Index

                         Contents

Foreword by Mark Tribe                             X
Prologue: Vertov’s Dataset                        VI
Acknowledgments                                XXVII

Introduction                                       2
A Personal Chronology                              3
Theory of the Present                              6
Mapping New Media: the Method                      8
Mapping New Media: Organization                   11
The Terms: Language, Object, Representation       12

1     What is New Media?                          18
How Media Became New                              21
Principles of New Media                           27
1. Numerical Representation                       27
2. Modularity                                     30
3. Automation                                     32
4. Variability                                    36
5. Transcoding                                    45
What New Media is Not                             49
Cinema as New Media                               50
The Myth of the Digital                           52
The Myth of Interactivity                         55

2     The Interface                               62
The Language of Cultural Interfaces               69
Cultural Interfaces                               69
Printed Word                                      73
Cinema                                            78
HCI: Representation versus Control                88
The Screen and the User                           94
A Screen's Genealogy                              95
The Screen and the Body                          103
Representation versus Simulation                 111

3     The Operations                             116
Menus, Filters, Plug-ins                         123
The Logic of Selection                           123
“Postmodernism” and Photoshop                    129
From Object to Signal                            132
Compositing                                      136
From Image Streams to Modular Media              136
The Resistance to Montage                        141
Archeology of Compositing: Cinema                145
Archeology of Compositing: Video                 149
Digital Compositing                              152
Compositing and New Types of Montage             155
Teleaction                                       161
Representation versus Communication              161
Telepresence: Illusion versus Action             164
Image-Instruments                                167
Telecommunication                                168
Distance and Aura                                170

4     The Illusions                              176
Synthetic Realism and its Discontents            184
Technology and Style in Cinema                   185
Technology and Style in Computer Animation       188
The icons of mimesis                             195
The Synthetic Image and its Subject              199
Georges Méliès, the father of computer graphics  200
Jurassic Park and Socialist Realism              201
Illusion, Narrative and Interactivity            205

5     The Forms                                  212
The Database 218
The Database Logic                               218
Data and Algorithm                               221
Database and Narrative                           225
Paradigm and Syntagm                             229
A Database Complex                               233
Database Cinema: Greenaway and Vertov            237
Navigable space                                  244
Doom and Myst                                    244
Computer Space                                   253
The Poetics of Navigation                        259
The Navigator and the Explorer                   268
Kino-Eye and Simulators                          273
EVE and Place                                    281

6     What is Cinema?                            286
Digital Cinema and the History of a Moving Image 293
Cinema, the Art of the Index                     293
A Brief Archeology of Moving Pictures            296
From Animation to Cinema                         298
Cinema Redefined                                 300 
From Kino-Eye to Kino-Brush                      307
New Language of Cinema                           309
Cinematic and Graphic: Cinegratography           309
New Temporality: Loop as a Narrative Engine      314
Spatial Montage                                  322
Cinema as an Information Space                   326
Cinema as a Code                                 330
Index                                            335