Mobile phones have transformed from a communication device to a
lens-based media. Over the last decade mobile filmmaking has
evolved from underground and art house into an egalitarian
moving-image practice. Everyday we carry the tools around to
potentially produce feature films. In an international context, mobile
film can provide access to filmmaking and video production for a
new generation of filmmakers. For local communities, mobile
devices have the potential to engage audiences all around
Wellington and beyond Aotearoa. Mobile devices can enable one to
see the world from new viewpoints and angles. The beauty of
mobile filmmaking is exposed through the creative exploration of
filmmaking and its break from established rules and conventions.
While mobile camera phones were never intended for filmmaking
when they first appeared, the current third (or fourth) generation of
smart phones are often equipped with high definition video. While
the very first pioneering mobile short and feature films, produced
from 2004-2007, explored the new mobile pixel aesthetic,
contemporary mobile filmmaking represent a new wave of mobile
filmmaking. Mobile filmmakers are constantly on the move and
work in collaboration, their work is related to mobile bodies,
connectivity, mobile experiments and the re-definition or rather remixing of traditional filmmaking genres. Artists and independent
filmmakers ignited a new form of media production that also
transcends the cinematic screen. Simultaneously, mobile
filmmaking has also developed into a cultural practice. MINA
showcases the mobile work produced with local communities and
young adults in Brazil, Germany, Russia and Australia, presenting
the exciting work of MINA’s international partners.
The next generation of filmmakers will utilise the mobile device
according to their own ideals and agendas. Mobile filmmaking is
engaged in a constant innovation process that is influenced by
multiple vectors. It is emerging as a field with its own aesthetic
qualities. MINA provides a platform for the debate and exploration
of these contemporary developments in New Zealand.
The Mobile Innovation Network Aotearoa was co-founded by
Laurent Antonzack and Dr. Max Schleser at the beginning of 2011.
Alongside this screening program, MINA organizes mobile
filmmaking workshops and provides a platform for the discussion of
mobile creativity and innovation through both online and offline
events. The MINA symposium on the 26th November at the College
of Creative Arts at Massey University will bring together renowned
international artists, filmmakers, industry professionals and
researchers to share their ideas on the subject of mobile creativity
and mobile innovation in the creative industries. One of MINA’s core
aims is to engage the audience in the filmmaking process and to
foster new emerging talent in Aotearoa. MINA’s first major film
exhibition at the Film Archive in November 2011 is curated by Dr.
Max Schleser. The program features more than 60 international
mobile films and includes the Asia-Pacific premiere of three mobile
feature films. MINA would like to thank the colleagues in the College
of Creative Arts for their support in making this project possible and
especially thank Associate Professor Chris Bennewith and Professor
Anne Noble. MINA is supported by the Institute of Communication
Design, Toi Rauwharangi, College of Creative Arts, Massy University
and the Film Archive Wellington.
I hope you enjoy the program and will experiencing the world in a
mobile way.
Dr. Max Schleser
TEAM MINA
Roy Parkhurst – Contributing Researcher & Panel Chair
Karen Curley – Contributing Researcher & Panel Chair
Program design by Klaus Kremer
Logo design by Thomas Le Bas
Video support Keir Husson
Tech support Durgesh Patel
Laurent Antonczak – Co-founder
Dr. Max Schleser – Co-founder
26th NOVEMBER 2011
MINA Mobile Creativity and Innovation Symposium
[Executive Suite - 5B 14]
Massey University, Wellington
10:30 Registration
11:00 am
Dr Camille Baker – MindTouch: Mobile Media Performance
[UK]
Kasia Molga – Saving the world with Twitter – musing on alternative ways
of communications. Not necessary among humans.
[UK]
Dr Christopher Fry – Marking the possibilities: QR codes and new notions
of space and place [UK]
Chair: Karen Curley
12:00 pm
Andrew Quitmeyer – Semi-Automatic Filmmaking with Mobile Devices
[USA]
Laurent Antonczak – Mobile Devices and Art Museum, a new learning
experience [France]
Daniel Mauro – Speaking without Listening: Limitations of the Online
Distribution and Accessibility of Amateur Video
Chair: Roy Parkhurst
1 pm – 2pm Lunch Break
[USA]
2 pm
Dean Keep and Marsha Berry – The Mobile Aesthetic: Exploiting the
possibilities for Creative Practice
Roy Parkhurst – A small history of cinematography: Walter Benjamin and
the tradition of the city portrait
Gavin Wilson – The Body as Physical Conduit for Experience in a
Phenomenology of Cell Cinema
Chair: Dr. Max Schleser
3pm
Associate Professor Lynne Ciochetto – Cellphones and social services for
the ‘bottom billion’
Tiago Franklin – The Brazilian Perspective on Mobile Art and Mobile
Filmmaking [BRAZIL]
Daniel Wagner – Entertainment Lab for the Very Small Screen (ELVSS)
4pm
Rosângela Ap – “Mobile Art” – Mapping, Analysis and Classification of
Poetic Proposal to use Cell Phones
Max Schleser – Mobile Filmmaking 2.0
Miss Pixels – The Hashtag Project
Andrew B. White - iPhoneography
Roger Guetta Envision/Decision/Mission [Canada]
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Symposium Abstracts
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Laurent Antonczak [AUT University / University of Strasbourg]
Mobile Devices and Art Museum, a new learning experience.
The commonplace mobile devices that visitors carry in their pockets are
increasingly being used by art museums as educational resources that extend the
visitor’s learning experience. By offering visitors platform-specific applications
that deliver rich, dynamic content, museums are able to engage and educate
visitors in new and exciting ways.
Within this context, Laurent Antonczak is currently leading a team of 10
researchers, based in Strasbourg (France), who are investigating the use of
mobile technology to engage museums visitors in learning about a masterpiece,
its author and about the social and political context of the creative work. This
project aims to provide mobile users with a positive experience with the Musée
d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg.
During his session, Laurent will give a quick overview of this specific project
and will define some key elements of this project in relation to mobile phone,
collaborative practice and user experience.
Laurent has more than 10 years experience in digital strategies (branding,
marketing, visual communication, social media, and emerging technologies for
web and mobile phones). Laurent is co-founder of MINA.
---------------------------------------------------
Rosângela Ap [Artist]
“Mobile Art” – Mapping, Analysis and Classification of Poetic
Proposal to use Cell Phones
The text refers to research that aims to map to analyze the state of art which is
called the "Mobile Art" in the period 2001 to 2010, we are soon to be a
predominant mode of communication with contemporary features. This research
is delimited in the use of cell phones "on" and "for" the production of poetics
proposals because we believe that this already presents a variety of proposals on
the integration of other communication technologies, making the complex
analysis of all the demonstrations with other mobile devices. We believe that
there is a need for reflection on this production and that the organization toward
a mapping and classification will help future research on the subject. The
theoretical basis for the analysis is based on authors who discuss the art in the
digital context, using concepts of interactivity, digital aesthetics, new designs,
content production as Vilém Flusser (2008), Oliver Grau (2007), Claudia Giannetti
(2007), Pierre Lévy (2000), André Lemos (1997), Paul Weissberg (2003), among
others, since many of the proposals have as main participation of the "public" in
the work which also involves the discussion of co-authorship in this process. The
search results will be built a database of events related to the Mobile Art, national
and international artists and groups; an opening of an online communication
channel for the dissemination of research online and receive contributions
throughout the project.
Rosângela Ap (Rosângela Aparecida da Conceição) is an artist, designer, teacher,
researcher and independent curator. Member of the researches groups CAT science / art / technology (2009) and GIIP (2011), both certified by IAUnesp/CNPq. Since 1996, regularly participates in exhibitions as an artist. Since
2005 presents lectures, workshops and courses in Art and Technology in cultural
and educational institutions. Since 1996, regularly participates in exhibitions as
an artist.
---------------------------------------------------
Dr. Camille Baker [Brunel University]
MINDtouch: Mobile Media Performance
The mobile media performance project, MINDtouch: Ephemeral Transference, a
PhD art research work completed in 2010 and published in 2011. It proposed that the
mobile videophone become a new way to communicate non-verbally, in real time,
across different physical and technological environments and locations. Users ‘VJ-ed’
or mixed video from a database live, and using their body data with wireless sensors
they had abstract visual conversations with other mobile users, creating a
collaborative, telematic collage of externalised body sensations. The goal was to
expand and explore more embodied and meaningful exchanges between remote
groups of people.
MINDtouch critically investigated, challenged, and extended the potential of
performance practice through its live approach, using mobile and online networks. It
was about the transmitting the sense of liveness and presence, through visual
manifestations of embodied experiences through the mobile network.
It is my contention that lo-fi aesthetics of pixelated images add to the intimacy,
authenticity and 'realness' of the mobile video medium, as well as making it more
accessible to the users. Delays in the transmission render the work more 'everyman'
in its nature and easier to relate to, while professional quality work creates a distance
or disconnect from the common person and their everyday experience or ability. I will
discuss these issues and the MINDtouch project in more depth in this paper, as well
as new directions in non-verbal mobile expression and performance in my new work.
Dr. Camille Baker is a lecturer and artist-performer/researcher/curator within various
art forms: interactive and performance installation, music composition and
performance, video art, web animation, and experience design.
---------------------------------------------------
Associate Professor Lynne Ciochetto [Massey University]
Cellphones: and social services and for the 'bottom billion'
Cellphone technology has become much more commonplace in western
industrialized nations and amongst the middle and upper classes of emerging
nations. With the introduction of most technologies there are unexpected costs
and benefits. One of the unexpected effects of cellphone technology has been the
social benefits in emerging nations. Cellphones are an example how countries can
leapfrog stages in technology. Poorer people in emerging economies, especially
India and China have been able to bypass the stage of purchasing computers and
can now access the internet through their cellphones. This possibility has brought
unanticipated social benefits and potentially has major implications for improving
the lives of millions of people. This presentation explores some emerging trends
and pioneer work being conducted by companies such as Nokia in providing
agricultural information to poor rural farmers in India and the access to
microcredit and online banking in Bangladesh.
Lynne is an Associate Professor in the College of Creative Arts at Massey
University. With degrees in sociology and anthropology, a masters in sociology, a
post-graduate diploma in development studies and three years post-graduate
study in graphic design at the Basel School of Design her approach is
interdisciplinary.
---------------------------------------------------
Tiago Franklin R. Lucena [Universidade de Brasília. CAPES
scholarship]
Mobile art pratices in Brazil: an overview
We want to show the many creative possibilities in the use of mobile devices in
the art by focusing on creative practices in Brazil. It should be noted that mobile
devices is a pervasive technology in this country. The brazilian culture and way of
life facilitates the participation of individuals by integrating online social
networking, using SMS or the Bluetooth network in everyday life and artistic
experience for example. It focuses, however, in audiovisual production with these
devices. Indeed, more than just creating narratives and fictional stories in
proposals for micro-nanovídeos, brazilians pratices tries to document of the city's
problems, used for public denunciation, to record intimate scenes that contributes
with the discussion around invasion of privacy. Not coincidentally, these themes
are present in the videos submitted and presented at various festivals in the
country that help create a framework for strengthening the practice in the region.
Festivals such as: Cell.lucine, Mobilefest and ArteMov are three of the most
representative in the country and are sponsored by mobile phone companies that
contribute to create a space of discussion and visibility for these productions. In
a country of continental dimensions, other experiences are isolated groups of
individuals who creatively use the device in various ways and emphases proving
the versatility of the technology and re-given potential meanings for each culture
and group.
PhD candidate of Arts and Technology at University of Brasilia. Area of Interest:
In the field of Arts and Technology I have been investigating (practicaltheoretical) Mobile Art and the use of mobile devices (cellphone, smartphones,
netbooks) in arts, science and technology.
---------------------------------------------------
Dr Christopher Fry [University of Westminster]
Marking the possibilities: QR codes and new notions of space
and place [UK]
QR (or Quick Read) codes have come to pervade the urban landscape. They are
becoming a standard feature of print, billboard and TV advertising. By 'scanning'
the code, those with a QR code reader on their mobile device can navigate to
online content, such as a company's website, or receive a message encrypted
into the matrix of the QR code. These machine/mobile readable 2D barcodes offer
connections to online spaces and texts, seemingly marking up physical space in
the manner of a hypertext.
However, the QR code can be seen as more than merely a hyperlink. It has been
reframed by artists as a window or portal onto other spaces and places. Their
esoteric nature, being readable only by the mediating device, makes them
signifiers of potential and possibility. They are symbols that suggest a connection
but without revealing the destination since they require the interpretation of the
device to translate. This automatic process is offered/presented as a physical act
that extends the user's own capabilities. This paper will examine the question:
How can the QR code be employed to draw attention to new notions of space and
place and our relationship with the mediating device?
Dr. Chris Fry is an artist and teacher living in London. He currently teaches at the
University of Westminster on the Contemporary Media Practice course, within the
School of Media, Art and Design.
---------------------------------------------------
Dean Keep [Swinburne University]
& Marsha Berry [RMIT University]
The Mobile Aesthetic: Exploiting the possibilities for Creative
Practice
Mobile phones are intimate personal devices that are ideal for capturing
ephemeral sights, sounds and experiences of the everyday. Their use has become
second nature and they are an integral part of a postmodern habitus. We use
them to communicate with others, for entertainment, to find our way through city
streets, to meet people and to capture and share moments of personal
significance.
Camera-phones enable visual artists and filmmakers to extend their creative
practice whilst challenging perceptions and conventions surrounding the
production and screening of digital video projects. Images and video captured on
the mobile phone are generally not afforded the same status or prestige so often
attributed to visual mediums such as photography and cinema, but this may also
be viewed as an advantage, as it frees both the artist and the viewer from the
intellectual baggage associated with more traditional visual media forms.
In this paper, with particular reference to art works produced by the authors, we
examine the mobile aesthetic; looking at how camera-phones may be adopted as
tools for the creation of video works that exploit the unique image quality of the
camera-phone. The portability and technical capabilities of mobile technologies
significantly alters relationships with media and creative practice, presenting new
opportunities and strategies for artists to interrogate and interpret the ephemera
of everyday experiences.
Dean is a Visual Artist and Lecturer in Digital Media at Swinburne University,
Melbourne. He has been active in mobile art movement since 2004 and has
exhibited work in national and international forums. The focus of his research is
mobile media, emerging digital technologies and memory studies.
Marsha’s research trajectory started in humanities with a focus on ethnography,
ethnomethodology, language and performance studies. She has applied and
extended her background in ethnography and post-structural critical discourse
analysis to the emerging field of digital media. Her creative practice includes
photography, video art and poetry. Since 2007, she has explored the connections
between technology, memory, place and displacement in her practice. She has
exhibited her video art and images nationally and internationally.
---------------------------------------------------
Daniel Mauro [University of Texas at Austin]
Speaking without Listening: Limitations of the Online
Distribution and Accessibility of Amateur Video
While mobile and amateur videos capture details and moments often unseen in
commercial media, very few of these videos reach large numbers of viewers.
Production is plentiful, yet distribution and consumption pose challenges to any
political potential they may have. Such potential is too often assumed to be a
part of the technology, itself, perceived under shortsighted prospects that a
technology such as a mobile camera-phone inherently enables an effective,
meaningful form of communication. Much of the discourse of mobile and amateur
video is surrounded by its assumed democratizing qualities, yet this conception of
democratic media neglects the roles of distribution and access in yielding greater
political potential. YouTube and other video sharing sites offer potential in
enabling a multivocal collection of content, but whether or not those voices are
actually heard is a much more complicated matter.
Producing and uploading a video online does not mean it will necessarily be
received by another viewer. Much of the disconnect between producer and viewer
occurs because the organization of such content online does not necessarily offer
easy access to the uploaded videos. The accessibility of mobile and amateur video
online points to some of the broader constraints and limitations in the realization
of their political potential.
This paper asserts that accessibility is a key function in the online distribution and
political potential of these videos. Limitations of accessibility will be explored in
an examination of online video distribution networks, a study of the organization
of searches and content at popular video sharing sites, and a case study of an
amateur videographer uploading footage from the Libyan Revolution.
Daniel Mauro is a doctoral student in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at
the University of Texas at Austin. His current research focuses on histories of the
dissemination of amateur motion picture technologies. When not researching, he
makes his own films and videos with these technologies.
---------------------------------------------------
Kasia Molga [Artist]
Saving the world with Twitter - musing on alternative ways
of communications. Not necessary among humans.
So first we thought that the world is flat. We also thought that it is carried by a
giant man called Atlas. Then we changed our perspectives a bit and were
convinced that we are in the centre of the universe. Then, with the technological
progress and invention of new communication tools, slightly disappointed we
discovered that we are just a tiny particle amongst the vastness of Cosmos and
that our being on this world is not a divine creation but in fact it might be very
accidental. Moreover it seems to be interdependent on millions of other factors
and living species and that we are part of something called “biodiversity”.
However it also seems that our collaborative “ego” still keeps rejecting that idea
that we are not the masters of the world but merely a small part of it. In the
context of the state of environment and in fact self-preservation as species to
keep playing around and having fun on our planet, it seems that again there is a
time to shift out perception on what it is that thing called “our world” and how we
can relate to it.
The modern, fast progressing communication, networked, data and social media
technologies have revealed an entirely new layer and thus opportunity to explore
relations with each other and other species.
Based on her own practice which often employs mobile media or related social
media technologies and giving examples of other practitioners work (such as
Active Ingredient, Sander Veenhoff and more), Kasia Molga asks - can we (and
by “we” we mean all living creatures) start talking and can twitter really save the
world?
Kasia Molga is a visual artist and interaction designer whose practice is concerned
with our relationship with the planet – Buckminster-Fuller’s concept of a
“Spaceship Earth”; and changes in our perception: of ourselves and our roles in
the context of nature, climate, environment and community in this increasingly
technologically mediated world.
---------------------------------------------------
Roy Parkhurst [Massey University]
A small history of cinematography: Walter Benjamin and the
tradition of the city portrait
Paper for innovative exhibition/screening programme at the New Zealand,
government-managed Film Archive which represented the first mobile filmmaking
festival in New Zealand and one of the first in the southern hemisphere. This
paper responded to independent filmmaker Adam Kossoff who submitted Moscow
Diary (2011), one of the finest features to date made exclusively from mobile
phone video footage. Kossoff’s film traces Walter Benjamin’s wanderings and
diary about his travels to Moscow from 1926-27. This paper addresses the
relationship between Benjamin’s theories of photography/cinematography, his
travel diaries, and the tradition of the cinematic “city portrait” including such
canonical titles as Walter Ruttman’s Berlin: Symphony of a City (1927), DzigaVertov’s Man With A Movie Camera (1929), & Jean Vigo’s A Propos de Nice
(1930). This paper presents novel new connections and evidence of a deeper
continuity between period theorization of the formative experimental cinema and
the contemporary mobile filmmaking practices of today.
Roy has been living and teaching in New Zealand since the mid-1990s. He came
here from the United States where he studied and taught at The University of
Florida, Ohio University and Guilford College. Roy also spent some time in the
entertainment and journalism worlds and was Senior Editor of JAZZIZ Magazine
from 1991-1996. He studied new media, film and literature off and on from the
mid-1970s to the late 1980s and took up digital design practice in the early
1990s.
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Miss Pixels [Artist]
The Hashtag Project
The Hashtag Project is a beacon in MissPixels’ daily artistic production. She will
discuss the creative process behind this series and how she strives to integrate
this new concept in the 2.0 environment. This particular project is intended as a
plastic interpretation of the confrontation between the virtual universe of the
social networks and the real world. Choosing specific words, the artist indexes
and classifies real environments using tools from the virtual world. Selecting the
Smartphone as the medium for this concept is meant to intensify the link
between the two worlds. MissPixels will present the #nightmare Project, which
contains photos from New York, Montreal and Barcelona. She will also discuss the
next step in the Hashtag Project: #dream.
The artist will share her intensely personal definition of mobile art, as well as her
vision of movement in the context of contemporary art. She will also discuss the
place mobile artists currently occupy in the art world and whether there should be
room for them in traditional exhibition spaces. MissPixels will also discuss the
method behind her work (in series, by concept), the apps she uses, and how
spontaneity permeates her creative work. MissPixels will also try to convince you
that she is not a photographer, but rather an Image Manipulator 2.0.
MissPixels has participated in several exhibitions in countries that include Italy,
Australia, the United States, Canada and Spain. She has received countless
accolades and has given lectures in London, Montreal and New York City. She has
also given several interviews to various newspapers, magazines and books.
---------------------------------------------------
Andrew Quitmeyer [Georgia Institute of Technology]
Semi-Automatic Filmmaking with Mobile Devices
Digital filmmaking has significantly impacted documentary films by decreasing
the costs of production, editing, and distribution. Few digital affordances,
however, have been applied to improve the actual filmmaking process; most
documentary productions continue to abide by the legacy practices. First,
documentarians gather massive amounts of subject information from archival
footage, recorded interviews, and text. Next, the documentarians are forced to
re-sort through the collected data and derive a structure for the eventual audiovideo narrative. While this structural synthesis period distinguishes documentary
from other film formats, as a stand-alone process it can be quite arduous.
Some video logging systems attempt to ameliorate the problem of sorting
through droves of audio and video. These systems, however, are typically only
used in large commercial or theatrical filmmaking as they rely on pre-established
concrete master structures (such as shot lists). On the other side, database film
projects fully automate the structuring of video into dynamically ordered
segments or presenting spatialized, interactive clips. To form any sort of distinct
narrative with these systems still requires the intense sorting and editing process
of traditional filmmaking.
Documatic aims to simplify the arduous structural synthesis process by combining
it with more the exploratory, spontaneous "information gathering" segment. Via
an Android application and digital video source, mobile filmmaker pairs can add
real-time annotations to recorded footage. As the amassed data is downloaded to
a computer, Documatic combines the semantic and video data to create "preedited" rough-cut, video sequences for Adobe Premiere. The end product will be
more or less indistinguishable from a traditional, linear documentary film, but the
new formative process will hopefully be simpler, more efficient, educational, and
fun.
Andrew Quitmeyer is a polymath adventurer interested in discovering new means
of exploring and sharing our world.
---------------------------------------------------
Dr. Max Schleser [Massey University]
Mobile-mentary (mobile documentary) 2.0
Mobile filmmaking entered the mediascape from 2004 onwards and not only
introduced a new aesthetic but also established prospects for cultural innovation.
The paper will point at the development in mobile video towards the sociability
(de Souza e Silva 2006) and ‘connectivity’ of mobile filmmaking. The
transformation of audience in creating these new documentary practices as an
alternative cultural practice (Schleser 2009) is an indicator for not only a
transforming art and design environment but also the emergence of a new
understanding of creative processes. In the recent study Documentary and New
Digital Platforms – an ecosystem in transition, one of the key elements outlined in
the report by the Documentary Network is the dynamic new relationship with
audiences. The current work-in-progress 24 Frames 24 Hours investigates the
new forms of “cultural mediation” (Houle 2011). 24 Frames 24 Hours is an
international collaborative mobile documentary capturing the life in 24 hours in
24 different cities. The project kick started with an international collaborative
mobile film-making workshop in Paderborn (Germany) and Wellington (New
Zealand) and one in New York City (USA). The project examines collaborative
practices and applies Cinéma vérité and Kino-Pravda practices in the digital
realm. The study draws upon new paradigms of participation and simultaneously
analyses creative processes. Besides the aesthetic refinement, the research
project functions as a prototype for community involvement through creative
practices. The paper will review contemporary crowd-sourcing film projects and
will analyse the emerging distinction between collaborative and co-creative
practices. Moreover the paper points at the industry presideces and will argue
that process driven and participatory approaches require new frameworks to
evaluate these media text. The paper will relate these developments to the bigger
picture of innovation through a user-based interpretation of technology (Edgerton
2007) and will examine collaboration as a creative process (Gauntlett 2011).
Dr. Max Schleser is a filmmaker who explores mobile devices as creative and
educational tools. Max is Subject Director Digital Media at Massey University and
co-founder of FILMOBILE (www.filmobile.net) and MINA (www.mina.pro), Mobile
Innovation Network Aotearoa.
---------------------------------------------------
Daniel Wagner [Unitec]
Entertainment Lab for the Very Small Screen (ELVSS)
The ELVSS project challenged film students to adapt the traditional storytelling
conventions they’re learning to emerging creation and delivery platforms.
25 Students in the Bachelor of Performing and Screen Arts at Unitec Institute of
Technology in Auckland were lent iPhones to shoot and iPads to edit material, and
created an interweaving series of very short films, for optimum delivery on
mobiles.
Called to question in the teaching are new considerations for creating and
packaging narrative. How might story structure be adapted to best suit the
realities of the new delivery media? What effect do video compression and
smaller screens have on our choices related to Shot Size, Framing, Camera and
Actor Movement, Editing, etc? What are the sonic possibilities and how can we
further them to create richer environments? What are the potentials for
interactivity (such as QR codes and user-enabled hotspots)?
By the end of the 11-week course, they produced five mobisodes, each of which
connect to one another at one or two points. Along the way, they’ve been guided
to grapple with creating their own macro and micro working and learning
structures and have learned to negotiate between creative teams. The learning
that occurs is not data transferred from a lecturer’s head to the students’, but is
an experiential journey in an unfolding idiom where the outcome is both unfixed
and unknown at the beginning of the process. It is the use and recognition of the
potentials of the tools that become the learning content itself.
Students in a contemporary best-practice film school, forging a new pathway, are
being challenged to apply traditional cinematic methods and sensibilities to
newly-developing concepts and new media tools.
Dan has been working in various aspects of the entertainment industry for quite
awhile now. In the mid 70’s, he was part of an experiment in social-changefocussed television in Los Angeles, serving on the programming staff and also on
the camera crew in their live-TV studio. Moving to San Francisco in 1980, Dan
became a segment producer for a local TV programme, also directing music
videos for some influential left-field bands of the day. Since 2005, he’s been a
Lecturer at Unitec Institute of Technology in Auckland, New Zealand. He teaches
both Cinematography and Emerging Technologies and is the E-Learning
Community Coordinator for the Department of Performing and Screen Arts at
Unitec.
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Gavin Wilson [York St John University]
The Body as Physical Conduit for Experience in a
Phenomenology of Cell Cinema
The screening of films made on mobile phones to one or more spectators, either
on a mobile phone or projected before an audience, significantly changes the
material instrumentality of the phone film with profound consequences for its
reception. In this process, the phone film transitions from a particularised kind of
audio-visual artefact recording a filmmaker’s personal experience, to become the
material component of a potentially innovative discourse, sharing characteristics
of cinematic form whilst foregrounding other features specific to it.
The term I favour for this mode of audience engagement, cell cinema, describes
an innovative mode of media discourse in two significant ways: The first links the
filmmaker and spectator in a more direct relationship of individualised
communication, foregrounding its cellular interaction in a physical, biological or,
as Deleuze says, a rhizomatic sense. The second involves them in a physically copresent form of participatory engagement within film festivals.
This paper and selected film examples investigates the centrality of the human
body in phone film engagement, of an enhanced encounter with the sensual,
challenging the physical distancing of theatrical projection.
The writing of Maurice Merleau-Ponty brings us back to phenomenological
experience, revealing the act of seeing as contingent on objective thought about
the world. Additionally, I look at how the earlier writing of Henri Bergson offers a
physiological conception of the body’s function in human perception.
The mobile phone and the human gaze forge a bridging link between people,
connecting through vision, appealing to an immediate if mediated sensory
experience. As Merleau-Ponty says, ‘to look at the object is to plunge oneself into
it’.
Prior to undertaking my current academic research project under a Studentship
awarded by York St John University, I worked as a Sector Manager for Screen
Yorkshire, one of the UK’s development agencies for screen media. During most
of my earlier freelance career I worked as a cameraman on film and TV dramas,
commercials and music promos for UK-based and international production
companies, and continue to write narrative fiction screenplays. The subject
matter for this paper expresses a particular line of enquiry expounded in my
doctoral thesis, due for completion in 2013.
---------------------------------------------------
Andre B White [Artist]
iPhoneography
The use of the cellular phone as a device for photography has been somewhat
lacklustre until recently. The advent of point-and-shoot digital cameras and the
subsequent integration of this technology into cell phones in the mid-2000s
allowed for instantaneous image capture. Whilst someone might not always carry
a camera with them they would likely always carry a cell phone. The combination
of a usable camera on a device that was always at the ready opened up
possibilities for capturing images anywhere and at any time.
After the novelty of having 'a camera on your phone' wore off and the images
were deemed suitably awful (in a pure sense) due to limited optics and
resolution, several years past before the cellphone camera evolved in to the
photographic tool of today. Fast forward to the iPhone. Initially with a very
limited 2 megapixel camera it was still just 'another average camera on cell
phone' (albeit a cutting edge cell phone). That was until the advent of the App
Store in 2008. The App Store offered up applications that could edit and enhance
the images from the inbuilt camera. Suddenly images taken on the iPhone, in
combination with these third party apps, became 'works of art'; the limitations of
the technology became its strengths and the term 'iPhone photography' or
'iPhoneography' was coined. Images were shot, app'd and shared, communities
built, hierarchies established, exhibitions staged, articles written, critiques and
definitions applied. Joe Public became a photographer (an 'iPhoneographer');
people who had never considered themselves to be creative became 'artists'
through their iPhone photography. Professionals ditched their DSLRs for
portability and instant results.
Andrew is an Auckland based iPhoneographer. http://www.andrewbwhite.com/
and http://andrewbwhite.tumblr.com/
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