Cinematographic continuity edits across shot scales and camera angles:An ERP analysis

Film editing has attracted great theoretical and practical interest since the beginnings of cinematography. In recent times, the neural correlates of visual transitions at edit cuts have been at the focus of attention in neurocinematics. Many Event Related Potential (ERP) studies studies have reported the consequences of cuts involving narrative discontinuities, and violations of standard montage rules. However, less is known about edits that are meant to induce continuity. Here, we addressed the neural correlates of continuity editing involving scale, and angle variations across the cut within the same scene, two of the most popular devices used for continuity editing. We recorded the electroencephalographic signal obtained from 20 viewers as they watched four different cinematographic excerpts to extract ERPs at edit points. First, we were able to reproduce the general time and scalp distribution of the typical ERPs to filmic cuts in prior studies. Second, we found significant ERP modulations triggered by scale changes (scale out, scale in, or maintaining the same scale). Edits involving an increase in scale (scale out) led to amplification of the ERP deflection, and scale reduction (scale in) led to decreases, compared to edits that kept scale across the cut. These modulations coincide with the time window of the N300 and N400 components and, according to previous findings, their amplitude has been associated with the likelihood of consciously detecting the edit. Third, we did not detect similar modulations as a function of angle variations across the cut. Based on these findings, we suggest that cuts involving reduction of scale are more likely to go unnoticed, than ones that scale out. This relationship between scale in/out and visibility is documented in film edition manuals. Specifically, in order to achieve fluidity in a scene, the edition is designed from the most opened shots to the most closed ones

Collaborative Brain-Computer Interfaces in Rapid Image Presentation and Motion Pictures

The last few years have seen an increase in brain-computer interface (BCI) research for the able-bodied population. One of these new branches involves collaborative BCIs (cBCIs), in which information from several users is combined to improve the performance of a BCI system. This thesis is focused on cBCIs with the aim of increasing understanding of how they can be used to improve performance of single-user BCIs based on event-related potentials (ERPs). The objectives are: (1) to study and compare different methods of creating groups using exclusively electroencephalography (EEG) signals, (2) to develop a theoretical model to establish where the highest gains may be expected from creating groups, and (3) to analyse the information that can be extracted by merging signals from multiple users. For this, two scenarios involving real-world stimuli (images presented at high rates and movies) were studied. The first scenario consisted of a visual search task in which images were presented at high frequencies. Three modes of combining EEG recordings from different users were tested to improve the detection of different ERPs, namely the P300 (associated with the presence of events of interest) and the N2pc (associated with shifts of attention). We showed that the detection and localisation of targets can improve significantly when information from multiple viewers is combined. In the second scenario, feature movies were introduced to study variations in ERPs in response to cuts through cBCI techniques. A distinct, previously unreported, ERP appears in relation to such cuts, the amplitude of which is not modulated by visual effects such as the low-level properties of the frames surrounding the discontinuity. However, significant variations that depended on the movie were found. We hypothesise that these techniques can be used to build on the attentional theory of cinematic continuity by providing an extra source of information: the brain

Past and Future of Multi-Mind Brain-Computer Interfaces

The great improvements in brain–computer interface (BCI) performance that are brought upon by merging brain activity from multiple users have made this a popular strategy that allows even for human augmentation. These multi-mind BCIs have contributed in changing the role of BCIs from assistive technologies for people with disabilities into tools for human enhancement. This chapter reviews the history of multi-mind BCIs that have their root in the hyperscanning technique; the collaborative and competitive approaches; and the different ways that exist to integrate the brain signals from multiple people and optimally form groups to maximize performance. The main applications of multi-mind BCIs, including control of external devices, entertainment, and decision making, are also surveyed and discussed, in order to help the reader understand what are the most promising avenues and find the gaps that are worthy of future exploration. The chapter also provides a step-by-step tutorial to the design and implementation of a multi-mind BCI, with theoretical guidelines and a sample application

Figures of Conspiracy: Finance Capital and the Aesthetics of Speculation

This dissertation intervenes to theorize the implications of late 20th and early 21st century economic financialization for media studies and visual culture by considering the ways in which both the contemporary economy and contemporary culture share a central emphasis on speculation, a term which ambivalently refers both to the capacity to see, as well as the capacity to hypothesize and imagine. The central issue at stake is the question of how imaginary, speculative, and representational values in the economy can have real effects not only on stock prices but also on the material conditions of lived experience of individuals, as in the emblematic case of the 2008 global financial crisis. To answer this question, the dissertation develops a theory of the figural, drawing on the writings of Erich Auerbach, Gilles Deleuze, Walter Benjamin, and others, in order to explain how abstract processes of speculation can come to have concrete, material consequences. At stake is the notion that social reality and aesthetics are intimately imbricated through figural relations. Consequently, it is to mediated aesthetic renderings of the process of speculation that the dissertation looks to locate and comprehend these economic and cultural transformations. I focus on objects that deal centrally with conspiracy and investigation, which I argue following Fredric Jameson is the dominant representational locus of the cultural imagination of global finance. Body chapters contain close formal analyses of the amateur conspiracy chart style known as “Chart Brut,” the medical mystery television series House M.D., the found-footage horror film Sinister, and the videos news thriller Nightcrawler. A conclusion considers how the film Arrival constellates the formal and thematic issues at stake in the body chapters together into a potentially unified figure

Night moves: A mise-en-scene of a luminous economy

Since the general electrification of ambient urban lighting in the late nineteenth century, complex arrangements of functional and aesthetic lighting have become increasingly deployed to intensify the capitalization of the city at night. Contemporary solid-state lighting integrated with networked control systems means that scenic effects once contained within theatrical and cinematic production, have infiltrated the built spaces that we occupy. As digital imaging technologies converge with the built environment, the city at night can be considered as a moving image. This research considers the implications of the nocturnal city when it is understood as a manufactured atmosphere, where the distinctions between media interfaces and the construction of urban space are no longer distinguishable as distinct zones of experience. By employing Bertolt Brecht’s and Antonin Artaud’s concepts of a mise-en-scene of light as a critical and transformational tool, the thesis develops connections between current theories of atmosphere and post-cinematic urbanism. The thesis proposes a practice-based analytical and critical mise-en-sce ne that draws on embodied empirical methods for creating lens, light and sound-based artworks within installation art and the urban environment. This research explores the effects of light and digital projection on urban subjectivity and its representations. Recent formulations of atmosphere in Gernot Böhme’s phenomenological conception of architectural atmospheres and Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos’ theorisation of lawscape are integrated into a broader corpus of analysis and theory through empirical, theoretical and historical modes of enquiry. Together, the written thesis and body of practice provide the framework phototropia. This aims to establish a transversal platform for critical thought and practice from which to think and remake the city at night. From the perspective of a material practice this method offers ways of understanding the changing relations between imaging technologies and contemporary urban subjectivity

The Twenty-Frist Century Pantagruel: The Function of Grotesque Aesthetics in the Contemporary World

This dissertation examines whether the grotesque, an aesthetic form associated with the carnivalesque literary mode and commonly seen as aesthetically and politically subversive, can resume its function within the contemporary context in which carnivalisation of everyday life is a frequently noted aspect of capitalist culture. Locating as its primary image the human body in the process of often-violent deformation, this study explores this problem by theorising the grotesque as Janus-faced: existing on the boundary between the Symbolic and the Real. As such, I argue that the grotesque is: a) deeply related to cultural attempts to challenge hegemonic structures, even as these challenges become themselves implicated in the power structures they oppose (Chapters 1, 2, and 3); and b) a concept that reveals the realm of the Real as independent of human consciousness while also being of profound interest for this consciousness and the subjectivity which it underpins (Chapters 3 and 4). In outlining this argument, this study deploys the theories of Gilles Deleuze, Slavoj Žižek, and Alain Badiou, as well as the work of Jacques Rancière, Henri Lefebvre, Thomas Metzinger, Catherine Malabou, Quentin Meillassoux, and Ray Brassier. It, furthermore, works its way backwards from the Anglo-American cultural scene of the late 1990s and early 2000s (Sarah Kane’s Cleansed and Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds), through elaborations of punk anti-Thatcherite London(s) of the late 1970s/early 1980s (Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell, and Iain Sinclair White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings), to post-1968 attempts to reinvigorate a progressive vision of the USA and write it (back) into existence through Gonzo autobiography and journalism (Oscar Zeta Acosta’s The Revolt of the Cockroach People and The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, and Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas). In this way, the argument of this work tries to find a path – through a deformed human body in works of literature, film, and comics – toward a non-human world that can be deployed in the service of a progressive political vision, even while the autonomy of this non-human world is recognised

El Che vive: memory, cinema,art andpolitics

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Inglês: Estudos Linguísticos e Literários, Florianópolis, 2020.Che Guevara, morto há mais de cinquenta anos, surpreende por seu persistente ressurgimento através de imagens. Essa fascinação pelas imagens de Che se explica pelo conceito da ansiedade de lembrar e não-lembrar, fruto da demanda de rememoração e redenção ? no sentido Benjaminiano (LÖWY; BENJAMIN, 2005) ?, a qual é expressa através do olhar fantasmagórico de Che. Tal olhar fantasmagórico é ambivalente podendo potencialmente levar a imaginações artísticas e ações emancipatórias que recriem Che, ou a apropriações capitalistas ou outras formas de tentar controlar as imagens de Che. Na tese, são criadas algumas pontes entre o Marxismo e o pensamento decolonial, tal como entre o conceito de ação criativa Arendtiana (1998), da consciência antecipatória de Bloch (1996) e a cosmovisão ancestral (WILSON, 2001; LACLAU, 2016; ANZALDUA, 2012), e no entendimento amplo do conceito de alienação/fetiche. Diversos exemplos contemporâneos de imaginações artísticas e ações emancipatórias são discutidos, desafiando a retórica de suposta irrelevância política das imagens de Che. Tentativas de apropriação por corporações capitalistas, por um movimento nazista e por um artista gráfico também são discutidos a partir de uma redefinição ampla da teoria da alienação. Um conto e dois poemas de minha autoria sobre Che também são discutidos na tese, assim como cinco filmes: The Last Hours of Che Guevara (THE LAST HOURS, 2016), El Dia que Me Quieras (EL DIA, 1997), El Che de los Gays (EL CHE DE LOS GAYS, 2004), Personal Che (PERSONAL CHE, 2007), and Che! (1969).Abstract:Che Guevara, who died more than fifty years ago, keeps resurging through images. This fascination with Che's images is explained by the concept of the anxiety of remembering and non-remembering, caused by the demand for remembrance and redemption ? in the Benjaminian sense (LÖWY; BENJAMIN, 2005) ?, which is expressed through Che's ghostly look. Such a ghostly look is ambivalent and can potentially lead to artistic imaginations and emancipatory actions that recreate Che, or to capitalist appropriations or other ways of trying to control Che's images. In this doctoral dissertation, some bridges are created between Marxism and decolonial thought, such as between the Arendt?s concept of creative action (ARENDT, 1998), Bloch's anticipatory consciousness (BLOCH, 1996) and cosmovision (WILSON, 2001; LACLAU, 2016; ANZALDUA , 2012), and in the broad understanding of the concept of alienation / fetish. Several contemporary examples of artistic imaginations and emancipatory actions are discussed, challenging the rhetoric of supposed political irrelevance of Che's images. Attempts at appropriation by capitalist corporations, by a Nazi movement and by a graphic artist are also discussed from a plural redefinition of the theory of alienation. A short story and two poems of my own about Che are also discussed in the dissertation, as well as five films: The Last Hours of Che Guevara (THE LAST HOURS, 2016), El Dia que Me Quieras (EL DIA, 1997), El Che de los Gays (EL CHE DE LOS GAYS, 2004), Personal Che (PERSONAL CHE, 2007), and Che! (1969)

The Apprentice Africa TV Format: Local Culture, Global Model, and Informalized Production Practices in the Nigerian Media Industry

In 2008, the hugely popular American global television format programme, The Apprentice, debuted its Africa wide version, The Apprentice Africa, in the African market. This became the first entrepreneurship format programme to be produced in Nigeria and Africa. First, the show was broadcast on three Nigerian channels, then moved to broadcasters in Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. The Apprentice Africa reality TV show is a strategic research site for investigating the conditions of television format production in Nigeria, considering the programme’s interaction with multiple economic sectors of the country. This study is set against the backdrop of the organizational conditions of the Nigerian media industry and how they potentially relate to the historical dynamics of nation-building. Thus, it navigates the development of the entertainment industry amid a history of interactions of political, socioeconomic, and cultural factors. Its literature opens with an appraisal of globalisation, broadly explaining how chains of global and local activities converge and interact to result in international trade and adaptation. The literature then tapers into informalization, exposing how local and global media industries function within shadow economies. Accordingly, the literature introduces television (TV) formats. TV formats exemplify and validate the potential for cultural formations or adaptations to be, on the one hand, ‘streamlined or standardized in nature’, as in global media industries, and on the other hand, partly standardized, as in the Nigerian national media industry. The Apprentice Africa TV format represents an example of a good product of a system that production practices embedded in a culture of informality accomplished. In analysing this adapted format, I argue that cultural innovation benefits an informalized production ecosystem. Bourdieu’s conceptual model of cultural forms describes and explores how television format adaptation is affected by these broader Nigerian media cultures and dynamics. A methodology involving an Ethnographic Content Analysis (ECA) which features observation and documentary analysis provides a fundamental examination and interpretation method in examining the production and dissemination of this case study format. Furthermore, ECA offers the opportunity to uncover new patterns, emphasis and themes in the documents conceptualised as field work. In its contribution to knowledge, the study first reveals informal practices as overlooked opportunities for innovation of culture in media fields such as adaptation and production of TV formats. Second, it reveals that the Nigerian media’s structural flexibility increases innovative possibilities. Thus, evidence shows a thriving intersection of the country’s film and television industry’s agents and agencies. Consequently, perfectly licit commodities such as television formats may originate from either irregular or unregulated production arrangements where there are significant cultural influences and changes. Third, the study also showed that Nigeria’s socio-political and organizational history has implications for informalization of its media. Finally, an underlying factor both influenced by informalized culture and partly contributing to it is the country’s hustle culture – in Nigeria, you must hustle to succeed in the business scenes. The implication is that the culture of informalization prevalent in the media industry influences global format adaptation in the country, differentiating its production processes from globally understood and standard processes

Knowledge Modelling and Learning through Cognitive Networks

One of the most promising developments in modelling knowledge is cognitive network science, which aims to investigate cognitive phenomena driven by the networked, associative organization of knowledge. For example, investigating the structure of semantic memory via semantic networks has illuminated how memory recall patterns influence phenomena such as creativity, memory search, learning, and more generally, knowledge acquisition, exploration, and exploitation. In parallel, neural network models for artificial intelligence (AI) are also becoming more widespread as inferential models for understanding which features drive language-related phenomena such as meaning reconstruction, stance detection, and emotional profiling. Whereas cognitive networks map explicitly which entities engage in associative relationships, neural networks perform an implicit mapping of correlations in cognitive data as weights, obtained after training over labelled data and whose interpretation is not immediately evident to the experimenter. This book aims to bring together quantitative, innovative research that focuses on modelling knowledge through cognitive and neural networks to gain insight into mechanisms driving cognitive processes related to knowledge structuring, exploration, and learning. The book comprises a variety of publication types, including reviews and theoretical papers, empirical research, computational modelling, and big data analysis. All papers here share a commonality: they demonstrate how the application of network science and AI can extend and broaden cognitive science in ways that traditional approaches cannot

Variable Format: Media Poetics and the Little Database

This dissertation explores the situation of twentieth-century art and literature becoming digital. Focusing on relatively small online collections, I argue for materially invested readings of works of print, sound, and cinema from within a new media context. With bibliographic attention to the avant-garde legacy of media specificity and the little magazine, I argue that the “films,” “readings,” “magazines,” and “books” indexed on a series of influential websites are marked by meaningful transformations that continue to shape the present through a dramatic reconfiguration of the past. I maintain that the significance of an online version of a work is not only transformed in each instance of use, but that these versions fundamentally change our understanding of each historical work in turn. Here, I offer the analogical coding of these platforms as “little databases” after the little magazines that served as the vehicle of modernism and the historical avant-garde. Like the study of the full run of a magazine, these databases require a bridge between close and distant reading. Rather than contradict each other as is often argued, in this instance a combined macro- and microscopic mode of analysis yields valuable information not readily available by either method in isolation. In both directions, the social networks and technical protocols of database culture inscribe the limits of potential readings. Bridging the material orientation of bibliographic study with the format theory of recent media scholarship, this work constructs a media poetics for reading analog works situated within the windows, consoles, and networks of the twenty-first century