Virtual Windows

24Jan10

This past November Anne Friedberg passed away.  She was the author of two books (Window Shopping and The Virtual Window) that continue to be extremely influential on my research about the screen as a cultural form. Her approach to media studies weaves together the critical Western tradition, the history of optics, and feminism while trying to think about possibilities of media production, representation, and consumption beyond the stranglehold of methodologies based in representational critique.  In the “Introduction” to The Virtual Window, Friedberg writes, “As beholders of multiscreen ‘windows,’ we now receive images—still and moving, large and small, artistic and commercial—in spatially and temporally fractured frames. This new space of mediated vision is post-Cartesian, postperspectival, postcinematic, and posttelevisual, and yet remains within the delimited bounds of a frame and seen on a screen” (Friedberg 6-7). Here, Friedberg does nothing less than sum up what I see as a main feature of contemporary visual culture.  What I find interesting is that these screen fractures are all to often framed as screens, or put another way, the frame of the moving image is framed by scaffolding, a curtain, a television box – reminders that these frames have a material reality in the history of the screen as a cultural form. Also,  Friedberg experimented with innovative ways of presenting her research as illustrated by “The Virtual Window Interactive” website that accompanied her final book. Thank you, Anne Friedberg, for creating a rich body of work that I will continue to use in my own research.


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A Screen Rant!

26Aug09

The following is a great editorial on the pervaisiveness of screens from our friends across the Atlantic…it’s a screen invasion (thanks Alan for sending it to me).

We watch them on the bus. At work. At play. We have been invaded by screens


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Project Natal: Meet Milo

25Aug09

Talk about screen-body confrontation…the responsivity of the video game is determined through this exact confrontation!


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Gareth!

21Jul09

Okay, I’m sitting at the coffee shop with my friend and her son, Gareth, who is playing Pokemon on his Nintendo DS. He is talking to he screen, poking at it, contemplating his next move, throwing up his arms in excitement. And then, he asks his mother to look up a specific Pokemon and she goes to her iPhone to find the information online (while completing another application on her laptop). Talk about rehearsing the gamut of screen-body confrontations!


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Murray Mania

23Jun09

Today was the first round match of Andy Murray, the “British hope” who has an actual chance at winning Wimbledon this year (that is, if he catches Federer on a very, very bad day). The possibility of a home grown Wimbledon champion is something that is apparently a big deal as the last Brit to win the Championships was Fred Perry in 1936. Anyway, during his match on center court, thousands of people sat outside of the stadium watching him play on the large screen LED display hosited outside. This area is coined “Henman Hill” after the last British hope (though, truthfully, he was only ever an extremely long shot with Pete Sampras to contend with), Tim Henman. The next best thing to being inside is sitting next to it watching what’s going on inside on a live feed on what is sure to become “Murry Mound” or “Mount Murray” if Andy wins his first major on British soil.


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Crimes of the Screen

19Jun09

A commercial (also airing during Roland Garros on ESPN and the Tennis Channel) for “Chase Visa” featured a criminal decked out in the most stereotypical criminal atire possible – a black hankerchief strapped around the eyes for good measure – using a blowtourch to cut a circular hole out of the computer screen of the unexpecting (female) user.  He begins to crawl through, but thank goodness for Chase Visa’s online security features. Keeps those cyber-criminals at bay.


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Franklin Templeton Investing in Screen Futures

18Jun09

A Franklin Templeton Investments advertisement that aired on ESPN and the Tennis Channel during Roland Garros featured their logo of Ben Franklin’s head floating across the facades of downtown skyscrapers. Zoom in to the people in the buildings, using their computers to make investments. The floating head returns. Money is made. A true story of the screen.


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Lady Gaga Live and Onscreen

01Jun09

Wow.


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Salvation and Skynet

31May09

When I mentioned that I went to see a movie last week to one of my friends, she asked me what I saw and it completely left my mind – a brain wipe (aka Dollhouse) if you will. Now I remember (and wish I could go back to my former clean slate). It was Terminator: Salvation, a movie that even Christian Bale as eye candy could not save.

*SPOILER ALERT*

With all of its horribleness, however, the climax of the movie is a massive screen-body confrontation that unfortunately makes no narrative sense yet still works for my purposes. In the sequence, the main character who you don’t really care about at all, the machine-human named Marcus with the “strong heart” who is essentially the protagonist of the film, enters Skynet’s central command and communicates with the “system” as anthropomorphized primarily via Helena Bonham Carter, through an immense series of glass screens/ computer monitor. Marcus reclaims his humanity by destroying the screen interface that represents his link with Skynet and the machine side of his self.

a screenshot lifted from the trailer by Gizmodo

Skynet's Screen Interface in Terminator: Salvation

A post by Gizmodo poses the question, why is Skynet central command designed for humans to interface with the machines in the first place? This makes them more vulnable to attack as they are trying to eradicate humanity. This major plot hole, irronically, seems to indicate the depth in which the mere presence of the human body is embedded in the perception of screen space. It illustrates how the screen-body confrontation is a habituation that defines, even in the futuristic prequel/sequel (depending on how you see it) like Terminator: Salvation, the terms of our (white, American, male) engagement with new media technology.


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Indy for Sale

23May09

Continuing an unintended sports theme, a commercial that aired tonight [May 22] on ESPN during Friday Night Fights featured a historical collection of television sets from boxy black-and-white variety to the sleek plasmas of today. Each television model featured corresponding footage from the particular Indianapolis 500 as it was broadcast during the time period from when the set originated. The final shot framed this “screen” history as the progress from one type of television set to the multiple viewing options now available.

Interestingly, while searching for a recording of this spot online to include in this post (unfortunately, no luck), I ran into “sister” advertisements that dropped the television set motif but continued to play on the historical progression from early races leading up to the upcoming 2009 event. What makes the particular commercial I saw compelling is how it implies that the historical narrative of this particular “sport” is tied into the mediated experience of it.


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