2010年10月5日 星期二

Mission To Earth

1) Using “Mission to Earth” as an example, note what is new or different about digital cinema 
compared to traditional filmmaking? Consider the story and appearance of the film.


Appearance
1) Randomness
I think it is the most important feature, in this film, the screen is split into many part, 
such as the color cubes, computer graphics, and the video footage, they are being selected randomly, only the voice over is not random. For the traditional cinema, it is impossible, as there is no program to select different footage or CG. This "random" feature allowed the film can be shown in different appearance in different time, i think it is innovative and creative.


2) Computer graphics
In this film, there are some split cubes, showing some computer graphics, some of them are GIFs, some of them are color cubes, and I can even see a voice visualizer for the narrator. These computer graphics are cannot be done by traditional cinema, as they are randomly produced, it is impossible to draw them frame by frame.


Story
For the story of this film, I think it is being told by the voice over, but not the images. I think it is because it is impossible to use only the images to tell the whole story (the images are randomly chosen). However, in terms of the story, I don't really think that there is a shape difference between this film and the traditional cinema, if there is really a difference, I think it would be related to genre, for traditional cinema, almost every film has its genre, it can be comedy, romantic...etc, but for this film, I can't see any genre in it, it reminds me The Celebration which I saw in last semester.




2) What other art forms (eg film, digital art, painting, websites etc) does this film 
remind you of? Explain the similarity.

Digital art

For the computer cubes and diagram, they remind me one of the installation that I saw before, in this artwork, the artist used equipment to stack television images into one pixel wide slice. They make me think about the possibility to tell a story by using simple cubes and diagram, maybe a red color tone means angry, vivid voice diagram means happy...etc


Daniel Sauter We interrupt your regularly scheduled program, 2003


Music
Jazz is the genre that I think similar to this film. Jazz improvisation is quite similar to the randomness of this film, they are generated immediately, for the music, the performer can play the note in his/ her head, and for the film, computer will select different images based on the rules given by the programmer.


Painting
As mentioned in the previous class, this film also remind me the art of De Stijl.  And according to Wikipedia, artist try to create a clear and ordered form in their artworks, and seek harmony and order, and Piet Mondrian is one of the important figure of this art form.


Lev Manovich Mission To Earth, 2005
Piet Mondrian Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow, 1930

Conclusion
I am sure to say that the technique of this film is innovative and creative. And it makes me think about two questions: can AI make artworks? I think if the programmers set enough rules and guidelines, AI can still do the job and trick us.

6 則留言:

  1. being selected randomly...
    This is a good point! I have never notice this throughout the screening...

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  2. You should notice that, it is one of the key part of this film!

    thanks for sharing anyway :D

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  3. Its Interesting that the movie reminds u of jazz. Do u know what Vj is? Visual jocker they generate visual images randomly according to the rhythm of music, that is interesting too!!

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  4. it sounds like some kind of sound visualizer

    and while talking about this kind of software,
    I knew that there is a great director, who also directed Be Kind Rewind,
    he made a MV for The Chemical Brothers many years ago,
    and he used the environment as the visualizer.

    well it is quite off topic, but i think it is worthy to take a look!
    Star Guitar
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wQOn1NNXPo&ob=av3n

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  5. Ka Kit CHU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    It's a very interesting point that you associated the randomness of Jazz music with the structure of the film. You are right that they share the quality of randomness, but there is a difference between two. In the film its structure was mechanized by machines and only functions after a particular programme is set. But in music performing one can play music and twist it instantly. Therefore that's the difference between machines and human instincts.

    Well done dude!

    May the force be with you.
    Stacie.

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  6. Stacie

    Yes, human still can change whenever he/she want,
    but from my personal experience and the book that I have read before
    that randomness of improvisation is somehow linked to our memory, experience(such as which few notes, we like to play most) and the technique that our teachers teach us. And do you think this is somehow close to the programing? of course, human is much much flexible than machine, human can somehow have a greater range of reaction and "twist it", just like when a child going to fall, his body will instantly react to avoid injury, and I think my computer can't do that quickly, but I know AI can react, especially when I am playing computer games, haha.

    And if we think that "twist it" instantly is one of the option of that program code? In long time ago, there was a computer called "deep blue" won the no.1 Chess Master in this world, and chess is full of choices and twisting.

    I still think that there is a possibility for computer to draft a drama script or even a film.

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