“The networked screen is one such concept, linking screens to the larger and frequently amorphous ideas and practices that constitute them, and to the material contexts in which such screens link viewer to image, user to screen, and spectator to spectacle.” – Haidee Wasson, 2008

 

Scrambling across my brief, I realised one thing. I hated it. I absolutely hated it. Tossing and turning at my half-assed proposal, I thought long and hard about what I could do. I wanted to create a study on frames that explored the materialisation, but wasn’t sure where to go with it. It was then I read up on Haidee Wasson and the set reading of ‘The Networked Screen: Moving Images, Materiality, and the Aesthetics of Size’ (2008) where my direction completely changed. (Apologies, Dan!)

From there on in, I was inspired by Wasson, who, in turn, considered the medium of cinema, “as moving images and objects, where movies have long been implicated in spatially specific material networks“. Following this notion, the idea of “Web Films” that articulate a distinct kind of “Networked Cinema” is a concept I really want to explore in the frame. With an extensive understanding and tacit knowledge gained from my Networked Media/Ontology studio from last semester with Adrian Miles, I want to look at frames as frames, unpacking their medium and realities. With this, I’ll give a quick few notes on my direction and explain it as concisely as possible.

 

STATEMENT OF INTENTION 

Observing the material and contextual specificity of Network Cinema, my final project SERIES will be an interactive blog that aims to explore the currents of contemporary visual culture and the concept of the network screen. Rather than telling a narrative, SERIES will suggest the different roles and ways of transforming celluloid, electronic and digital images into differentiated social and material sites. From GIFS, images and short video exerts, SERIES will showcase frames and imbricate their connections; moving beyond “temporally and spatially specific material networks” (Wasson, 2008) like movies or photographs to become online, networked cinema.

 

DELIVERABLES

Focusing on diegetic space of the frame through the mise-en-scène element of lighting, I’ll be creating original work on my iPhone alone. This choice was inspired by our screening of This Is Not A Film. This choice was built from the immediate nature of the shooting on mobile devices and is also a nod to the discussion of Wasson who pointed that technology is changing how people receive images. Uploading only original content, SERIES will be a blog that uses a custom-built Tumblr theme. It will connect the frame through both tags and categories, collating their connections and networks. I’ll be keeping my blog up to date with changes and the construction of the blog. To peek the draft, click here.