My initial reaction was that I love Sally Potter but do I really want to watch a movie on my iPhone? I gave it a try, and it was an interesting experience. Each installment is around 18 minutes, so I made sure the phone was plugged in to avoid battery drainage. I watched the first two in quick succession, but then didn’t get around to viewing the rest, as I found it hard to find 18 minutes where I wanted to hold my phone in landscape mode. There is no crosscutting or editing at all, except to change from one interviewee to another, so it definitely feels like something shot on a phone.

The film itself is interesting enough; with a star-studded cast (Steve Buscemi, Dianne Wiest, Jude Law, Judi Dench…), and some intrigue, it holds attention. I ammore interested in the context , however — will people who watch this on mobiles form a different opinion from those who first see it in theaters or online?

Does anyone know of any others? These will keep my busy for awhile, but I would like to find an ongoing podcast or two about film or media theory.

The editorial is about a tasteless as one can be directly after someone’s death, and actually reinforces my impression of him from DFW’s article.² He states that he didn’t know who DFW was when he let him shadow him for two months, and now that he’s dead he publishes a vitriolic editorial, apparently because DFW refused to appear on Ziegler’s show after the article was published. He then proceeds to attack DFW’s status as genius and basically speculates that he killed himself out of a fear of not being able to live up to the title. He even insults Infinite Jest, calling it “bloated”, although I would bet he hasn’t read a word of it.

I’m not sure what Ziegler’s motivation is, except maybe to warn people not to make a hero out of DFW because he has killed himself (he implies that DFW committed suicide in order to become more famous). I’m not interested in taking the whole editorial apart, as I suspect it is just a shock piece intended to keep Ziegler in the spotlight, and this blog post has probably already given it too much attention. One sentence did strike me, though:

I was a bit miffed at some of the inaccuracies and misrepresentations as well as the lack of any update to the storyline in the piece, but as a conservative you pretty much expect that from someone in academia who is clearly a liberal (after all, everyone in the elite literary world knows that conservatives are not smart enough to be worthy of their ranks and would certainly never attain the lofty level of “genius”).

The twin complaints of many conservatives, including (or perhaps especially) Ziegler, of the “liberal media” and “liberal academia” have always struck me as not only fallacious but strangely overplayed. The former complaint has become so cliche that all conservative commentators have to do is repeat it endlessly without a shred of evidence, and I am afraid that the latter may also attain the status of accepted truth in certain circles if it hasn’t already. So for the next few weeks in class we are going to examine these claims, and try to determine whether there really is a systematic bias in the media and the classroom, and to what extent it matters. Ive got a list of possible readings and discussion topics in mind, but any suggestions are welcome.

Coming up at a later date: my own reflections on political bias in the classroom.

1. I have no reason to doubt the identity of the commenter — I just don’t know
2. to be fair, Ziegler does have a letter to the editor in the Atlantic after the publication of Host, so this isn’t the first time he’s written about this

All of this begs the question of what is reality? When people claim that gamers are missing out on reality by immersing themselves in electronically produced worlds, what, exactly, do they mean? How is playing a game any less real than driving a car, sleeping, watching tv, making love, or talking on the phone? I am still doing someting, whether twitching my fingers on a gamepad, listening to music, or thinking about the day. I still exist. In what ways and to what extent is all of our existence virtual? When I email a friend or check myspace for recent activity, am I missing out on reality because I am not face-to-face? When I play The Sims, am I doing something less real than when I teach a class?

And what about networked, massively multiplayer online games? The cable guy told me he met his wife on Everquest. As strange as it sounds, how is that not real life? He moved from Texas to Michigan and got a job as a cable guy because of his gameplaying. When the worlds are virtual, but collaboratively built, the notion of “reality” changes. When virtual worlds are malleable enough that users’ desires shape the economy, topography and society of the game, they become more and more like this thing we call real life. I think that is what is so scary to some, why eXistenZ, with its all-encompassing sensory input and the undecidability regarding what, ultimately, is real becomes something people fear. My question is: what is so important and special about non-digitally mediated reality that we want to preserve it at all costs? And is this even possible?

via Joho the Blog

Video game development has mostly been left to computer programmers who are experts at writing code and have less skill in cinematic storytelling. But with a new generation of game consoles and more lifelike graphics being released, the line between the two worlds is blurring. Major movie studios, with their vast libraries, want to make their own games. And video game companies are seeking new Hollywood-style franchises to compete.

I agree that the line is blurring, but film is still a privileged storytelling medium. The language we use to talk about video games has to be different than that used to talk about film, even as the two share many traits. Which brings me to the next point of interest, articulated over at Digital Poetics, about liberal arts education and media, and the role of resistance. Nicholas rightly argues that much today’s new media scholarship is more descriptive than argumentative, and that that is in part because of the proliferation of screens, our complete immersion in media, and the demystifying function of new media to reveal its own codes. From here he asks: “Why does a student today need to be told how a movie or a video game “works its ideology on you” when the movie or game itself can’t wait to confess this fact?” I would argue that revealing codes and “making of” featurettes does not reveal ideology, and, in fact, gives the illuson of transparency even as the code-revealing mechanisms reinforce the same ideologies. In many ways the demystification process puts film in the postiion of one among many media, less dominant, but flattens the media landscape into a more or less homogenous set of images, complete with commercials for more hardware to watch more images. He ends with a provocative paragraph about media studies itself:

Other open/diy/indy projects (that do not necessarily rely on bittorrent) I’ve been checking out are the Open Media Network,
OurMedia and Underground Film, all of which offer different products, some of which really suck, but usually with some interesting stuff thrown in.

Does anyone know of other places to find grassrootsy, open media?

(via Feministe)