__International Journal of Film and Media Arts

URI permanente para esta coleção:https://hdl.handle.net/10437/15692

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Stage-directing the virtual reality experience : developing a theoretical framework for immersive literacy
(Lusofona University, 2021) Melki, Henri; CICANT - Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies
Despite the incremental improvement and inclusion of immersive technologies in entertainment, training simulation, fine art, inclusive design, academia, and education; Virtual Reality (VR) still faces issues regarding its ability to compete with films and animation in visual storytelling without merging into the realm of video games. In 2015, Pixar’s Ed Catmull warned moviemakers that Virtual Reality is “not storytelling” and argued that the linear aspect of narratives poses an obstacle that cannot be overcome with VR. In contrast, Catmull argued that VR has immense application in games. However, VR creators have been pushing the boundaries and possibilities of delivering narratives in virtual spaces. In 2019, the VR experience “Gloomy Eyes” was presented at the Sundance festivals featuring a 30-minute story split between 3 episodes. The simulation is structured to provide its audience with some degrees of freedom while guiding them intuitively through the virtual space. In 2021, Blue Zoo also released a VR project titled “The Beast” featuring a cyclist powering up a snow-covered mountain. The short film was entirely created in Quill VR with the intention of being treated like a theatrical play rather than a film. While the creators of “The Beast” have explicitly mentioned the influence of theatre, “Gloomy Eyes” draws its visual language from similar theatrical roots. This paper argues that VR has been mistakenly compared to film and animation when it should be associated with theatre. The audience of both are not passive as they are during the screening of a film or animation. The space and the medium demands participation through their presence in the same space with the actors/characters. Theatre presents a promising candidate for extracting criteria that could be used to develop a visual language for VR. This research aims to formulate a framework for developing a VR visual language through comparison between character-driven narratives in VR such as “Gloomy Eyes” and “The Beast”. The comparative study establishes overlapping criteria and characteristics found in the structure, literacy, sound, and delivery format of narratives in a theatrical performance. These criteria are then outlined and discussed, drawing from affordance theory and discussions on aural and visual attention in theatre, to form a holistic view in approaching VR literacy.
Autofiction of the cognitariat : self-criticism of a bourgeois dog
(Lusofona University, 2023) Cuter, Elisa; CICANT - Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies
Artists and intellectuals living in precarious conditions (or: belonging to the cognitariat), find themselves at the crossroad between precarity and privilege. Julian Radlmaier’s Selbstkritik eines bürgerlichen Hundes (Self-Criticism of a Bourgeois Dog GER, 2017) deals with this issue in a very explicit, self-reflexive way. Its protagonist is a filmmaker on the dole who is sent by the German workfare program to work seasonally as an apple picker. Once at the orchard, when the other workers attempt a revolt, he discovers that his attachment to his status as an artist impedes him to join their struggle. The autofictional form of the film, I demonstrate, reflects a subjectivation dynamic that turns into a spiral of perceived debt, guilt, and political paralysis. By internalizing a widespread anti-intellectual bias, the film offers a paradigmatic account of why it is difficult for members of the cognitariat to solidarize with other segments of the precariat or the working class: the difficulty depends largely on the internalization of neoliberal capitalism’s ambivalent consideration of immaterial, cognitive, and creative work.
Portuguese soap operas : a genre at the crossroads
(Lusofona University, 2019) Damásio, Manuel José; Costa, Jorge Paixão da; ECATI - School of Communication, Architecture, Arts and Information Technologies; CICANT - Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies
In the context of ever greater circulation of televisual content of all genres and formats, this paper focuses on the intersections between the global and the local to understand how a specific genre – soap opera – was localised in a specific cultural and geographical setting giving origin to a production model that gained local prominence and nowadays faces a number of new challenges. Our general argument draws on the empirical findings of original research on the molding of this specific televisual genre and format called “telenovela”, and the specific production mode associated with it, and reflects on its historical emergence and the contingencies of such a process. Our goal is to identify the variables that allowed this genre to gain local dominance and later achieve international circulation. Following the results of quantitative and qualitative research, we argue that the structure of the local production and distribution settings and the dominant ideology of the associated production culture promoted the emergence of an original local production culture and sustains it until today.
Stereoscopic therapy : fun or remedy?
(Lusofona University, 2016) Raposo, Sara; FCAATI - Faculty of Communication, Architecture, Arts and IT
Once the material of playful gatherings, stereoscopic photographs of cities, the moon, landscapes and fashion scenes are now cherished collectors’ items that keep on inspiring new generations of enthusiasts. Nevertheless, for a stereoblind observer, a stereoscopic photograph will merely be two similar images placed side by side. The perspective created by stereoscopic fusion can only be experienced by those who have binocular vision, or stereopsis. There are several causes of a lack of stereopsis. They include eye disorders such as strabismus with double vision. Interestingly, stereoscopy can be used as a therapy for that condition. This paper approaches this kind of therapy through the exploration of North American collections of stereoscopic charts that were used for diagnosis and training purposes until recently.
Games can play us : the power of disempowerment in "emotional engineering"
(Lusofona University, 2017) Filipe, Eva R.; CICANT - Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies
With the paradox of interactive emotion as astarting point, this study will try to understandwhat is the cause for this limitation of videogames’ emotional power, identifying some requirementsfor it to be overcome. Through thissingling out, the concept of disempowerment isdrafted as a model for theoretical inquiry, criticalcounterpoint and set of practices that standopposed to the forces that go through, defineand are themselves firmed on the diverse layersof the interactive experience. Beyond tryingto grasp the emotional potential yet to realizeand how the rupture with the established andexpected practices may unlock it, the proposalof the disempowerment model will overflow theinside of the game experience. From its constructionwithin a game to its use on discourseabout video games, its importance on broaderand interwoven dynamics will be highlighted. Allalong the way, a critical proposal will gain shape,which will seek to, cyclically, magnify videogame’s power as a medium of experiences andthe power of the medium as a cultural object. Keywords: Video games; agency; interactivity; immersion; subversion; emotional engineering; disempowerment.
La colorimetría cinematográfica aplicada a los nuevos formatos periodísticos televisivos : el caso del programa español lo de Évole
(Lusofona University, 2022) Barrientos Báez, Almudena; Caldevilla-Domínguez, David; Blanco-Pérez, Manuel; CICANT (FCT) - Centro de Investigação em Comunicação Aplicada, Cultura e Novas Tecnologias
With the irruption of multi-screens that the Netflix era has brought about, a good part of the old visual formulas, especially television and reporter ones, have become outdated. This is especially observable in television formats strongly linked to reporter journalism, such as Spaniards around the world, Street travelers and others. In recent years, a trend of adaptation of cinematographic codes to television products has already been perceived, but the Covid-19 pandemic and the ban on theatrical exhibition in cinemas around the world has precipitated a change in the model of consumption. This article presents an investigation on a nuclear element: the cinematographic colorimetry used in journalistic television programs, specifically, one of the most watched journalistic programs on Spanish television: Lo de Évole.
The relation between gamers audiences and gaming industry workforce
(Lusofona University, 2020) Barroso, Ivan; ECATI - School of Communication, Architecture, Arts and Information Technologies; CICANT - Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies
Relationships between gaming audiences and the industry workforce have been a significant factor for decades, becoming an economic driver for high-profile studios, which has led to an increase in budget size and a tightening of deadlines. The definition of creative media products under capitalism as “research, product planning and design, packaging, publicity and promotion, pricing policy, and sales and distribution” (Ryan, 1991, p.186) resonates perfectly with contemporary marketing strategies The inherent complexity of marketing strategy in this view accounts for heightened risks, which make the creation of original products from scratch a difficult proposition. This, in turn, can account for a certain aversion to risk, which makes sequels and serialization a preferred option, whereby games become mere products, and audience mere consumers. The aim of this article is to trace the process through which the games industry’s core audience became defined, as it relates to how certain game titles became established in the market, and how this affected working conditions for game developers. The scope of this article is big-budget game titles, and how these related to the establishment of certain pervasive, potentially harmful audience expectations in the games industry.
Rust, mold and cracks : post-dualist approaches on spaces and images
(Lusofona University, 2023) Gervilla, Lucas Rossi; CICANT - Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies
Using the piece of video art “Rust, Mold, and Cracks”, created by the author, this paper addresses questions related to space, ruins, and different temporalities. Calling upon the authors Georg Simmel and Milton Santos, the text proposes an approach to ruins that goes further than dualist concepts such as abandoned/not abandoned, or modern/outdated. It also discusses the role of Nature in this scenario. In light of this situation, space and time are under mutable reorganisation, as pointed out by David Harvey. Different arrangements between them shall produce diverse modernities. Considering images as objects resulting from this spatiotemporal modification, this article comments on their accumulation.
AYAH - Sign : collaborative digital art with the grenfell communities
(Lusofona University, 2021) Gingrich, Oliver Mag; Choudhrey, Sara; CICANT - Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies
Coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the Grenfell tragedy, local artistic practitioners Oliver M. Gingrich, of media art platform ART IN FLUX, and artist researcher Sara Choudhrey, curated a series of workshops and events as part of the project AYAH – Sign. Significantly, the project places collaboration at all stages of its conception, implementation, and its outcome. Members of the local community and the wider general public were invited to explore new forms of artistic practice with a focus on Islamic pattern-making. These practice-based community-focused activities contributed towards a collaborative digital artwork, publicly displayed as a site-specific installation opposite the Grenfell Tower site. The participatory activity and artwork were designed to bring the community together in a time of need, to provide mutual support through joint creative engagement. Social connectedness, i.e. the experience of belonging, and relatedness between people (Van Bel et al 2009), is becoming an increasingly important concept in the discussion of social benefits of media including participatory art practices (Bennington et al. 2016). This paper reflects on the potential for art to bring communities together, to contribute to wellbeing and social-connectedness and providing a more inclusive experience for a range of community members. The project was conceived within the context of deeper research into participatory art and its potential to contribute to mental wellbeing, providing social cohesion for communities and acting as a creative support strategy in times of need. Collaborative art practices, such as AYAH - Sign, not only inspires further creativity among local residents through collaborative engagement, but also encourages community members to reconnect both physically and emotionally with one another. Keywords: Collaborative Community Practice, Digital Art, Islamic Digital Art, New Media Art, Social Connectedness, Arts and wellbeing,
British stereo photographers in Spain : Frank M. Good
(Lusofona University, 2016) Fernández Rivero, Juan Antonio; CICANT - Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies
Unlike French stereo photographers, who flooded the market with Spanish views, the most important British publishers and photographers rarely made Spanish views. Quite possibly this was precisely because of the rapid market penetration of the French, such as Gaudin, Ferrier and others, and in spite of the leading British photographic houses, such as Frith or George W. Wilson, also wanting to include Spanish views in their catalogues. The photographer Frank Good would be the only British photographic editor to make a collection of some importance of Spanish stereoscopic views during the first decades of the history of photography, visiting and photographing the cities of San Sebastian, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Tarragona, Valencia, Seville and Cordoba. About one hundred views, of which more than half are of Cordoba and Seville, do not include, strangely, cities such as Madrid, Toledo and Granada.
Contracts of making, viewing and listening : researching in and through films
(Lusofona University, 2020) Ranjan, Ram Krishna; CICANT - Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies
This paper tells the story of Contracts of making, viewing and listening, a 17-minute film that has emerged as part of my ongoing doctoral study in Artistic Research in Film. Taking the Bengal Famine of 1943 as a site-event, the doctoral research focuses on investigating and experimenting with epistemologies and ontologies of expressions emanating from a space of subalternity, especially Dalits. Contracts of making, viewing and listening can be seen as an artistic intervention into Satyajit Ray’s Distant Thunder – made in 1973, the film tells the story of effects of the Famine in rural Bengal through the eyes of a Brahmin couple. The artistic intervention was geared towards both critically reading the film from the lens of Dalit consciousness, and to explore ways of writing that critique in the language of the film itself. By retracing the journey of Contracts of making, viewing and listening, this paper focuses on how research is performed in and through the medium of film in this intervention, its multiple conceptual/material contingencies, and ultimately what it proposes in the context of artistic research.
Animating poetry : whose line is it anyway? : creation and critique of shared language in poetry animation
(Lusofona University, 2019) Hanna, Susan J.; CICANT - Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies
This paper provides a detailed analysis of an example of personal practice in the creation of collaborative contemporary poetry animation as an example of Ecstatic Truth. It cites a rationale for translation, transcription and remodeling of poems into new animated visual and sonic experiences. This investigation into creation and critique of shared language between poetry and animation includes critical commentary and some historical context, as well as supplying comparative exemplars from poets, animators and collaborators. It suggests that poetry animation is an emergent genre in its own right, and that this has expanding potential for engaging specialist and non-specialist audiences.
The importance of digital filmmaking and how it affects education in filmschools
(Lusofona University, 2017) Stewens, Simone; CICANT - Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies
The present document discusses the impacts and changes brought about by digital technologies and the transformations they entail for the different areas of film production, development and education. By focusing on the particular case of one school – The Cologne Film School (ifs) – and how this school as embraced digital disruption, the paperscrutinizes all areas that are shocked by the digital and how film schools can and should react.
Ventura : a character’s mental landscape as history
(Lusofona University, 2017) Cordeiro, Edmundo; ECATI - School of Communication, Architecture, Arts and Information Technologies; CICANT - Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies
Pedro Costa’s last film, Cavalo Dinheiro [Horse Money, 2014], continues the work with Ventura in a way that could be seen to overtake Vanda’s role in his series of films since Ossos [Bones, 1997]. In Juventude em Marcha [Colossal Youth, 2006], by means of «the power of the false» (Deleuze), Ventura is a stratigraphic character, the result of a confrontation between fictional and documentary powers which permanently shifts, in Ventura himself, the actually existing Ventura from the invented Ventura. This builds a portrait that, with the ritornello of the film — Ventura's insistent recitation of a love letter —, moves across centuries of Portugal and world’s history. But in Horse Money, both concentration and fragmentation increase. There are all kind of coincidences and clashes between the past and the present time, which are presented in a glossolalia, voices that spread memory everywhere, as in the final sequence in the elevator, when we have Ventura and a soldier of the 25 April Revolution completely mummified, transformed into a golden statue. I want to highlight the everlasting present created through the length of time and the scarcity of space (we don’t get out of the elevator for a prolonged period of time). This is not a time that corresponds to confusion or delirium; this is the time built by the film, and I will particularly focus my paper on this coincident mental and historical landscape that, by entailing the body and the life of a person transformed into a character, allows to the filmmaker to ride through history with Ventura’s horse-money (‘money’ is the name of Ventura’s horse left in Cap Vert). We have no predefined thoughts and Pedro Costa does not provide us with any exits, but “the nerve-wave that gives rise to thought” (Artaud, via Deleuze) mixes with the noise of the tremor of the elevator that continues without stopping.
VAST/O : exploring the use of expanded animation for a shared physical understanding of spatial phobias
(Lusofona University, 2019) Woolf, Natalie; Martins, Carolina; CICANT - Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies; HEI-LAB - Human Environment Interaction Lab
This paper looks at materialities of expression through expanded animation. In particular, it details the development of a creative approach for the production of artworks for an installation that will provide a shared understanding of spatial phobias and their physical and psychological symptoms. It brings together the approach of the two authors and their individual research topics. Combining experiential phenomena of particular materials (placing animation within surfaces and technologies), and spatially distributed reading of comic book panels. The physicality of still and moving images and their distribution/placement will be explored, leading to the expansion of animation contexts. Drawing on various makers and practices, the article explores the use of abstract comics and text as static panels and animated drawing, on-site location, and the intervention of various media technologies and other materialities to recognise their effectiveness and impact as a spatially engaged method of reading. The work developed was applied in an interdisciplinary installation titled VAST/O. The artwork is based on some theoretical approaches from literature and animation, thematically drawing on Gaston Bachelard’s notion of vastness, built upon an analysis of Baudelaire’s poetry, and addressing spatial phobias. It seeks to identify a way forward for the communication of the realities of phobic experiences.
Hitting where it hurts : absurdity as an artistic method
(Lusofona University, 2021) Jutz, Gabriele; CICANT - Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies
This article frames absurdity as an artistic method related to the context of an artwork’s making. The artworks introduced here are (very broadly) situated at the interface between animation and documentary. Their absurdity is not a matter of their content, but is deeply inscribed in the process of their making. Though they do not explicitly address political questions, they strike at the heart of given power systems or established hierarchies and thus hit where it hurts. “Make it absurd!” is a way of transgressing standards and norms and thus undermining established power relations. The article offers close-readings of a small number of contemporary artworks that can be apprehended as stimulating examples of how absurdity as a method deploys its critical potential. As the examples demonstrate, disrupting a given context can be achieved in many ways: By “inflating” formal devices in order to subvert typical elements of televisual language from inside-out (House by Andy Birtwistle, Great Britain 2013); by rendering a source text (and not just any text!) literally unreadable by investing an enormous amount of time to its dismantling (‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac by Jorge Lorenzo, Mexico 2013); by hijacking a male masterpiece and placing the “copy” as well as the female appropriator at the same level as the “master” (A Movie by Jen Proctor by Jen Proctor, USA 2010); by demonstrating that the technique of animation itself bears the mark of the absurd (Anna Vasof’s series of works, gathered under the headings of Non-stop Stop-motion and Muybridge’s Disobedient Horses, Austria, 2017–); and finally, via a method called “slapstick avant-garde,” by launching an attack on purist self-restraint (Dont Know What by Thomas Renoldner, Austria 2019). Keywords: Absurdity as an artistic method, appropriation, animation, slapstick.
Writing animated documentary : a theory of practice
(Lusofona University, 2016) Wells, Paul; CICANT - Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies
This short discussion provides some introductory remarks on writing for the documentary form in animation. Taking into account theories of the place of animation in utilitarian films, avant-garde works and the essay film, the analysis, based on auto-ethnographic insights, provides some methods and approaches to developing animated documentary work. These include ‘Making Animation Choices’, ‘Staging in Space’, ‘Using Attachment and Detachment’, developing ‘Episodic lists and Micro-Narratives’, and deploying ‘Transition and Associative Relations’. The analysis seeks to show that these approaches to the animated documentary reveal and evidence a theory of practice, and a practice of theory.
Augmented reality to enhance nonopposite reality awareness : lexical relations amongst primary teaching
(Lusofona University, 2020) Baptista, Adriana; Morgado, Celda; Costa, José António; Azevedo, João; CICANT - Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies
Lexicon allows particular cosmovisions built up with varied semantic, formal and pragmatic-discursive relations (Coseriu, 1991; Teixeira, 2005). In teaching context, these variations are often replaced by dichotomous and decontextualized proposals of lexical organisation (Baptista et al., 2017). We hope changing some teaching practices, based on complex lexical relationships research, and on new didactic resources. Firstly, we account for the diversity of existing lexical relations (Choupina et al., 2013), considering different linguistic criteria (Lehmann & Martin-Berthet, 2008). Then, we present an exploratory study to see if primary school pupils’ mental lexicon is intuitively organised in a dichotomous way. Departing from three bimodal narratives where words show opposition relations, although not exclusive, within the story, sometimes oppositional relations become similarity relations. These relationships allow to group words such as word class, worldviews, sociocultural references. Although this approach starts with antonyms and synonyms in second grade classes (according to Portuguese primary school curriculum, Buescu et al., 2015), we registered varied students’ responses, reflecting a mental lexicon escaping the dichotomy of certain oppositions taught in a decontextualized way. Thirdly, we propose an augmented reality tool that allows children (and adults) to watch visual narrative representing actions from written narratives. As a matter of fact, within particular contexts, words may not relate to each other in an opposite way. If intuitive knowledge on words isn’t confined to rigid perspectives, teaching shouldn’t lead that way, but to promote a critical thinking approach supporting education for citizenship.
The beauty of the fragment reconstituted in the great wall
(Lusofona University, 2021) Bruyn, Dirk De; CICANT - Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies
Max Hattler’s short abstract animations demonstrate an awareness of the form’s historic 1920’s European Abstract Animation precedents, is informed by the structurally focused minimalism of the 60’s and re-tools pre-cinema toys. Yet his work speaks to the contemporary technological environment he occupies and experiences directly. His move to Hong Kong and his recent Serial Parallels is also a predictive probe into future media environments. Hattler’s digital architectures are designed to make sense of the technological situation of speed and information overload which Vilem Flusser marks as amnesic and Marshall McLuhan identifies as an acoustic space readable through pattern recognition. His practice makes productive use of the flexible and modular qualities of contemporary digital image-making technologies for both production and publication purposes.
Moldear a la audiencia : sobre la génesis del efecto en el discurso audiovisual
(Lusofona University, 2017) Marino, Iván; CICANT (FCT) - Centro de Investigação em Comunicação Aplicada, Cultura e Novas Tecnologias
The following paper explores the first Soviet essays aimed at researching the role of "effect" in audiovisual discourse, relating them in turn to the main schools of thought of the time. The aim of this research is to return to the sources of audiovisual rhetoric - one of the most effective and persuasive discursive techniques of contemporary culture - to elliptically identify its reminiscences in current cinema and TV discourses. Following this line of work, we analyze, among others, the first ideas of Pudovkin (2006), Kuleshov (1974) and Eisenstein (2010a) on the subject, focusing on the notions of «attraction» and «effect» that, in our opinion, remain transformed in the audiovisual discourses of today.

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