Dear listers
DEADLINE: 29 OCTOBER
It would be great if some of you with STS interests and interests in
materialities of media technologies submitted proposals to the event,
below. Although I'm not one of the organisers, I am chairing a session on
theory (!) and think it would be very useful to hear some archaeological
voices.
Technologies of Transmediality
SYMPOSIUM
What happens when films, television programmes or live performances adapt,
translate or incorporate material which originates in a different medium,
migrating across media or involving combinations of media? Technologies of
Transmediality explores the impact of a range of different technologies on
performance and screen media in the broadest sense, involving film,
television and theatre histories, but also literature and language studies,
historians of technology as well as researchers in digital technologies
from computer sciences and engineering. Theoretical, practical and
interpretative contexts will be deployed in relation to the theme,
provoking dynamic comparisons and the sharing of different disciplinary
insights and perspectives.
The symposium brings together researchers from the Worldwide Universities
Network from the USA and UK in an intensive three-day event focused around
four keynote addresses from Prof Mike van den Heuvel (Wisconsin), Prof Jeff
Smith (Wisconsin), Prof Sarah Street (Bristol), and Prof Phillip Thurtle
(Washington). There will also be a performance by Bodies in Flight
exploring the use of photography in live performance, directed by Prof
Simon Jones (Bristol), and a screening of extracts from films and
television programmes which involve the import/impact of popular music as
transmedial experience, compiled and introduced by Dr Kevin Donnelly
(Southampton).
The discussion will be developed through four themed panels on transmedial
forms and texts in screen and performance:
o Historical and contemporary examples
o Comparative issues arising from multiple frames of reference
o Theoretical models for technologies and transmediality
o The practice of transmedial art and technologies
We particularly welcome contributions that themselves work through a range
of modalities and media. For the session on Theoretical models, I would be
keen to see presentations that emphasise transferable models and methods
rather than specific case studies. Presentations should be no more than
10-minutes long, to allow for panel responses and discussion.
Abstracts should be between 150 and 200 words in length, plus full contact
details and any affiliation, and emailed to [log in to unmask] by
Friday 29th October. In order to keep the event focused and maximize
dialogue, numbers will be limited to panel presenters only, who will be
notified by 8th November. There is a registration fee of £50 which includes
lunches, an evening meal and refreshments.
Technologies of Transmediality symposium: plenary abstracts
The Performance of Science
Prof Mike van den Heuvel (Wisconsin)
Screening of extracts from films and television programmes which involve
the import/impact of popular music as transmedial experience
Dr Kevin Donnelly (Southampton)
The interaction of film and music is one of the clearest examples of
intermediality. The film and popular music industries developed side by
side since the end of the
Nineteenth Century and have had vigorous interaction over time. Their
points of intersection mark some of the most striking and memorable as well
as some of the most rapidly forgotten moments on cinema.
In some cases the aesthetics of one medium dominates or obliterates the
other, while on other occasions a strong sense of merged aesthetics through
accommodation is evident. This illustrated talk will focus on a number of
examples of intermedial aesthetics demonstrated by films that incorporate
popular music, running from isolated appearances of singers to full
attempts at integration with music-led narratives and pop star actors.
Popular Music, Intermediality and the Screen
Prof Jeff Smith (Madison)
The parallel histories of film and popular music in the postwar era are
replete with anecdotes about each medium's influence on the other: songs
that eulogize movie stars, songs that sample lines of dialogue or snatches
of movie music, movies that take their tone and mood from the songs that
inspired them, etc. Such anecdotes indicate that recent scholarship on
intermediality may provide a useful framework for analyzing the connections
between these two preeminent forms of American popular culture.
My paper examines two particular ways in which intermediality is
articulated in film and popular music: multimodality and ekphrasis.
Drawing upon the work of Annabel Cohen and Lars Elleström, the first part
of the paper uses a scene from Kickass
(2010) to consider ways in which cinema's multimodal address supports
particular kinds of intermedial relations between film and popular music.
The second part of the paper examines ekphrastic descriptions of film in
popular music. By briefly
surveying examples of ekphrasis in the work of Scott Walker, the Pixies,
the Drive-By Truckers, Thomas Dolby, and others, I will analyze the
different strategies that musicians use to overcome the challenge of
conveying aspects of the cinematic
in an almost purely aural medium.
Technicolor and Transmediality
Sarah Street (Bristol)
As the most commercially successful colour process for motion pictures for
many years, Technicolor came to signify a particular 'look', brand and
philosophy of screen colour. One of the ways it sought to differentiate
itself from cheaper, black and white films, was via the 'value added' of
colour which frequently involved being very much at the forefront of
processes of adaptation, re-presentation and re-invention of related forms
and media. The intermediality of Technicolor will form the basis of this
paper, focusing on texts in which colour was used to enhance and extend
intermedial exchange between cinema, novels and films, for example Gone
With the Wind (1939) and Blithe Spirit (1945). Discussions of
colour-film-music will also be drawn upon to investigate the claim that
colour pushed cinema towards greater integration with other medial forms.
In this instance the fusion of forms evident in films such as The Red Shoes
(1948) and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) will be discussed. The examples of
Technicolor, and colour in general, provide an opportunity to think about
the complex intentions, forms and impact of intermedial exchange.
Animating transmediality: The surprising depth of the uncompositable image
Prof Phillip Thurtle (Washington)
Transmedia environments often juxtapose images to create immersive
environments of astonishing depth and immediacy. This is surprising from a
theoretical perspective, since our current conception of surfaces, borrowed
from photography, often place ssurfaces at odds to depth of experience. The
indexical quality of a photograph, for instance, best indicates a world of
greater depth existing outside the frame of an image. A theory of
transmediality built on animation, however, provides a very different model
to think about the relationship between depth and surface and,
consequently, the depth of transmediality. Animation creates depth by
layering surfaces on top of each other. Consequently, the same conditions
that indicate a loss of depth in photography provide the necessary
components to an experience of depth in animation. This is especially
apparent in animations that aren't composited into seamless wholes. For
instance, the fine art animations of William Kentridge and Stephanie
Maxwell, shimmer, morph, and move, creating worlds saturated with vitality
and suggestive of constant change. This talk will explore the metaphysical
and aesthetic consequences of a theory of transmediality based on the
uncompositable image and its relationship to music, motion, and immersion.
All the best
Angela
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Dr A A Piccini
Drama: Theatre, Film, Television
School of Arts
University of Bristol
Cantocks Close, Woodland Road
Bristol BS8 1UP
T: 0117 331-5087
E: [log in to unmask]
Skype: aapiccini
W: www.bris.ac.uk/drama/staff_research/angela_piccini/
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