[spectre] DVD-release--SOFT CINEMA: Navigating the Database [u]

[Geert Lovink [c]]

> Lev Manovich and Andreas Kratky
>
> SOFT CINEMA: Navigating the Database
>
> DVD-video with 40 page color booklet
> The MIT Press, 2005
> ISBN 0-262-13456-X
>
> What kind of cinema is appropriate for the age of Google and blogging?
> Automatic surveillance and self-guided missiles? Consumer profiling 
> and CNN?
> To investigate answers to this question Lev Manovich - one of today’s 
> most
> influential thinkers in the fields of media arts and digital culture – 
> has
> paired with award-winning new media artist and designer Andreas Kratky 
> to
> create the Soft Cinema project. They have also invited contributions 
> from
> leaders in other cultural fields: DJ Spooky, Scanner, George Lewis and
> Jóhann Jóhannsson (music), servo and Andreas Angelidakis 
> (architecture),
> Schoenerwissen/Office for Computational Design (data visualization), 
> and
> Ross Cooper Studios (media design).
>
> SOFT CINEMA: Navigating the Database is the Soft Cinema project’s 
> first DVD
> published and distributed by The MIT Press (2005).  Although the three 
> films
> presented on the DVD reference the familiar genres of cinema, the 
> process by
> which they were created and the resulting aesthetics fully belong to 
> the
> software age. They demonstrate the possibilities of soft(ware) cinema 
> - a
> 'cinema' in which human subjectivity and the variable choices made by 
> custom
> software combine to create films that can run infinitely without ever
> exactly repeating the same image sequences, screen layouts and 
> narratives.
>
> 'Mission to Earth' is a science fiction allegory of the immigrant
> experience. It adopts the variable choices and multi-frame layout of 
> the
> Soft Cinema system to represent ‘variable identity’. 'Absences' is a 
> lyrical
> black and white narrative that relies on algorithms normally deployed 
> in
> military and civilian surveillance applications to determine the 
> editing of
> video and audio. 'Texas' is a ‘database narrative’, which assembles its
> visuals, sounds, narratives, and even the identities of its characters 
> from
> multiple databases.
>
> The DVD was designed and programmed so that there is no single version 
> of
> any of the films. All the elements – including screen layout, the 
> visuals
> and their combination, the music, the narrative, and the length – are
> subject to change every time the film is viewed.
>
> The development of Soft Cinema project was made possible by the 
> commissions
> from ZKM Center for Art and Media and the BALTIC, The Centre for
> Contemporary Art. The resulting computer-driven installations and 
> films have
> been exhibited in museums, galleries, media and film festivals around 
> the
> world, including ZKM, Karlsruhe; the ICA, London; SENEF, Seoul; the 
> ICC,
> Tokyo; DEAF, Rotterdam, Transmediale, Berlin; and Chelsea Art Museum, 
> New
> York.
>
> Lev Manovich <www.manovich.net> is the author of The Language of New 
> Media
> (The MIT Press, 2001) which is hailed as "the most suggestive and broad
> ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan." He is Professor of 
> Visual
> Arts, University of California, San Diego <visarts.ucsd.edu> and a
> researcher at California Institute for Telecommunications and 
> Information
> Technology <www.calit2.net>.
>
>  Andreas Kratky has been responsible for media design and co-direction 
> of a
> number of groundbreaking new media projects, including the 
> award-winning
> DVDs That’s Kyogen and Bleeding Through – Layers of Los Angeles 
> 1920-1986
> (both published by ZKM).
>
> SOFT CINEMA: NAVIGATING THE DATABASE is available through The MIT 
> Press <
> mitpress.mit.edu>, online resellers <www.amazon.com, 
> www.barnesandnoble.com,
> etc.) and selected bookstores.
>
> Additional information: www.softcinema.net
>
> email: manovich at ucsd.edu