Site Archive

Ten glimpses into the crystal ball: the future of documentary
Written by David Tames on June 18, 2011
Filed Under Business, Distribution, Documentary, Film Festivals, Filmmaking, Front Page, Media Technology, New Media, Television, The Media, Web
1 Comment  

I’ve been contemplating the evolution of the documentary this summer and I was delighted to see that The MediaGuardian’s recent Sheffield Doc/Fest 2011 coverage includes ten articles providing a refreshing perspective on how documentary makers are finding new ways to reach their...  Continue Reading...

Fluid Screens, Expanded Cinema
Written by David Tames on December 15, 2010
Filed Under Art, Books, Critical Theory, New Media
Leave a Comment  

Among my favorite books is Gene Youngblood’s Expanded Cinema, in spite of originally being published in 1970, it still offers a fresh perspective on the possibilities of new media art. Imagine a collection of essays that takes Youngblood’s book as a starting point. Well,...  Continue Reading...

A framework for thinking about cyberspace
Written by David Tames on December 1, 2010
Filed Under Books, Critical Theory, Featured, New Media, The Media
Leave a Comment  

Daniel Downes suggests in Interactive Realism: The Poetics Of Cyberspace (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005) that it is people who construct social reality through their interactions, critiquing the “transformative turn” in media studies. Distinguishing clearly between the Internet...  Continue Reading...

Cinema will eventually become a flexible means of writing
Written by David Tames on November 22, 2010
Filed Under Art, Camera, Critical Theory, Filmmaking, Front Page, Music Video, New Media, Writing
Leave a Comment  

In 1948 Alexandre Astruc, a filmmaker and theorist, suggested the notion of caméra-stylo (camera pen) in his essay, “The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Caméra-Stylo,” which appears in the book, The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks (Edited by Ginette Vincendeau and...  Continue Reading...

provocative.objects: the extradition (Fri., Nov. 12, 2010)
Written by David Tames on November 9, 2010
Filed Under Art, Events & Screenings, MassArtDMI, New Media
Leave a Comment  

You are cordially invited to attend provocative.objects: the extradition, a cybersurreal exhibition + event on Friday, November 12th at MassArt in the Patricia Doran Gallery. The event is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. and end around 10 p.m., after which we’ll gather at a local watering...  Continue Reading...

Expanded Cinema: Still fresh after forty years
Written by David Tames on August 17, 2010
Filed Under Art, Books, Featured, Filmmaking, New Media
2 Comments  

A few months ago I pulled Gene Youngblood’s classic Expanded Cinema (E.P. Dutton & Company, 1970, available online) off the shelf and read it again. The pages in my well worn softcover edition were falling out, the glue having dried over the two decades I’ve owned the book....  Continue Reading...

Memory and the end of reality
Written by David Tames on August 11, 2010
Filed Under Art, Critical Theory, Featured, New Media, Writing
6 Comments  

The transformation from media as a form of cultural production to media as entertainment has lead us into a crisis as we enter the fifth phase of history. Marshall McLuhan (1962, 2005) divided history in four phases: 1. culture of oral communication, 2. manuscript culture, 3. the Gutenberg...  Continue Reading...

2010 Bumpkin Island Art Encampment
Written by David Tames on July 27, 2010
Filed Under Art, Documentary, Events & Screenings, Filmmaking, New Media, Photography
Leave a Comment  

If you live in the Boston area, here’s an idea for what to do this weekend: The 2010 Bumpkin Island Art Encampment! Consider making a day of it and come out and visit on one of the public visitation days, Saturday, July 31st or Sunday, August 1st. Seven artists groups homesteading on...  Continue Reading...

Thoughts on video on the web and HTML5
Written by David Tames on June 3, 2010
Filed Under Media Technology, New Media, Sound, Tools, Video on the Web, Web
1 Comment  

If your web site has video on it, I believe the time has come to take into consideration viewers using mobile devices if you’ve not done it already. The desktop is no longer the only platform for viewing video, and Flash, long dominant as the web video standard (at least as far as web...  Continue Reading...

Fragments from The Conversation 2010 (March 27, New York)
Written by David Tames on March 28, 2010
Filed Under Business, Copyright, Distribution, New Media, Sticky, Web
1 Comment  

On Saturday I attended the “The Conversation” at Columbia University, a conference focused on “Social Media, Distribution, and the Future of Film.” Related material can be found by searching on the #convonyc hash tag. Here are my notes, not everything here is a faithful...  Continue Reading...

Next Page »