" and "contributors" and scold "freeloaders." They present themselves with a vaguely feminist agenda of control and liberation of sexuality and the female body, and language of the art gallery and the community blog to describe their power structures and products. We could say this is the end of pornography補 completion of exposure, where every member is removed from the capture, but the self, and every member included in the audience, including the self. In the equating of self with other, signification with reflection, the 'virtual' and 'real' have taken the place of 'subject' and 'object'. The community that is joined in these sights is a community of images. An exhibitor can become one of a set of images, to be given back to the self as a virtual. This is not the joy of 'perverts' finding enjoyment in the "instrumentalization" for the pleasure of the other, instead it's a total mediation of 'self' to 'other',
a narcissistic circuit where they can be both object and subject, gaze
and that which gazes back: your image giving pleasure to your self.
The Quill Magazine