April 8th Presentation (Shanel Slater & Tyler Stone)

Museums as Laboratories of Change: The Case for the Moving Image (Penz) 

Takeaway: Digital film and technology can layer complexity, discursive formats, and meaning-making to museum exhibits, and the historical concept of exhibits as a parallel experiences to cinema anchors film's position within museums.

Questions: 

•  Museums, as institutions that grant legitimacy to culture through their selection of objects as artifacts into their collection, apply the same principles to their selection of films. How does the urge to "Retain some level of control and to be associated with quality projects, avoiding the Da Vinci Code syndrome--a mediocre film by accounts," affect the public's relationship with museums and their relevance? Are museums promoting factual and trustworthy information sources or are they alienating populations who consume mainstream media? 
•  Just as there are different motivations for museum visits--educational, exploration/discovery, and entertainment--there are motivations behind the inclusion of museums in film. Are each of these motivations found in films featuring museums? What do they need to add to the narrative of the museum experience?

PBS Newsline: "To Woo Millennials, Museum Group Taps Into Digital Age" 

What is your reaction to the "Museum Hack" approach to museum visits? How does it approach digital tools? 

The Museum is the Muscle: Abstraction in Early Film, Dance, Painting (Andrew) 

Takeaway: Although film and dance are often placed in opposition to abstract art, each medium has a similar goal of encouraging the viewer to feel a corporeal perception of movement. 

Questions 

•  Andrew defines "kinesthesia" as a "phenomenological awareness of our own body and position and the potential movement with regard to what is seen" (73). As he argues, early modernist dancers, filmmakers, and painters attempted to invoke a sense of kinesthesia in the viewer. How do abstract images invoke a bodily response within the viewer? In other words, how does abstraction challenge "passive" consumption practices and encourage viewers to think about the body? 
•  By drawing connections between dance, filmmaking, and abstract painting, Andrew documents the intellectual history of early modernism. However, perhaps more importantly, he highlights the similarities between mediums that are often considered disparate by decribing the corporeal effect they each have on the viewer. Taking this argument a step further, what corporeal effects do digital mediums have on the user/viewer?

The Serpentine Dance (Lumiere, 1886) and "The Album" (Vuillard, 1895)

Here you will find a recording of the Serpentine Dance by the Lumiere Brothers from 1886, along with Edouard Vuillard's "The Album" from 1885. What similarities do you see between the two? What affective qualities does each invoke? 

Quoting Motion: the Frame, the Shot, and Digital Video (Lundemo) 

Takeaway: The debates between film theorists Eisenstein and Vertov in the 1920s illuminate the social and political importance of movement in digital video, particularly in regards to surveillance. 

Questions

•  How does digital movement differ from filmic movement? What is the significance of this difference? 
• Lundemo explains that digital compression works by breaking frames into pixels "to analyze the changes from one frame of video to the next? (109). What are the broader social and political consequences of converting human action into data bits? 

The Artist's Studio: The Affair of Art and Film (Nead) 

Takeaway: Film has represented the artist first as fools who were technically inferior in the 1890s-1910s, then as enigmatic figures worthy of respect and reverence in the mid to late 20th century with a focus on their corporeal form and studios, most often with phallic metaphors. 

Questions:

• The article focusses on male artists in the case studies, several in the turn of the century and Picasso in the mid-20th century. Film was shown to revere phallic instruments and corporeal forms during the mid-20th century, How did films depicting non-male artists portray the artists' bodies? 
• Speaking to the conversation about artists in film, Nead states "The digital culture of the twenty-first century may mark the end of the affair, or at least the intrusion of a third party that will prove fatal to the dialogue between the two old lovers" (37). Has this proven to be true? How has the conversation between film and the artist changed with the introduction of digital technologies?