Edited by Matteo Bittanti (California College of the Arts) and Henry Lowood (Stanford University), the April 2011 issue of SAGE's Journal of Visual Culture focuses on machinima and digital cinema. Special thanks to deus ex machina Susan J. Rojo (Stanford University) for her priceless assistance.
For those who are not familiar with the publication, "The Journal of Visual Culture offers astute, informative and dynamic thought on the visual. The journal publishes work from a range of methodological positions, on various historical moments and across diverse geographical locations.
It is the leading interdisciplinary forum for visual culture studies scholars in film, media and television studies; art, design, fashion and architecture history; cultural studies and critical theory; philosophy and aesthetics; and across the social sciences".
From the introductory essay by Henry Lowood:
"The goal of this special issue of the journal of visual culture is something more modest than the re-definition of cinema, but it is nonetheless an effort to stake claims, find the new, proclaim success, or identify failure. Rather than cinema as a whole, the object of our attention is machinima, the making of animated movies in real time through the use of digital game technology and assets. Due to its nature as an unexpected outcome of game technology and as an alternative to frame-based animation, the nearly 15-year history of machinima has been characterized by themes of unanticipated innovation, subversion, modification, and hacking, as well as ideas about new narratives, forms of production, spectatorship, media consumption and fan communities. In other words, machinima offers plenty of opportunities for taking positions about the promise and potential of a new media format.”
...
"The important leit-motiv for us was diversity. We were interested neither in an exclusively academic assessment of machinima nor in giving voice only to those who have produced machinima. We did not insist on a single mode for responding or quality of response to the questionnaire. Some respondents answered several questions one-by-one, others focused on one question exclusively, and most riffed on a topic of their choosing related to the subject matter of the questionnaire. Some gave us narratives based on personal experiences, while others provided dispassionate analysis, replete with citations and apparatus. And, as you will see, some used text, and some used images." (Henry Lowood)
Articles and abstracts can be read online here.
Additional information on the HTGG website.
An Italian translation, with additional essays, will be released in book-form in the Fall of 2011. Stay tuned for more information.
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