Transmedia Frictions: The Digital, the Arts, and the Humanities

415 Pages·2014·2.891 MB·English

by  Marsha Kinder, Tara McPherson (eds.)

TRANSMEDIA FRICTIONS
The Digital, the Arts, and the Humanities
EDITED BY
Marsha Kinder and Tara McPherson
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
TRANSMEDIA FRICTIONS

TRANSMEDIA FRICTIONS
The Digital, the Arts, and the Humanities
EDITED BY
Marsha Kinder and Tara McPherson
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university
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University of California Press
Oakland, CA
© 2014 by The Regents of the University of California
Cataloguing-in-Publication Data on fi le at the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-520-28185-1 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-520-95769-5 (ebook)
Manufactured in the United States of America
23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
ansi/niso z39.48–1992 (r 2002) (Permanence of Paper).
Cover image: From Tracing the Decay of Fiction: Encounters with a Film by
Pat O'Neill (2002). Image courtesy of Pat O'Neill and The Labyrinth Project.
We dedicate this volume to all those who have created
new demands by working at the pressure point between
theory and practice—not only those historic fi lmmakers
like Eisenstein, Vertov, and Deren whose experimentation
we are still mining for theoretical implications, but also
those contemporary theorists who have generated
transmedia frictions by venturing into the realm
of production.
One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand
which could be fully satisfi ed only later. The history of every art form shows
critical epochs in which a certain art form aspires to eff ects which could be
fully obtained only with a changed technical standard, that is to say, in a new
art form. Every fundamentally new, pioneering creation of demands will carry
beyond its goal.
WALTER BENJAMIN
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments • xi
Preface: Origins, Agents, and Alternative Archaeologies • xiii
PART I. MEDIUM SPECIFICITY AND PRODUCTIVE PRECURSORS
Medium Specifi city and Productive Precursors: An Introduction • 3
Marsha Kinder
Print Is Flat, Code Is Deep: The Importance of Media-Specifi c
Analysis • 20
N. Katherine Hayles
Postmedia Aesthetics • 34
Lev Manovich
If–Then–Else: Memory and the Path Not Taken • 45
Edward Branigan
Cyberspace and Its Precursors: Lintsbach, Warburg, Eisenstein • 80
Yuri Tsivian
Past Indiscretions: Digital Archives and Recombinant History • 100
Steve Anderson
Films Beget Digital Media • 115
Stephen Mamber
Navigating the Ocean of Streams of Story • 126
Grahame Weinbren
Is This Not a Screen? Notes on the Mobile Phone and Cinema • 147
Caroline Bassett
PART II. DIGITAL POSSIBILITIES AND THE REIMAGINING OF POLITICS, PLACE,
AND THE SELF
Digital Possibilities and the Reimagining of Politics, Place, and the
Self: An Introduction • 161
Tara McPherson
Transnational/National Digital Imaginaries • 180
John Hess and Patricia R. Zimmermann
Is (Cyber) Space the Place? • 198
Herman Gray
Linkages: Political Topography and Networked Topology • 211
David Wade Crane
The Database City: The Digital Possessive and Hollywood
Boulevard • 236
Eric Gordon
Cuba, Cyberculture, and the Exile Discourse • 259
Cristina Venegas
Thinking Digitally/Acting Locally: Interactive Narrative,
Neighborhood Soil, and La Cosecha Nuestra Community • 272
John T. Caldwell
Video Installation Art as Uncanny Shock, or How Bruce Nauman’s
Corridors Expand Sensory Life • 291
Mark B. N. Hansen
Braingirls and Fleshmonsters • 316
Holly Willis
Tech-illa Sunrise (.txt con Sangrita) • 330
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Guillermo Gómez-Peña
Works Cited • 339
Index • 373
viii • CONTENTS
CONTRIBUTORS
STEVE ANDERSON GUILLERMO GÓMEZ-PEÑA
University of Southern California (USC) Artist
Los Angeles, California San Francisco, California
CAROLINE BASSETT ERIC GORDON
University of Sussex Emerson College
Brighton, United Kingdom Boston, Massachusetts
EDWARD BRANIGAN HERMAN GRAY
University of California at Santa Barbara University of California at
(UCSB) Santa Cruz
Santa Barbara, California Santa Cruz, California
JOHN T. CALDWELL MARK B. N. HANSEN
University of California at Los Angeles Duke University
(UCLA) Durham, North Carolina
Los Angeles, California
N. KATHERINE HAYLES
DAVID WADE CRANE Duke University
Independent Scholar Durham, North Carolina
San Francisco, California
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