kagablog

Prins: Let us indulge in a more systematic endeavour. We’re starting the future of digital culture and digital cinema. We have contemplated on digital cinema. In “Nostalgia For The Future” we saw a rather extreme example of what digital cinema is or can be. We suddenly arrived at a rather political statement that especially works like “Nostalgia For The Future” help us to get away from the garbage of modern culture. Let us now try to think of a more positive way in which the digital cinema and its possibilities can change our lives. Let us take the production point of view. Using a digital camera can be very liberating and can be qualified as an extremely democratic phenomena, not only for the artists, in as far as they get rid of producers, crew and everybody around them, but perhaps for all of us. According to Andy Warhol we will all one day be famous for 15 minutes. But maybe – in terms of the second debate on graphic design - we have all become designers, even artists. I’m thinking of the possibilities of the use of digital cameras by individuals, who are no longer looking at other people’s stories but create their own stories. Simon, is there a positive future, that lies ahead with digital camera?

Field: When we talk about everybody being an artist, we have to be quite careful. Of course it is not just with cameras. People now have their own editing desks and computers. The whole kit is now becoming available for relatively low budget costs. Frank Scheffer who worked on the project with Aryan, was speaking enthusiastically to me a couple days ago about the fact that he now has an editing suite, which is for him a far more exciting liberation than just the camera. This is one of the rhetorical arguments you hear about the new interactive media and the new approach to computers. I think we need to be careful about this idea of everybody becoming artists. I personally don’t want a world in which everyone becomes an artist. I’m actually not interested in having an interactive relation with a computer screen, and images on that computer screen. I’m interested in being led through a story and not being involved in creating my own ending. It is interesting for me to have somebody else create that ending and have a view on characters, situations or on a medium. Lars von Trier and the people working in Dogme were using very low budget cameras, but these are actually extremely expensive films. They have very high budgets, but they are giving it a complete new look like in Festen. There also very interesting filmmakers who are working in the way that Aryan has spoken of very enthusiastically. There is a lot of very low budget, interesting work going to be done in the crossovers between fiction and documentary, new forms of diary films. Many people we have shown in the festival are working in this very single person way. I think there is the possibility among strong film makers of a sort of new wave of digital technology that is going to come out. In a way it is very much an echo of what happened in the 60’s, with 16mm and light sound equipment. Completely new ways of working with actors are created, or of working with montage at very different type of film. We’re going to get lots of different types of film. To go back to your initial question about people making their own films: I indeed think that is also going to be an issue. But people must have access. It was always a dream in the days of 16mm and super 8 that it would give people access to equipment. It worked out that way, particularly with standard 8 and super 8. Now we are seeing the same thing. Lots of people will start telling their own stories in home movies. Nothing new, we have had video home movies for years and years. Before that it was 16mm, before that super 8. We’ve had home movies for the last forty, fifty years. But now perhaps there is going to be some potential of a liberation. What is also very interesting in this discussion about intermedia, is the way that digital technology is encouraging a lot of visual artists, performance artists and people who work with moving images and integrate them into performances. Some of the consequences of this digital technology will be mongrel forms between cinema and other artistic media.

Prins: Ed, I recall reading an article by you on Gerald van der Kaap, who attempted a kind of cinematographie automatique. He works with programme engines and search engines. In that article you stated that you would still prefer a distinction between a kind of high culture and low culture within these enterprises. The artist is able to create a certain liveliness and emotional interest, whereas the normal user just browses, cuts and pastes as a free associate.

Tan: First of all, I would also be unhappy if everybody became an artist. I think that analogue video is already a low threshold medium. If you take into account the rising of incomes after the 60’s, everybody could afford making videos from the 70’s on. But this did not happen. The same will be witnessed within the digital domain. As Simon says, a lot of home movies will be made. And not only home movies, but all kind of visual messages will be produced, from sms like personalised graphics to snapshots and web grafitti. From an anthropological point of view this is very interesting. I think that people will send little movies to each other daily and communicate through them. We all had speech to produce words, and now we all have digital media for producing pictures almost as if they originate from our body, like speech. From an anthropological point of view this is very interesting. I think that people will spread images and communicate through them. But not everybody will be an artist. It needs knowledge, and other things to be one. Artists are people that use existing media in another way than others do, because they want to go beyond functional, persuasive, and sociable communication. They will make their own languages of digital media. One of these may heavily rely on reuse of materials. Images will be spread around the world. The practice of quoting that we have seen in individual arts since the 20’s, will take on another shape and another meaning. There is so much imagery available in a digital form that just quoting and reusing and re:mixing images will be something that is simply to common to do. I think that the sheer number of imagery will force artists to think of other forms of reuse and quoting then we have seen so far. One way would be to produce art generating machines, programmes that re:mix digitalised materials from the world’s image, photo, video and film archives. Intelligent search engines may deliver raw materials for artificial art, intelligent editing and exhibition software may finalise the re:mix. The Institute for Artificial Art offers a few examples of what I mean: http://www2.netcetera.nl/~iaaa/. The difference between everybody’s ‘art’ and these new forms is that the latter use knowledge of examples. This knowledge and the examples themselves spring from years of practice and improvement.