Framing, Re-framing, and Un-framing Cinema
Digital artists Paul Kaiser and Marc Downie of OpenEndedGroup collaborate with Tom Gunning (University of Chicago, Art History and Cinema & Media Studies) on a project that seeks to study and intervene in the current redefinition of the moving image as it shifts from the frame of classical cinema to the immersive framelessness and interactivity of virtual reality.
Fall 2016, Thursdays 4-6:50p / Logan Center for the Arts, room 014
CMST 27805/37805; cross-listings ARTV 20805/30805 and others TBD
By cinema, we mean the art of the moving image, which is not limited to the material support of a flexible band called film. This art reaches back to early devices to trick the eye into seeing motion and looks forward to new media and new modes of presentation. With the technological possibility of breaking images into tiny pixels and reassembling them and of viewing them in new way that this computerized image allows, we now face the most radical transformation of the moving image since the very beginnings of cinema.
A collaboration between the OpenEndedGroup (Marc Downie and Paul Kaiser) artists who have created new modes of the moving image for more than decade and film scholar Tom Gunning, this class will use this moment of new technologies to explore and expand the moving image before it becomes too rigidly determined by the powerful industrial forces now propelling it forward. This course will be intensely experimental as we see how we might use new computer algorithms to take apart and re-experience classic films of the past. By using new tools, developed for and during this class, students will make new experiences inside virtual reality environments for watching, analyzing and recombining films and that are unlike any other. These tools will enable students, regardless of previous programming experience, to participate in this crucial technological and cultural juncture.
Enrollment is by permission of instructor. Please submit a brief statement of interest to Gray Center Coordinator Mike Schuh (mikes1@uchicago.edu) that includes previous course work and/or experience relevant to this class and a brief explanation of why you would like to take this class.