Ocracy: A Peculiar Encounter Between Two Peculiar Cultures

University of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156359/1/hullinger_thesis_final.pd

Film, Relay, and System: A Systems Theory Approach to Cinema

Film theory is replete with references to systems, yet no theory has emerged to provide a cohesive explanation of how cinema, as both technology and institution, operates as a relay system. Interdisciplinary in nature, my dissertation proposes a systems theory of cinema deriving largely from the work of social scientist Niklas Luhmann. Systems theory is especially productive for the ways that it intervenes at crucial sites of conflict and irresolution within film studies. With its emphasis on nonhuman agencies, systems theory calls for reappraisal of the significance of the human to the cinema apparatus--a significance long assumed to be simply a given. With its claim that the reasoning adduced by an observer is never in fact the logic of the observed, systems theory has major implications for thinking about the role of narrative in film and film theory. And with its stress on contingency, systems theory can be seen to upset the terms of debates within the field about cultural and technological determinism, and to provide further grounding for recent work on contingency and cinematic time. Chapter one examines a defining staple of early cinema, the chase film, as a quintessential example of the construction of movement, in the evolution of film editing, via a chain of interlinked segments that relay--and tend to abrogate--human figures. Chapter two focuses on a film conceived by Rube Goldberg at the transition from silent to sound cinema, with particular attention to how the coming of sound complicates the visual relays characteristic of silent slapstick\u27s gag structures. Chapter three examines the dynamism of the long take in classical and post-classical cinema, emphasizing the gradual and incremental disclosure of elements by the camera and revealing the cinema recording process itself as a type of Goldbergian contraption. The last chapter reflects on the computerization of film and media, showing that systems theory provides a useful avenue to thinking about the continuity between analog and digital cinema due in part to an unusual but rich and suggestive conception of the notion of medium

The Gravity of Cartoon Physics; or, Schrödinger’s Coyote

When Wile E. coyote goes off a cliff, instead of falling in a parabolic arc, he comes to a halt in mid-air, hangs there until he realizes that he is no longer on solid ground, then falls. Many critics and, indeed, the creators of the cartoons themselves, describe this as “cartoon physics,” which breaks the rules that appear to govern the real world, but several principles of modern physics are in fact depicted here. He is both falling and not falling; when he is able to observe his situation, the laws of quantum physics catch up with him. This, and the principle of relativity, govern the apparent paradoxes of the cartoon world. Although the coyote was, according to his creators, conceived as a parody of a modern scientist and played for laughs, he illustrates several paradoxes of modern science and the unease with which these are widely viewed. These cartoon physics have become a meme that has developed in later animated cartoons and live-action science fiction films, and is now even a part of modern-day science textbooks

Riemannian Reading: Using Manifolds to Calculate and Unfold Narrative

The purpose of this study is to investigate the space where readers and texts interact. By applying non-Euclidean geometry to the modern subgenre of science fiction known as steampunk, we can see that narratives have no intrinsic geometry. Instead, what we can understand is that readers unflatten inherently flat narratives by applying their own metric of understanding to a narrative. Steampunk acts a primer to considering this mathematical process by explicitly flattening its settings and characters, as well as the historical accounts founding the narrative. Mark Hodder\u27s novel, The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack, offers two characters that unsuccessfully attempt to act as non-Euclidean readers. Through manipulation of agency, Hodder\u27s novel demonstrates the unflattening process as we read novels. However, our unflattening process distorts a narrative through the application of our metric of understanding. The study first gives a short historical account of non-Euclidean geometry in the 19th century. The analysis stems from the application of non-Euclidean geometric thinking to narrative structures

Riemannian Reading: Using Manifolds to Calculate and Unfold Narrative

The purpose of this study is to investigate the space where readers and texts interact. By applying non-Euclidean geometry to the modern subgenre of science fiction known as steampunk, we can see that narratives have no intrinsic geometry. Instead, what we can understand is that readers unflatten inherently flat narratives by applying their own metric of understanding to a narrative. Steampunk acts a primer to considering this mathematical process by explicitly flattening its settings and characters, as well as the historical accounts founding the narrative. Mark Hodder\u27s novel, The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack, offers two characters that unsuccessfully attempt to act as non-Euclidean readers. Through manipulation of agency, Hodder\u27s novel demonstrates the unflattening process as we read novels. However, our unflattening process distorts a narrative through the application of our metric of understanding. The study first gives a short historical account of non-Euclidean geometry in the 19th century. The analysis stems from the application of non-Euclidean geometric thinking to narrative structures

Performing the Network

Séance: a networked glossalalia is a networked performance that is part of the media art project, The Perpetual Emotion Project. Both are animated by our interest in the non-instrumental and the non-sensical and in the making of performative events. In this paper we present the work as practice-led research, which contributes to the understanding and development of what we identify as performative media art. This paper is an expanded version of a paper presented at E-Performance and Plug-ins, UNSW, 2006