the emergence of a digital cinema

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Computers and the Humanities 33: 365–381, 1999. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 365 The Emergence of a Digital Cinema ROGER B. WYATT Emporia State University, 1200 Commercial Street, Emporia, KS 66801, USA Abstract. Paradigmatic change is driving aesthetic change in cinema. This restructuring is not only transforming what is on the screen, but the means of production that put it there. The interplay of technology and culture, along with their dynamics has made this so. Marshall McLuhan’s Laws of Media provide an effective lens with which to examine this change. Some preliminary observations on the shape of digital cinema are offered. However to paraphrase Al Jolson, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Key words: aesthetic, cinema, Desktop Video, digital, DTV, film, information, McLuhan, paradigms, production Cinema is truth twenty four frames a second. Jean-Luc Godard 1 1. Introduction Planetary society is experiencing fundamental change at rates unprecedented in human history. It is generally agreed that global society is evolving from an age of industry into an age of information. At a primary level this change is concerned with deep alterations of worldview. Worldviews are mental constructs that structure our understanding of reality. Twin revolutions in the disciplines of information and communication have both propelled and reflected these paradigmatic shifts. Norbert Weiner has observed that “society can only be understood through a study of the messages and communication facilities which belong to it.” 2 Thus shifts in a culture’s message making modalities, in both their content and structure, reflect and times lead shifts in a culture’s worldview. The visualization of information, the central resource of the emergent era, by means of moving image messages is increasing. This is so because of an urgent need for information compression brought on by an information production explo- sion throughout post-industrial societies. Moving images achieve this requirement by portraying both patterns and dynamics of information as it evolves through space and time. As these are moving images, they are cinematic. As they are computer generated they are digital. Digital Cinema is the result. Like natural language and mathematics, moving images are symbolic manifes- tations of thought. “The symbol is the basic instrument of thought; those who create

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Page 1: The Emergence of a Digital Cinema

Computers and the Humanities33: 365–381, 1999.© 1999Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

365

The Emergence of a Digital Cinema

ROGER B. WYATTEmporia State University, 1200 Commercial Street, Emporia, KS 66801, USA

Abstract. Paradigmatic change is driving aesthetic change in cinema. This restructuring is not onlytransforming what is on the screen, but the means of production that put it there. The interplay oftechnology and culture, along with their dynamics has made this so. Marshall McLuhan’s Laws ofMedia provide an effective lens with which to examine this change. Some preliminary observationson the shape of digital cinema are offered. However to paraphrase Al Jolson, you ain’t seen nothin’yet.

Key words: aesthetic, cinema, Desktop Video, digital, DTV, film, information, McLuhan, paradigms,production

Cinema is truth twenty four frames a second.Jean-Luc Godard1

1. Introduction

Planetary society is experiencing fundamental change at rates unprecedented inhuman history. It is generally agreed that global society is evolving from an ageof industry into an age of information. At a primary level this change is concernedwith deep alterations of worldview. Worldviews are mental constructs that structureour understanding of reality. Twin revolutions in the disciplines of informationand communication have both propelled and reflected these paradigmatic shifts.Norbert Weiner has observed that “society can only be understood through a studyof the messages and communication facilities which belong to it.”2 Thus shifts ina culture’s message making modalities, in both their content and structure, reflectand times lead shifts in a culture’s worldview.

The visualization of information, the central resource of the emergent era, bymeans of moving image messages is increasing. This is so because of an urgentneed for information compression brought on by an information production explo-sion throughout post-industrial societies. Moving images achieve this requirementby portraying both patterns and dynamics of information as it evolves throughspace and time. As these are moving images, they are cinematic. As they arecomputer generated they are digital. Digital Cinema is the result.

Like natural language and mathematics, moving images are symbolic manifes-tations of thought. “The symbol is the basic instrument of thought; those who create

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new symbols – artists, scientists, poets, philosophers – are those who, by givingus new instruments to think with, give us new areas to explore in our thinking.”3

Each symbol system has been dominant in a specific domain of knowledge. Naturallanguage dominates in the social sciences and humanities, mathematics in science,and images in the arts. Under conditions of information overload, these symbolicsystems interact with each other, crossing discipline boundaries in new and uniqueways. Scientific visualization is a case in point. By manifesting mathematical data,the lingua franca of science, in the context of pictorial representation, the patoisof the arts, an innovative and highly effective means of communicating informa-tion emerges. The new symbolic systems of the information age, and their meansof creation, are being invented in the zone of interaction where art, science, andphilosophy merge.

This paper is a probe into the aesthetics of information.

2. What Is Digital Cinema?

Digital Cinema is a term with several meanings. Here, two are examined. Theydescribe different aspects of the task of generating computer based moving images.The first meaning refers to the hardware and software elements that make upthe material structures of an moving image production system. The process. Thesecond refers to the ideas that inform the system. The theory.

The implications and resonances of the two words, digital and cinema, provideinsight into the meaning of the term. The use of digital places Digital Cinemawithin the context of the technology of computer imaging systems. At the symboliclevel, computers hold a unique position in contemporary society. Computers are thedominant technological icon of the information age, just as the steel mill or the ironhorse were for the industrial age. Digital machines are themselves an image for thenew. In fact computing has come to symbolize a dynamo of change, altering andtransforming all aspects of culture including image making.

Light moving in time is how the film theorist William Wees defines cinema.4

The word cinema refers to the aesthetic systems of film and video technology. Itis used to represent the theoretical framework of values and rules that form thecontext within which moving images are constructed. In the context of DigitalCinema, the term is expanded in scope to include computer technology. ThusDigital Cinema becomes the emerging aesthetic for the creation of computer gener-ated moving images as well as the process to undertake this task. It is a not anapplication program or a particular type of software. It is a way of expressingthought through moving computer images. The concept supports a cinema of ideasin motion, across time and space. As with all innovation it is a blending of the oldand the new.

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3. On Aesthetics, Paradigms, And Technological Development

Marshall McLuhan has observed, “that when information brushes against informa-tion, the results are startling and effective.”5 Magritte, Dali, and other surrealistswere masters of this. The startling and surprising juxtapositions of their workreflect deep structural shifts in humanity’s views of interior and exterior reality. Onone level the melted clocks of Dali’sThe Persistence of Memory(1931) proclaimthe decline of the industrial Victorian era and the ascent of the quantum informa-tion era. New paradigms have always been accompanied by new aesthetics. DigitalCinema represents an emerging aspect of the aesthetics of an information age. Aswith earlier aesthetics, digital cinema brushes visual information against visualinformation to achieve its effects.

This aesthetic however, is being born into the context of the development ofcomputing, a powerful electronic technology. The development of the aesthetics ofmachine images is deeply intertwined with the development of the technology thatcreates and displays them. The aesthetics of photography, film, or video also havethis same relationship with their respective technologies. However, it is not merelya linear, sequential relationship of new developments in technology creating newimaging aesthetics. The relationship is far more complex and subtle.

Technological development occurs in a resonating internal created by the inter-actions of multiple contexts, dynamics, and actions. The relationship betweentechnology and culture provides the conceptual surround within which, devel-opment occurs. Technology is a part of culture not apart from culture. Theimplications of this observation are often obscured by the overwhelming presenceof the machine itself.

When examining technology, it is not uncommon to focus primarily upon itsmaterial aspects, hardware and software, its scientific origins, and the operationalaspects of the technology, but ignore the culture context. As a result the observermisses much. It is rarer, but far more profitable, to focus upon the body of thoughtthat provides the conceptual context of the technology. It is ideas and visions thatdrive technology development. Culture generates technology.

The development of photography provides an example. In a study that exam-ines the development of photography from an aesthetic context, Peter Galassi hasobserved “that photography was not a bastard left by science on the doorstepof art, but a legitimate child of the Western pictorial tradition.”6 Images createtechnology. In a later passage he continues, “The ultimate origins of photography– both technical and aesthetic – lie in the fifteenth – century invention of linearperspective.”7 Often the yearnings, visions, and desires of a culture are out ahead,driving technological development.

Aesthetics are the thoughtware of image technology.Technological systems are composed of three elements: hardware, software,

and thoughtware. The first two are self-evident. It is within thoughtware thatcomplexity lies. Thoughtware comprises not only technology skills, but the tech-

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niques of technology as well. At yet a deeper level, thoughtware includes thestrategic and conceptual underpinnings of the system as well. Aesthetics playthe role of thoughtware for moving images. It is thoughtware that determines theutilization of hardware and software. Yet it is also true that the dynamics of hard-ware and software development create opportunities for innovation and change inthoughtware. Thus new ideas and visions are created which in turn create newhardware and software. This relationship is interactive, feeding forward as well asfeeding back.

Aesthetics are also frameworks that reflect the values of larger gestalts andparadigms. Aesthetics are the deep structure rules that order the purpose, tech-niques, and actions that one undertakes when making images. Thus aesthetics arethe interface between paradigms on one level, and the operational level of imagingtools and activities on the other.

As paradigms shift, so do the aesthetics that reflect them. Surely Brunnolessci’snew aesthetics of perspective proclaimed a vision of the world based upon directobservation, where things are what they are, not metaphorical representationsof theological constructs. With the revolutionary brush strokes of perspective,the medieval world view was painted over and an empirical, scientific, and ulti-mately industrial, one took its place. The new aesthetics proclaimed a new worldview. Aesthetics then are located within a complex interrelationship between therepresentations of a paradigm on one hand, and the call of technological possibilityon the other.

To fully understand the emergence of a digital cinema it is necessary to examinethe multiple levels of meaning that surround the term. The techniques of tech-nology, embedded in the hard and software are as necessary to understanding asare the conceptual underpinnings and frameworks that reflect the values of largergestalts and paradigms. First, the machine perspective will be examined. Considerthe following vignettes.

Paris, 28 December 1895.In the darkness inside the Salon Indien of the Grand Café, at Boulevard desCapucines 14, a projector clatters away, placing flickering scenes upon a silverscreen. This is the first public screening of a motion picture.8 On screen, a trainpull into a railroad station. As the locomotive approaches, a thrill of excitementcourses through the crowd. A powerful way of examining the world and allits realities is being born.9 The images move. Motion, in both time and space,is being fused to representation. It is innovation emerging in a world about toblow itself up.

London, 18 Sept 1928.The televisor apparatus sat in a room in the Engineers’ Club. The spectatorstook their places. Six hundred yards away, in another building, John Baird,inventor and television pioneer, powers up his machinery. Tubes glow. Fanshum. The Nipkow scanning disc starts to spin. A building away, upon the

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three and a half by two inch televisor screen, through flicker and distortion,a human face appears. This is an image from an early television broadcastexperiment by the BBC. The image appears to be singing. Someone in theaudience mutters that the face is “curiously ape-like, decapitated at the chin,and swaying up and down in a streaky stream of yellow light.”10 Mercifully,from his position in the other building, Baird could not hear the comment.

Kansas, 18 Sept 1990.He hit the return key. Upon the RGB monitor, among the pixels, the young manjuggled the balls with the assurance of an athlete. By means of digital illusion,the juggler himself, is juggled around the screen. This is an image from anearly digital cinema work. It is after midnight, the computerist is asleep at thekeyboard. Through the night the juggler juggles. No one watches.11

These vignettes illustrate the progression of the three great revolutions inmoving image technology systems during the last hundred years. They are film,video, and computer.

Embedded in these imaging revolutions are twin technical conversions. First,from optical-chemical to optical-magnetic imaging systems. Film is realizedthrough the interactions of a complex chain of optical and chemical events. Videoon the other hand, creates images through the recording of optical events in electricform, upon magnetic media. Computing too, stores imagery in magnetic form.

The second conversion is from analog to digital recording modes. Both film andvideo render analog representations of reality. In contrast computers create digitalviews of reality. Analog representations are physical copies of waveforms of lightwhile digital ones are composed of binary descriptions of waveforms. With a highpitched transmitted squeal of 0, 1, 0, 1, on off, on off, digital pulses reshape theworld of images.

Developments in hardware feed into developments in thoughtware. These tech-nical conversations impact upon cinematic thinking. Imaging possibilities are to anextent enhanced or limited by technical developments. Hardware and software actas filters or limits allowing certain possibilities or aspects of reality to be observed,rendered, and viewed. For example film and video handle the rendering of the colorred in very different manners. NTSC video, for reasons of bandwidth capacitycannot render a true red.12 Not only is the color smeared over the outline of theimage to begin with, but mostly what the viewer sees is some sort of orange. Filmon the other hand, can render an accurate red. Trivial? Perhaps. However when oneis attempting to realize a video production ofThe Scarlet Letter, perhaps not.

In the early stages of their development, the three imaging systems sharedcertain commonalities. They were crude. Early film, video, and computer systemswere large, heavy, and endowed with modest capabilities. The various technicallimitations included production length or duration, restricted color palettes,13 andlow resolution imagery. With the rapid progression of technical innovation theselimitations were overcome.

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Another commonality emerges. In the early stages of each medium, the act ofcreating an image within the medium was significant in and of itself. The catalogsof early film are full of what would be considered home movies by contemporarycriteria.14 As the first participants in early stages of any technology are scientists,technicians, and engineers this should not be surprising. James Lindner commentsregarding the early development of computer graphics, “In the first stage, we hadcomputer science people who had access to the equipment, knew how to writethe software and therefore could do it.”15 Their focus is upon the titanic issuesof machine development and the initial range of software applications. Issues ofmessage and aesthetics are not theirs. They focus upon the means to make andperceive messages, not their content, style or meaning. The pioneering computergraphics efforts of Evans and Southerland, Englebart, and the rest, were graphicprimitives composed of circles, cones, and squares derived form geometry. Theirmeaning as images was not considered. Coaxing them out of surly and rigid main-frames was enough of a task. From these modest beginnings great artforms of vastcomplexity and range grew.

This observation is at a deeper level, at the level of thoughtware, indicativeof another commonality of these machine imaging systems. It is the commonstruggle to find a voice, an aesthetic framework for the emergent medium. Eachimaging medium began with undeveloped expressive languages. Each technolog-ical advance created new aesthetic possibilities.

As we have seen hardware and software interact with thoughtware. Howeverequally valid is the observation that each new aesthetic vision created a newtechnology in order to realize that vision. For example, sound recording systemsgave the filmed image a voice. However it was the desire for sound, a vision ofmoving images that spoke, which drove development of the new audio technology.Development of any technology cannot happen outside of a human context. It isa context that includes emotion, desire, imagination, and whimsy, as well as logicand electrical engineering skills.

Technology isn’t autonomous even though to some is appears that way. Thecurrents of cultural dynamics shape technology just as much as they do, forexample, language. To fully understand the emergence of a digital cinema it is alsonecessary to examine the aesthetic perspective. It is a perspective deeply embeddedin a cultural context.

Currently the aesthetics of the moving image are confronted with radicalshifts and change brought on by the interaction with computing. This interactionbrings about a convergence of aesthetic elements drawn from diverse sources,both what has been as well as what is to be. In addition to the extension ofthe aesthetic concepts of western art that have found there way into animation,film, and video, as well as computing, the new sources include developments incomputer tomography, remote sensing, algorithmic computer image processing,fractal geometry, synthetic environments, scientific visualization, and digital video

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effects.16 These new interactions will bring change to not only how moving imagesare made but why they are made and what kinds of images are made.

The breeze flutters as information brushes against information.

4. Contours of The Digital Cinema

Consider the following vignettes.

Virtual worlds. The analyst ran the scientific visualization. On screen thecomputer generated tornado gouged its way across a digital landscape. Aroundits violent movements, data clouds of meterological information swirled. Theyare accurate precision displays of weather forces at work. The analyst regardedthe display. She searched the screen, looking for the truth to be found in thereality of images. Digital Cinema.

Hollywood on a chip. The artist set aside the light pen. With a rapid tap onthe keyboard, the sequence started to run. On screen, as the barbarian chiefsheathed his sword, the image began to metamorphosize, melting into fantasticshapes and colors. Eventually a new image, a new reality started to emerge.Across a cubist sky, a bird flew. A smile crossed the artists face. DigitalCinema.17

The vignettes illustrate the wide range of applications where traces of DigitalCinema can be found. Issues of Digital Cinema concern not only the truth of fiction,but also the truth of fact. The manner in which the digital moving image commu-nicates factual information involves consideration of digital cinema aesthetics. Inthis context they become the aesthetics of information.

Digital Cinema is not video or film by other means. The term Desktop Video(DTV) applies in that case. Though they may share the same hardware and soft-ware, at the level of thoughtware they are different. Desktop Video is a term, likehorseless carriage, that captures the future in terms of the past. Digital Cinema, likeautomobile, is a term that defines the future in terms of the future. There is too muchthat is new in Digital Cinema to allow it to be defined by earlier imaging systems.Morphing,18 for example, cannot be accomplished by video technology alone. It isa form of image linkage that goes far beyond what the traditional film and videoconcept of transitional device, like cut or wipe, can communicate. The qualities ofmorphing push the concept of transition into the new territory of transformation.

In Digital Cinema images are taken from life and reworked into another imageof reality that is often surrealistically interdisciplinary in nature. These imagesoccupy a conceptual zone somewhere between videography and animation. Awatermelon with a gold hole drilled in it would be an example of this kind ofimage. Reality becomes extended by abstraction into visions of reality. The use ofsoftware tools has much to do with why these images are as they are.

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5. Implications of Softmachines For Making Digital Cinema

5.1. SOFTWARE IS A CONCEPTUAL MACHINE

Software is a new form of tool, one that is shaped by an age of information. GeorgeGilder writes of the fundamental shifts in the global economy brought on by thequantum revolution in physics. “The central event of the twentieth century is theoverthrow of matter. In technology, economics, and the politics of nations, wealthin the form of physical resources is steadily declining in value and significance. Thepowers of the mind are everywhere ascendant over the brute force of things.”19 Thequantum revolution has set in motion a process where material elements of thingsare being replaced by information. Digital Cinema conforms to this observation.Digital Cinema substitutes intelligence, in the form of software and technique, forhardware. Consider the following exchange.

WYATT: Tim, regarding the interface; it’s a striking representation of whatwould normally be hardware. Yet here we see it as a graphic represented insoftware. Can you comment?JENISON: Well that’s where the computer comes in handy. You can instead ofhaving a mechanical switch, you can have a picture of a switch and if they press,it does the same function as a switch. And of course it’s essentially information.It’s not a “real” object that needs to be manufactured. So of course that’s onereason this thing is so much cheaper.20

Tim Jenison is the founder of Newtek Inc. and the primary developer of theVideo Toaster.

5.2. SOFTWARE IS A MACHINE WITHOUT MATERIAL STRUCTURE

As we have seen the software elements of the Video Toaster21 display images ofswitches. Icons are provided rather than supplying material switches. Yet theywork. Click on one of tem and an action of some sort will occur. Somethingswitches. The Toaster is a softmachine, with important differences from the usualattributes of machines.

5.3. HARDWARE IS A VERY ACCURATE TERM

Hardware is fixed and relatively unchanging in its capacities. Hard. Fixed. Hard-ware is not changeable in the ways that software is. Having a fixed purpose bringswith it the inevitability of being surpassed by ongoing refinements to be found innew hardware capacity.22 Once again, with the quiet whirring of a hard drive, asystem based on information replaces a system based material.

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5.4. SOFTWARE IS DIFFERENT

It is flexible, multi-purpose, and adaptable, almost organic. It is dynamic throughupgrades which are either free or available at a modest price. Code writing,which is information, creates new structures and new capabilities. A new machineis described in lines of code and then implemented. As hardware and softwareconceptually merge into a softmachine, their relationship to thoughtware willchange as well.

The overwhelming importance of software packages and routines in DigitalCinema production are reflections of this observation. Hardware while important,is secondary to software at the creative level. Thus creation happens at the levelof pure abstraction. Ideas have little in the way of material elements to mark theirpassage from the inception of a concept to its realization upon a screen. There areno reams of paper containing endless drafts of a project. Only binary code tracedmagnetically upon a disk marks the developmental trail of a project.

As the tools change so does the message.

6. Outcomes of The Digital Cinema

In a posthumous work,The Laws of Media23 Marshall McLuhan laid out a percep-tual framework to discover aspects of the nature of any new media. The laws are infact four powerful questions. They are:1. What does the new media enhance?2. What does the new media obsolesce?3. What does the new media retrieve that was previously obsolesced?4. What does the new media become, or flip back into, when pushed to an

extreme?These powerful questions can be utilized to uncover contours of the new

aesthetic. McLuhan’s Four Laws focus inquiry into the areas of process, context,implication, and change. It is in precisely these areas where the relationshipbetween technology and culture is to be found. It is at this level, not at the level ofquestioning which processing chip to utilize, that the significant implications of anew system, aesthetic or technologic, are to be found.24

Digital Cinema ENHANCES individual and loosely coupled production anddissemination systems. As software substitutes for hardware in Digital Cinema,considerable savings are realized. With some exceptions, it is generally true thatsoftware is cheaper than the hardware it replaces. In this new context DigitalCinema technology becomes a studio in a box rather than a complex of build-ings on a lot. Accordingly, Digital Cinema technology is affordable by individualsrather than solely by organizations. This has implications for the entire economicstructure of moving image making. For one it facilitates the existence of cinema asa non-commercial process. The result is technology diffusion on a wide basis.

Enhanced diffusion is a general characteristic of computing. Taken as a whole,computers are the only information/communication/media technology where the

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means of production, at a professional level, is widely available to the generalpublic. This is markedly different from video, for example, where 35mm motionpicture cameras or one inch VTRs, professional equipment, are utilized to recordthe programs that find their way on to VHS cassettes for home viewing. Incomputing, the machine that is used to play a computer game is the same machinethat can be used to write a computer game. Mainframes are not necessary togenerate the code for programs that run on micros. The notion of cottage industryis restored. Though now it is electronic and digital in its nature. The digital atelierof the artist becomes a reality.

Digital Cinema OBSOLESCES the industrial organization of the image makingindustry. Entrepreneurial technical development has eliminated the powers ofthe broadcast and laboratory priesthood. Hierarchies are flattened and gatewaysreduced. Individual rather than corporate self-expression is enhanced. DigitalCinema obsolesces the priesthood of “experts” in moving image production. Manytechnological art forms, such as film and broadcast television, contain gates andgate keepers. This characteristic is determined by their industrial paradigm derivedprocess and structure. Electronic technology is informed by an emergent paradigmthat favors heterarchy and non-linearity over hierarchy and linearity.

Digital Cinema RETRIEVES the world view of the animator. Animation,contains a wealth of possibilities for surrealism, abstraction, and hyper-reality.Digital Cinema fuses the illusion of film and video photorealism with the abstrac-tion of animation. Digital Cinema retrieves the animator’s technique of rotoscopingwhere the artist traces the contours of the filmed image in the process of creating anew animated image. In the context of Digital Cinema, Oskar Fischinger’s notionof the motion painting attains its most complete realization.25 Early film was popu-lated by pioneers, who are those who dreamed with open eyes. Today they return.

Digital Cinema when PUSHED TO AN EXTREME flips back into reality.Virtual reality. Computing technology offers the possibility to develop the meansto easily create and view a 3D stereo image. Thus the viewer sees Digital Cinemafrom within the image space. Extreme Digital Cinema becomes the realization ofBuster Keaton’s brilliant meditation on cinematic form, “Sherlock Jr.”,26 where thehero (played by Keaton) ventures into the projected film image. By entering thescreen image, he experiences the reality of visions that are in the projected imagesof cinema.

Not only does Digital Cinema, when pushed to an extreme, facilitate thecreation of new and personal images of reality, it affects other information tech-nology systems as well. As Internet evolves, by means of fiber optic potentialand researcher inspiration, ever increasing in capacity, the Net becomes a pulsingweb of images composed of numerous individual realities coupled with the abilityto easily share those realities. The outcome becomes the realization of Gibson’snotion of cyberspace.27 Thus when coupled with telecommunications, DigitalCinema creates a visual bazaar populated with new voices. A chorus sings incyberspace.

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The implications of these observations lead one to the conclusion that DigitalCinema, as a process, facilitates increased expressive potential for the independentartist and small group, rather than for the large commercial organization. Theindividual emerges as the primary creator of cinematic works. Francis Coppolacomments:

To me the great hope is that now these little eight millimeter video recorders,and stuff, have come out, some, just people, who normally wouldn’t makemovies are gonna be making them. Suddenly, one day, some little fat girl inOhio is gonna be the new Mozart and make a beautiful film with her littlefather’s (sic) camcorder. And for once the so-called become an art profession-alism about movies will be destroyed. Forever. And it will really become an artform. That’s my opinion.28

Massive leaps in technological development lend to massive rearrangements ofthe human context.

Digital Cinema deindustrializes cinema. These observations can be seen in thecontext of a deep divergence in thinking that accompanies technological develop-ment and its applications. One school of thought holds that innovation allows us todo what we are currently doing only “better”, “faster”, and “easier”. This is changeviewed from the established center, the status quo. It is a view of change definedonly by the context of the present.

The other school of thought maintains that the new allows us to undertakecompletely different activities. This is change when viewed from the fringe, farfrom the center. It’s a view of the future that contains a future not just a past. Thepace of the rate of change can be monitored by examining the rate of passage thatan idea takes in its journey from the fringe to the center.

The notion that Digital Cinema deindustrializes cinema is a observation basedin the future rather than the present. It assumes that change alters the present ratherthan merely extending it indefinitely into the future.

7. Probes Into The Image Of Digital Cinema

These observations serve not to define the look of Digital Cinema, but to provide apalette of possibilities as to what it might be like. The concept of Digital Cinemaresonates with haiku, abstraction, and magical reality. The possibilities of non-realist as well as enhanced realist moving images has only just begun to be exploredin the digital realm. The concepts of collage, and juxtaposition dominate rather thanthe illusion of realism that informs most film and video. The world of oil paint oncanvas merges with the world of electron upon screen. The new image resonateswith metaphorical inspiration drawn from medieval painting, icons, and ideograms.This observation is another form of McLuhanesque retrieval. The numerous spin-ning, flipping, and tumbling logos on contemporary television are one example ofthis observation. Conceptually they are not far removed from the medieval icons of

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the Eastern Orthodox Church. Both are likeness and symbolic representations oflarger concepts. One though, is a representation of faith, the other of commerce.

Fantastic movement with the viewer’s perspective hurtling across vast distancesaccompanied by perpendicular, high speed turns that defy the laws of gravity arecharacteristics of Digital Cinema movement.

Scenes often don’t change by cuts or other transitions. Instead they transform.Metamorphosis, whether by morphing or by other means, drives the imagery acrosstime to the next progression or sequence.

Digital Cinema provides the ability to decouple backgrounds from foregroundobjects and figures. Everything can float forming a softreality. Images and back-grounds fade on and off. They can shift forwards and backwards in time. DigitalCinema favors the abstract. It enhances elliptical narrative with multiple and inter-weaving time progressions. Digital Cinema calls into question the deep structuralpattern of shot-transition-shot that is the bedrock of American classical cinema.These techniques move Digital Cinema into the realm of non-linearity. While non-linear, Digital Cinema can be narrative. Perhaps a chaos theory of images lies inwait.

A comment regarding text and its special place in communication is in order.Digital Cinema is a value added component when attached to text. In the contextof Digital Cinema, the graphic attributes of text are enhanced. Text is a graphicelement as well as a literary symbol system. Text becomes sculptural upon thedigital screen. The trend is towards lettering that is metallic, embossed, carved,and moves. It is lettering that calls attention to its shape and its physical attributes.It is similar to text upon monuments. This type of text resonates with text in comicstrips as well. As with the funnies and monuments, Digital Cinema, emphasizesthe graphic qualities of text. However as opposed to any printed text, includingcomics, Digital Cinema text leaves the static qualities of pedestal and page behind.It becomes animated, moving upon an electric screen. Digital cinema text is mostfully exploited, conveying meaning, with the minimum amount of words on thedigital screen. It is hard to read a paragraph of tumbling text. Thus haiku, with itsextreme compression of meaning, is a more appropriate literary style for text inmotion.

8. Implications of Digital Cinema For Narrative Fiction

On the whole, animation has tended to be dominated by painting, while film andvideo have tended to be dominated by drama. Digital Cinema merges the two influ-ences. As the sum is invariably greater than its parts, the results are extraordinary.The sum of these two influences is the visualization of a magical reality. The DigitalCinemaist paints upon the electronic canvas with brushes containing not paint butcharacters and places. How this is accomplished is explained below.

Digital Cinema facilitates portraying the extraordinary within the ordinary. Aswell the fantastic becomes ordinary. For example, by means of cutting, duplicating,

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and pasting aspects of an image of a few people walking, an entire crowd, clogginga rush hour street can be created from original images of just a few people. Bymeans of utilizing the computer principle of, do once-use many, a common streetscene can be created where none was before. Cut and paste, cut and paste. Creatingan illusion of a prosaic reality is much more fantastic than creating a space stationin a far off galaxy. Thus, Digital Cinema favors magical reality.

9. Implications of Digital Cinema For Documentary

As we have seen, Digital Cinema can represent the world of fact. Scientific visual-ization is an example of this. However the implications of Digital Cinema are tobe found at a deeper level. The arrival of Digital Cinema marks the end of an erawhen the televised moving image was equated automatically with objective truth. Italso marks the retrieval of the medieval sensibility where images were only looselycoupled with reality. Instead images of the Middle Ages told metaphorical truths.Digital Cinema returns us to that time. It moves moving imagery away from thenotion of cinema verite (film truth) towards a notion of the overt presence of thehand of the artist who interprets and shapes meaning at the level of image elements.

This does not melt fact into fantasy. Digital Cinema facilitates commentaryupon non-visual, abstract subjects. A problem with the cinematic image in its filmand video contexts has been its lack of introspection. Cinema, in its film and videomanifestations, likes the surfaces of action. This is true of both fiction and non-fiction. It is a truism of screen writing to portray character development throughaction. This sensibility carries over into the film of fact.

Broadcast news likes movement. Drama and ratings are to be found in actionnews images. However politics and economics are more than physical movement.Concepts, ideas, theories, and perspectives play crucial roles. These abstract ideasare hard to portray through action alone. The photo-op with accompanying narra-tion has been one standard response. They provide video images, however banal torepresent a trade agreement or a diplomatic initiative. The photo opportunity withits generic images of men in suits shaking hands is a far greater representationalfantasy and abstraction than the Digital Cinema rendering of a moving pert chart.These hand shaking sequences are so interchangeable that their narrations can beexchanged without any major loss of meaning. In this context the moving imageadds little of value to the meaning of the sequence. The narration contains most ofthe information content. However, Digital Cinema with moving images composedof symbols and images will effectively convey the sequence, relationships, andoutcome of any public affairs event in a manner that adds value to any narration.

10. Getting On-line With The New Paradigm: Implications For Theory

The current situation is one where the potential for digital moving image practice isin advance of conventional cinematic theory. The theoretical basis of filmmaking

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has been developed over a seventy year period from the late nineteenth centuryuntil the mid sixties with a few extensions since. This body of theory is losing itsabilities to describe cinema, let alone predict what good cinema will look like.29

It is time for a new aesthetic. Digital Cinema requires a new theory base thatallows and accounts for the new fluidity of mutual causality, non-linearity, andmetamorphosis. One that is based upon the values found in the paradigm of theAge of Information. The Eisensteinian theory of the collision of images, a Hegelianderived process of arriving at meaning within moving images though dialectic,has reached its limits.30 The rigid notions of Hitchcockian cinema with its rigidhierarchial planning and control of the design and production process is at an end.These methods cannot account for, let alone describe, the complexity of the digitalimage. It is time to move forward.

In periods of transition the new is defined in the context of the old. Currently ourculture is in such a period. Marshall McLuhan observes, “When faced with a totallynew situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of themost recent past. We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We marchbackwards into the future.”31 However as innovation progresses, the dissonancebetween the old theoretical framework and the current situation becomes increas-ingly apparent (Kuhn, 1970; Burke, 1985). This is just as true of aesthetic systemsas it is of scientific theories. In times of rapid symbolic change the language of theold aesthetic cannot adequately convey the concepts of the emergent aesthetic. Asa cinematic example, of what use is to refer to an image as a special effect, whenthe entire project is a special effect? In the new context the term cannot adequatelydescribe. Morphing is not merely a special effect inTerminator 2: Judgement Day(1991), it is a central expressive element of film. There isn’t enough differentiationin the term special effect.

The characteristics of the emergent Information Paradigm have been describedby Schwartz and Ogilvy.32 They identified seven major characteristics that form thestructure of the new paradigm. They are: indeterminate, mutual causal, morpho-genic, heterarchic, holographic, complex, and engaged perspective. A full discus-sion of these concepts, which is beyond the scope of this paper, can be found inthe sources identified in this endnote as well the previous one.33 Given the positionthat there is a direct relationship between paradigms and aesthetics, which this textargues, it follows that the characteristics of the Information Paradigm should bereflected in the aesthetics of information, of which Digital Cinema is a part.

The characteristics that Schwartz and Ogilvy describe can be found within thediscourse on moving images as well:

Scott Bartlett, a videographer prominent in the sixties and seventies observed,“Metamorphosis is the main thing you can do with video that you can’t withfilm, but video plus computers could do it even better.”34

Nam June Paik, a preeminent video artist said, “Indeterminism and variabilityare the underdeveloped parameters in the optical arts, though they have beenthe central problems in music for the last two decades.”35

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Brian Eno producer, musician, and video artist comments, “What it [hypertext]suggests is the possibility of a text not begin a single sequence of thoughts, buta community of thoughts. It is one of the things that are really changing theway people are thinking about culture. Remixing is another. The popular artsare so far ahead of the fine arts in this respect. There’s no fine art equivalent toremixing as far as I know, no equivalent to the concept of the diffuse artist.”36

As the aesthetics of Digital Cinema emerge, the possibility is quite highthat the other characteristics reflective of Schwartz and Ogilvie’s new paradigmelements, will reveal themselves. Equally possible is the intriguing notion that addi-tional characteristics, in addition to the original seven, will manifest themselves.Aesthetics can announce new paradigms as well as reflect them.

The new aesthetic of Digital Cinema will reflect the movement from the clockof Newton to the clock of Dali.

The screen flickers,Images pulse,

And Pixels dance.

Notes1 Godard, Jean-Luc (Director). (1960).Le Petit Soldat[Film]. Paris: Societe Nouvelle de Cinema.2 Weiner, Norbert. (1967).The Human Use of Human Beings. NY: Avon Books, p. 25.3 Youngblood, GeneExpanded Cinema. NY: E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc. 1970. p. 67.4 Wees, William C. (1992).Light Moving in Time. Berkley: University of California Press, pp. 11–13.5 McLuhan, Marshall and Quentin Fiore. (1967).The Medium Is The Massage. New York: Bantam,p. 76.6 Galassi, Peter.Before Photography. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1981. p. 12.7 Ibid. Galassi, p. 12.8 C. W. Ceram places the first public screening of a motion picture at this location on this date. C.W. CeramThe Archaeology of the CinemaNY: Harcourt, Brace, and World. 1965, p. 150.9 “Mon frere, en une nuit, avait invente el cinematorgraphe.” Auguste Lumiere tells us of how onenight in a dream, the idea of motion pictures came completely to his brother Louis, in a flash ofinspiration within a dream. Ceram p. 149. In footnote 17 on that page, Ceram comments upon thepowerful symbolism in the birth of cinema, a dream machine born in a dream.10 Briggs, Asa,The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Vol. II: The Golden Age OfWireless. London: Oxford University Press 1965, p. 535.11 The scene is taken from: Wyatt, Roger B. (Digital Cinemist). (1990).The Juggler Juggles, aDigital Cinema etude [Digital Cinema]. Emporia, KS: The Studio of Roger B. Wyatt.12 Perhaps this is why television engineers jokingly say that NTSC (National Television StandardsCommittee) stands for Not The Same Color.13 It is useful to note that Tolouse Lautrec never used more than eight colors in any of his posters. Heturned technical limitations into artistic opportunities. This approach can be utilized with all imagingtechnologies including computing.14 Early titles includeL’Arrivee d’un train en gare(The train arrives in the station), Lumieres 1896,The Sea Waves at Dover, Birt Acres 1896,Golfing Extraordinary-5 Gentlemen, Birt Acres 1896, andTraffic in the Alexanderplatz, Max Skladanowsky 1896.

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15 Lindner, James inComputers, New Technology and Aniamtionmoderated by James Lindner,with John Lasseter, Tina Price, and Carl Rosendahl. InStorytelling in Animation. John Canemakered., Los Angeles: The American Film Institute, 1988, p. 60.16 Friedhoff, Richard Mark and William Benzon.Visualization: The Second Computer Revolution.NY: Abrams, 1989.17 The description is taken from: Wyatt, Roger B. (Digital Cinemist). (1993).The Songs of Steel[Digital Cinema]. Emporia, KS: The Studio of Roger B. Wyatt.18 Morphing is the digital effect where one image metamorphosizes into another. Examples can befound inTerminator 2: Judgement Day(1991) andBlack and White(1992), a music video by MichaelJackson. The motion picture industry term for these effects is CGI (Computer Graphic Image).19 Gilder, George F. (1989)Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology.New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 17.12 Wyatt, Roger B. (Producer-Director). (1991).Information Technology, Class Three: Video: it’sNot Just Television Anymore[Video]. Emporia, KS: Emporia State University.21 The Video Toaster is a product manufactured by Newtek, Inc. formerly of Topeka, KS. It is ahardware/software combination that replicates the functions of a video switcher and facilitates thecreation of digital video effects. The Toaster replaces $50 000 worth of hardware with $2 000 worthof hardware and software. It is an excellent example of Gilder’s observation.22 Computer hardware is an exception to this observation. Computers are known as the universalmachines. They are multi-purpose in their function. Computer memory supports every kind of appli-cation that runs on the machines. It enhances all endeavors, not just one specialized task.23 McLuhan, Marshall and Eric McLuhan.The Laws of Media: The New Science. Toronto: Univer-sity of Toronto Press. 1988, p. 45.24 The question of which processor to use is an important one but in its proper order. It is atertiary question that will be easily answered once the questions of context, implication, and goalare answered. All too often the question of what to get is substituted for the tougher thinking that isrequired to answer the other questions. All too often superficial results are derived from this sort ofsuperficial thinking.25 Oskar Fischinger’sMotion Painting No. 1(1947) is a cinematic masterpiece of abstraction. Inorder to achieve a ten minute film where a painting composed itself in time and space, Fischingerpainted on glass for months. He would apply a brush stroke, then expose a frame of film. At twentyfour frames per second a ten minute work contains 14 400 separate frames. Though beautiful, thecomplexity of the technique becomes a barrier to creation. This film defines the limits of humancapacity regarding this technique. Further aesthetic advances for this technique require digital inter-vention. Digital Cinema.26 Keaton, Buster (Director). (1924).Sherlock Jr[Film]. Hollywood, CA: Metro Pictures.27 “The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games,” said the voice-over, “in early graphicsprograms and military experimentation with cranial jacks.” On the Sony, a two-dimensional spacewar faded behind a forest of mathematically generated ferns, demonstrating the spacial possibilitiesof logarithmic spirals; cold blue military footage burned through, lab animals wired into test systems,helmets feeding into fire control circuits of tanks and war planes. “Cyberspace. A consensual hallu-cination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators in every nation, by children beingtought mathematical concepts. . . A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of everycomputer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of themind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights receding. . . ”“What’s that?” Molly asked, as he flipped the channel selector.“Kid’s show.” A discontinuous flood of images as the selector cycled. “Off,” he said to the Hosaka.Gibson, William,Neuromancer, NY: The Berkley Publishing Group 1984, p. 51.28 Bahr, Fax (Director). (1992).Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse[Film]. Hollywood,CA: Paramount.

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29 The development of cinematic theory can be seen as the progression of a four stage develop-mental model:

Stage One: Primative Period (1895–1910). A period in which the cinema struggles to find avoice. The basic elements of cinematic language are developed; ie the close-up, dissolve, etc.Stage Two: Classic Period (1914–1960). In which the new cinematic language is developed,extended, and refined. Hitchcock, Eisenstein, Ford, Griffith, and Lang are a few directors,among many, who represent this period. A linear Hegelian, dialectic approach to narrativitycharacterizes the period.Stage Three: Modern Period (1960–present). Characterized by the growth of multiple aestheticschools, including the French New Wave, the Cinema Verite movement, and the New AmericanCinema. These schools questioned the aesthetic conventions of the classic period and revital-ized cinematic language by extending the range of aesthetic possibility. The redefinition andutilization of the jump cut is an example of aesthetic innovation of the period.

The movement to non-linearity is characterized by the following exchange:

Georges Franju (French filmaker of the Classic Period): “Movies should have a beginning, amiddle, and an end.”Jean-Luc Godard (leading French filmaker of The French New Wave): “Certainly, but not neces-sarily in that order.”The exchange is to be found inThe Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations, Oxford UniversityPress, 1991, p. 91.

Stage Four: Digital Cinema (emergent at present). The period which this paper examines.

30 The Eisentinian notion is that the meaning of one shot plus the meaning of another shot equals anew meaning based upon the collision or synthesis of the two. Two of his worksFilm Form (1949)andFilm Sense(1942) explain his theories.31 Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore,The Medium is the Message. NY: Bantam Books, Inc.1967, p. 74.32 Schwartz, Peter and James Ogilvy (1979).The Emergent Paradigm: Changing Patterns ofThought and Belief. Menlo Park, CA: SRI, Values and Lifestyles Program.33 Achleitner, Herbert, and Hale, Martha (1988).Information Transfer: Educating InformationProfessionals in the Emergent Paradigm. In Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice,(pp. 1–12).Proceedings of the First Joint Meeting between the Association Internationale desEcoles de Sciences de I’Information (AIESE) and the Association for Library and InformationScience Education (ALISE), Montreal (Quebec), Canada, May 25–27, 1988.

Achleitner, Herbert, and Wyatt, Roger (1992).Visualization: A New Conceptual Lens for Research.In Jack D. Glazier and Ronald J. Powell (eds.),Qualitative Research in Information Management(pp. 21–36). Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited.34 Youngblood, GeneExpanded Cinema. NY: E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc. 1970, p. 317.35 Youngblood, GeneExpanded Cinema. NY: E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc. 1970, p. 303.36 Prendergast,Mark Time to pick and Mix. New Statesman & Society4 Sept 1992 Vol 5, #218,p. 32.

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