Conservation of Time-Based Media Art

Conservation of Time-Based Media Art
Author: Deena Engel
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 629
Release: 2022-11-02
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000729478

Conservation of Time-based Media Art is the first book to take stock of the current practices and conceptual frameworks that define the emerging field of time-based media conservation, which focuses on contemporary artworks that contain video, audio, film, slides or software components. Written and compiled by a diverse group of time-based media practitioners around the world, including conservators, curators, registrars and technicians among others, this volume offers a comprehensive survey of specialized practices that have developed around the collection, preservation and display of time-based media art. Divided into 23 chapters with contributions from 36 authors and 85 additional voices, the narrative of this book provides both an overview and detailed guidance on critical topics, including the acquisition, examination, documentation and installation of time-based media art; cross-medium and medium-specific treatment approaches and methods; the registration, storage, and management of digital and physical artwork components; collection surveys and project advocacy; lab infrastructures, staffing and the institutional implementation of time-based media conservation. Conservation of Time-based Media Art serves as a critical resource for conservation students and for a diverse professional audience who engage with time-based media art, including conservation practitioners and other collection caretakers, curators, art historians, collectors, gallerists, artists, scholars and academics.

Silent Cinema

Silent Cinema
Author: Paolo Cherchi Usai
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2019-04-04
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1911239139

Paolo Cherchi Usai provides a comprehensive introduction to the study, research and preservation of silent cinema from its heyday in the early 20th century to its present day flourishing. He traces the history of the moving image in its formative years, from Edison's and Lumière's first experiments to the dawn of 'talkies'; provides a clear guide to the basics of silent film technology; introduces the technical and creative roles involved in its production, and presents silent cinema as a performance event, rather than a passive viewing experience. This new, greatly expanded edition takes the reader on a new journey, exploring silent cinema in the broader context of technology, culture, and society, from the invention of celluloid film and its related machinery to film studios, laboratories, theatres and audiences. Among the people involved in the creation of a new art form were filmmakers, actors and writers, but also engineers, entrepreneurs, and projectionists. Their collective efforts, and the struggle to preserve their creative work by archives and museums, are interwoven in a compelling story covering three centuries of media history, from the magic lantern to the reinvention of silent cinema in digital form. The new edition also includes comprehensive resource information for the study, research, preservation and exhibition of silent cinema.

Showing and Telling: Film heritage institutes and their performance of public accountability

Showing and Telling: Film heritage institutes and their performance of public accountability
Author: Nico de Klerk
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2019-03-25
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1622736524

'Showing and Telling' is the first academic work to explore how publicly funded film heritage institutes account for their mandate in their public activities. It does that by inspecting and evaluating public presentations and visitor information about these presentations. The research was done by juxtaposing two complementary approaches. The first is grounded in the author’s experience as a collection researcher and curator and makes a case for the richness of archival objects usually ignored for their lack of aesthetic qualities. The second is a survey of the public activities of 24 institutes worldwide, based on their websites, in February 2014; the latter constitutes a unique source. This original work uncovers the disconnect between the curatorial activities of these institutes and their missions. A central finding is that publicly funded film heritage institutes give their public an inadequate sense of cinema history. By and large they offer a mainstream-oriented repertoire of presentations, overwhelmingly consisting of feature fiction; they show a disproportionate amount of recent and new works, often through commercial distribution; their screenings consist of an unexplained melee of technological formats (sometimes substandard); and their presentations monotonously frame film as art, although their professed aesthetics are mostly of a cinephile nature and rest on received opinion. Specific materials, early cinema in particular, and specialist knowledge, both historical and methodological, are largely restricted to their network of peer communities. Wholesome transfer of full knowledge, in word and image, to the public is not a major concern. 'Showing and Telling' concludes with recommendations for curatorial activities. Firstly, with a conceptual apparatus that allows a more complete understanding of film heritage and its histories. Secondly, with a plea for rethinking the institutes’ gatekeeper function and for developing more varied, imaginative, and informative public presentations, both on site and online, that reflect the range of their collections and their histories.

Film Restoration

Film Restoration
Author: L. Enticknap
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2013-11-13
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 113732872X

This is the first monograph-length work intended to enable readers with a humanities background and the general public to understand what the processes and techniques of film restoration do and do not involve, attempting to integrate systematically a discussion about related technological and cultural issues.

Towards a Film Theory from Below

Towards a Film Theory from Below
Author: Jiri Anger
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2024-05-30
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN:

Operating between film theory, media philosophy, archival practice, and audiovisual research, Jiri Anger focuses on the relationship between figuration and materiality in early films, experimental found footage cinema, and video essays. Would it be possible to do film theory from below, through the perspective of moving-image objects, of their multifarious details and facets, however marginal, unintentional, or aleatory they might be? Could we treat scratches, stains, and shakes in archival footage as speculatively and aesthetically generative features? Do these material actors have the capacity to create “weird shapes” within the figurative image that decenter, distort, and transform the existing conceptual and methodological frameworks? Building on his theoretical as well as practical experience with the recently digitized corpus of the first Czech films, created by Jan Kríženecký between 1898 and 1911, the author demonstrates how technological defects and accidents in archival films shape their aesthetic function and our understanding of the materiality of film in the digital age. The specific clashes between the figurative and material spheres are understood through the concept of a “crack-up.” This term, developed by Francis Scott Fitzgerald and theoretically reimagined by Gilles Deleuze, allows us to capture the convoluted relationship between figuration and materiality as inherent to the medium of film, containing negativity and productivity, difference and simultaneity, contingency and fate, at the same time, even within the tiniest cinematic units.

Digital Humanities and Film Studies

Digital Humanities and Film Studies
Author: Adelheid Heftberger
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2019-01-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 303002864X

This book highlights the quantitative methods of data mining and information visualization and explores their use in relation to the films and writings of the Russian director, Dziga Vertov. The theoretical basis of the work harkens back to the time when a group of Russian artists and scholars, known as the “formalists,” developed new concepts of how art could be studied and measured. This book brings those ideas to the digital age. One of the central questions the book intends to address is, “How can hypothetical notions in film studies be supported or falsified using empirical data and statistical tools?” The first stage involves manual and computer-assisted annotation of the films, leading to the production of empirical data which is then used for statistical analysis but more importantly for the development of visualizations. Studies of this type furthermore shed light on the field of visual presentation of time-based processes; an area which has its origin in the Russian formalist sphere of the 1920s and which has recently gained new relevance due to technological advances and new possibilities for computer-assisted analysis of large and complex data sets. In order to reach a profound understanding of Vertov and his films, the manual or computer-assisted data analysis must be combined with film-historical knowledge and a study of primary sources. In addition, the status of the surviving film materials and the precise analysis of these materials combined with knowledge of historical film technology provide insight into archival policy and political culture in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 30s.

From Grain to Pixel

From Grain to Pixel
Author: Giovanna Fossati
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2009
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9089641394

"From Grain to Pixel attempts to bridge the fields of film archiving and academic research, by addressing the discourse on film ontology and analysing how it affects the role of film archives. Fossati proposes a new theoretization of film archival practice as the starting point for a renewed dialogue between film scholars and film archivists." --Book Jacket.

Film Curatorship - Archives, Museums, and the Digital Marketplace

Film Curatorship - Archives, Museums, and the Digital Marketplace
Author: David Francis
Publisher: Austrian Film Museum
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2020-06-16
Genre:
ISBN: 9783901644825

Film Curatorship is an experiment: a collective text, a montage of dialogues, conversations, and exchanges among four professionals representing three generations of film archivists and curators. It calls for an open philosophical and ethical debate on fundamental questions the profession must come to terms with in the twenty-first century.

Restoration of Motion Picture Film

Restoration of Motion Picture Film
Author: Paul Read
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2000-08-14
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 008051619X

This is the first book to bring together the work of a modern motion picture film laboratory together with the specialist techniques for preservation and restoration of archival film.The books data has its origins in a training programme called FILM which was written by members of the Gamma Group with funding from the EU fund Force. The committee comprised senior film archivists and technicians in charge of film conservation departments or working film laboratories within national film archives, together with technicians from commercial laboratories which specialise in archival film conservation and who do not work for national and local archives. The final group consisted of many of the most experienced individuals in their fields.Restoration of Motion Picture Film is an extremely informative, well-researched book which is an unmissable addition to the bookshelves of conservators, archivists and curators worldwide. Film history and film conservation students will also find it of great interest and use.* Only book in English on this subject* Prepared by leading specialists in their field* Includes coverage of digital technology