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New Subjectivities:

The following article details a movement from film as objective, scientific tool
to a subjective, psychological  instrument:

http://www.informatics.tuad.ac.jp/net-expo/ff/box/box7/en/b7-1.html


This article is good in the way that it shows a movement from objective to
subjective styles of documentary film making, and it addresses some of the
film-historical issues related to these changes while cataloging various styles.
However, the articulation of the objective-subjective thesis is not as fully
explored as it could be--perhaps because this thesis is located in the history
of film rather than in the adjacent histories of philosophy and painting. For
example, inside the objective model of documentary as neutral, impersonal
tool--camera as invisible, immaterial recorder--is the scientific model that
negates such invisibility-immateriality: Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
Though Heisenberg's principle applies to the quantum scale, its central
tenet--the effect of the measurer on the measured--functions on any scale. The
effect of the measurer on the measured Renov explores, but he does not fully
explore the philosophical implications of this problem nor does he explore the
artistic problems related to the objective-subjective approach (at least not in
this article).

However, if we want to maintain the objective-subjective model and not open it
up to its philosophical problems, then without moving into the subjective realm,
we can still look at the artistic problems. For example, the importance of
scale, the problem developed by Picasso in Cubism----the concern for  the
dimensionality of the representation and the dimensionality of the
represented--, and a few other problems explored by artists both inside and
outside film manifest themselves in something labeled objective, scientific
documentary.

As to scale, its importance manifests itself in terms of horizon, point of
reference, and so forth because the identity (objective or subjective) of an
object comes into question when its horizon is lost. To think of
objectivity-realism as an issue of scale, consider the work of Georgia O'Keefe,
especially her flowers, or the work of Claus Oldenburg (sp), especially his
spoon. Without a normalizing or relative perspective, we get the problem of
geometry, the problem of  _Gulliver's Travels_ (value relative to proportion),
and then too we get the problem of identity where the  _what_ itself becomes
questionable--for example, a sound: the wings of a hummingbird or a jet engine?

. . .




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Digital Identities:

http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/visible/renov.html


Perhaps a need to address the confessional line of autobiography in Western
culture: St. Augustine, Rousseau, Franklin.

Related course listing:

http://cinema.concordia.ca/russell/expdocsyl98.html



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An exhibit that deals with some of the ideas Michael Renov discusses.
Positioning:

The Exhibition:

http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/positioning/intro.htm

Related texts:

http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/positioning/texts.htm


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Society for Cinema Studies: Cinema Journal

http://www.cinemastudies.org/cj.htm

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Course Listings on Documentary:

http://web.missouri.edu/~commjhe/html/documentary_.html

http://www.fls.rochester.edu/class4.html


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