Bolter & Grusin "Immediacy, Hypermediacy, and Remediation"

Lokomat & Virtual Reality Setup
Originally uploaded by wellnair

Bolter and Grusin talk about what they term as “transparent immediacy.” Developers of new technology are working to one ultimate goal - to completely diminish the line between reality and fantasy. It seems as though works of art can not be completely real. Most art is manipulated by the artist or technology itself. The artist separates her/himself as well as the viewer from the subject. There is a line in which we can not cross, but people are fascinated with the idea of being able to do so. When working towards virtual reality, when will there be a stopping point? Should we have computers implanted in our brains, so that nothing we see has to be our true reality? I wonder if people will continue to marvel at technology (like those who jumped from their theater seats when seeing a moving train) or will we all some day be satisfied.

Screening: Lost Book Found and Girl Power

List found March 1, 2007
Originally uploaded by sweetgarbage

Within Cohen’s Lost Book Found I felt a great importance placed on fleeting images and the traces that people leave behind. I myself love to find objects or pieces of paper that someone has dropped or thrown away. I find myself thinking of who this person is and where they are in their life. In fact, I kept thinking of one of my favorite websites, Found Magazine. In the film, Cohen shows us the city through “handmade notes”, store fronts, and people who spend their day fishing. The whole film felt like it was shot through a haze, like a distant memory of our own.

Sadie Benning’s Girl Power has an overpowering feel to it. The multiple pop culture images really sort of come right at you. The use of the music of Bikini Kill adds to the overall abrasiveness (a word that I do not use negatively here) of the film. The film was in your face, drawing from photographs, television, and music, almost like a zine in film format. Girl Power seems to be a definite example of the Riot Grrrl movement.

Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

Brando SC013
Originally uploaded by Fine Young Cannibal

One of Benjamin’s concerns with reproductions is that of fragmentation. The aura, or mysticism, that surrounds a work of art is what draws us to it. The more that a work of art is reproduced, the more fragmented it becomes, breaking down until the original is just like every other work of art that stems from it. As Benjamin contrasts stage actor to screen actor, I couldn’t help but think of Marlon Brando in the role of Stanley Kowalski. Although I have never heard specifically if he had preferred to play Kowalski on stage or on film, I do recall his concern that the film, because of how he was photographed, would pull the audience towards his character, when in reality they should be repelled. Benjamin states his concern for how an actor’s message can be lost in the fragmentation of film, and I think that this holds true in respect to A Streetcar Named Desire.