GLI.TC/H has started and on Saturday November 19th it’ll be making its way to VIVID in Birmingham, UK! The full programme is available here, and as a PDF. Over the week I’ll be providing a bitesized overview of the upcoming events.
Lecture: Blind Optics
Gabriel Menotti presents his paper entitled “Blind Optics:”
In order to investigate the relation between cinema and technology, it seems necessary to escape the medium’s own parameters of analysis. Taking a step in this direction, one might adopt Friedrich Kittler’s notion of “optical media,” a classification based not on the morphological effects of cinema, but on the operational principles of its apparatus. However, while Kittler’s framework discloses the mechanisms of figurative representation, it casts an even darker shadow over the constitution of technique. To analyse the cinematographic apparatus as purely optical is to ignore that its technical underpinnings are also mechanical and chemical, electromagnetic and computational. In order to bring these material aspects to the surface of the medium, one could borrow a strategy that has been largely employed with aesthetic ends: that of blinding or disrupting the camera eye. A vast tradition of video art and experimental cinema, recently joined by practices such as generative programming, presents visuals that are not produced by clear lenses, but that mostly result from celluloid film, electric circuits and digital codification. This paper calls attention to the ways in which this sort of blind optics produces images not by the means of abstracting the world, but through the abstraction of the bare apparatus. Thus, it sheds some light in the processes of inscription and transmission that ultimately constitute audiovisual media, allowing us to grasp some of their particularities.
Bio
Gabriel Menotti is an independent researcher/curator engaged with different forms of cinema. At the present time, Menotti is a concluding PhD candidate and a Visiting Tutor in the Media & Communications Department of Goldsmiths College. He has previously organized pirate movie screenings, remix film festivals, videogame championships, porn screenplay workshops, installations with super8 film projectors, generative art exhibitions and academic seminars.ÊAmong the recent events to which Menotti has contributed are Medialab PradoÕs Interactivos?! (Spain); the 16th International Symposium of Electronic Arts (Germany); the 29th São Paulo Art Biennial (Brazil); and Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid.
Meta
GLI.TC/H 20111 will include works from over 100 participants from more than a dozen countries and will be taking place in virtual-space at http://gli.tc/h and in real-space
For more details visit: http://gli.tc/h | http://glidottcslashh.tumblr.com/ | https://www.facebook.com/glidottcslashh | @GLIDOTTCSLASHH
GLI.TC/H BIRM is part of The Garage presents… programme from VIVID and is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and Birmingham City University