Chapter 18 by Paul Lippert titled, "Cinematic Representations of Cyberspace" discusses the manner in which film has been able to manipulate concrete ideas and make them abstract in a manner which print couldn't do. I found this observation very compelling because it reminded my of the Multimedia classes I had taken in high school.
Lippert mentions how the placement of characters in a scene can create an abstract meaning. On page 298 he makes this point that if a character is standing in front of a group of others in a shot, the spacial arrangment of the characters is concrete, however the idea that this one individual is in the foreground illustrates an abstract idea that he or she is over importance. This idea of positioning adds a dynamic to film that print culture couldn't accomplish. Similarly, camera angles play a large role in creating abstract ideas of characters. A low camera angle with a character seeming larger than life creates a sense of power and vice versa.
Print was only able to do the opposite and make concrete what was abstract. Ideas of things beyond the physical world could be captured by words in print but couldn't go the other way.
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This is an interesting point. A couple of weeks ago I attended a screening of the documentary "Manufactured Landscapes," which followed photographer, Edward Burtynsky, around China while he captured the powerful images of China's ever-industrializing landscape. Although the point was clear in the documentary, there really was no narration that persuaded the audience to think a certain way; the images alone, the placement of the camera, got the point across without any biased opinion.
ReplyDeleteIt's true. A picture really is worth a thousand words. Camera angle, placement of objects in a photo or film all create an artistic message. One of my favorite internet mediums is Flickr. Here is a place that we can share our ideas through photos all over the world. The great thing about Flickr is that it is used by people who are usually truly attracted to such visual communication. It's hard to find things as simple as party pictures (like you would on facebook) on Flickr. As the we make our way into a more visual age of communication, what we can learn through others who share similar passions and ideas of photographic communication becomes extremely important. Flickr might be considered a window to the worlf the likes of which we have never seen before.
ReplyDeleteBut Lippert's ultimate point is that dominant classes utilize print literacy, with it's high level of abstraction, and those who depend largely on the less abstract forms of the visual/moving image will be at a disadvantage, so that subordinate classes will tend to remain in that position.
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