Dematerialisation.

V

version

Well-known member
germaphobian said:
Valid points. I haven't seen Miami Vice, but - sticking with David Lynch examples- I had a similar feeling when Inland Empire came out. It looked ugly as hell. Now, fast forward almost twenty years, it looks just fine, great even.
But you have to travel backwards in time in a sense, because the early digital only starts to look good and acceptable when all the mega-uber-billion-pixel-10K comes along, which, if I understand correctly, is exactly the point you made.
But even then, the early digital did (and does) feel more like a gimmick and, as I said, it looks good compared to the thing that followed it, but not so much if you compare it to the thing that preceded it. Inland Empire looks much better than the over-saturated awfulness of Twin Peaks 3, sure, but still much inferior to the films he shot using tape. A niche thing, good for some sort of experiment, similar to Dogma 95 or people shooting full lenght movies using VHS camera, but not something you would want to see becoming the one and only mandatory way of making movies in the way that the modern digital has taken over in its ubiquity.

But even if someone is set to follow this anti-nostalgic position - which may be a healthy one - you still end up in a sort of conundrum, because these days there is nothing to contrast the over-compressed audio-visual sludge with, everything's been maxed out and has reached some sort of technological breaking point. Or so it seems. It's hard to imagine that you will get another Miami Vice which will be made by using a new technology and will look kind of strange and ugly and alien compared to what we have now and then it will take root and develop and eventually take over and make all the digital 4K stuff look good in hindsight. No such thing on the horizon. Maybe a Musk chip in the brain, but I don't think anyone wants that. That's why most everyone is working backwards, with their VHS video filters and VST. tape emulators and similar ersatz, because there is not nowhere elso to go. Even the Actress song is wrapped in old timey AM radio static.
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That's true. It works as an experimental outlier or part of a toolkit rather than a new standard. And you wouldn't want to see people going back and trying to shoot like Collateral or Miami Vice now. The equivalent would be doing whatever you can with the latest gear.

I'm not convinced "digital" has to look the way it currently does though. Apparently it's as versatile as you want it to be, but companies like Netflix have a particular approach and look they want, which is whatever they call that flat, glossy look their stuff has. I've noticed something similar with Apple TV. A few of their films have had this cold, grayscale thing going on.





There are still people shooting on film, also doing stuff like shooting on film then scanning it digitally and bouncing between the two. Apparently Mann wants to go back to film for Heat 2.

It runs somewhat counter to my point about leaning into the latest gear, but I suppose it's ultimately about what you can get out of whatever's around. If you still have access to film and can make a good film with it then great. If you can get a good film out of combining film and digital or going entirely digital then that's also great.

We had another thread talking about this a while back and @linebaugh brought up Portrait of a Lady on Fire being shot digitally for various reasons.

www.indiewire.com

‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ Cinematography: The Perfect 18th Century Digital Painting

Behind the scene of how Claire Mathon and Céline Sciamma created something truly new in their exploration of the past.
www.indiewire.com www.indiewire.com

germaphobian said:
these days there is nothing to contrast the over-compressed audio-visual sludge with,
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We have to chuck streaming into the equation here too, not just digital cameras, especially now that the industry's trying to pull away from physical formats. You can pay for what's supposed to be a higher quality stream, but, afaik, it still won't be as high quality as just having a Blu-ray due to the streaming compression.
 
V

version

Well-known member
There's a material component to dematerialisation. We're increasingly online, but that also increases the demand for devices, cables, data centers, infrastructure. I know we've got 'The Cloud' but it's still run and maintained from physical locations. There's also the environmental impact of the energy required to keep the whole thing running and to develop, manufacture and transport new components, devices and all the rest of it.
 
shiels

shiels

_
Yes it’s a transmutation you could say, and there’s probably more shit in the world than ever, which is the real issue not that you nerds can’t feel your little collectibles anymore. nonsense thread and idea really but a nice little idea, charming. A Pleasing naïveté to it you could say, but ultimately fanciful nonsense
 
craner

craner

Beast of Burden
shiels said:
Yes it’s a transmutation you could say, and there’s probably more shit in the world than ever, which is the real issue not that you nerds can’t feel your little collectibles anymore. nonsense thread and idea really but a nice little idea, charming. A Pleasing naïveté to it you could say, but ultimately fanciful nonsense
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Stop wasting your time you fucking idiots, is basically what you're saying @shiels
 
ghost

ghost

Well-known member
version said:
Even the dematerialised is dematerialising.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

“It’s a Silent Fire”: Decaying Digital Movie and TV Show Files Are a Hollywood Crisis

Industry pros sweat the possibility that many digital files will eventually become unusable — an archival tragedy reminiscent of the celluloid era.
www.hollywoodreporter.com www.hollywoodreporter.com
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I think this is interesting in that what it really shows is the materiality of the dematerialized—it's just a synthetic kind of materiality.

There's a great book of design theory from the 00s about the idea of the digital as "a medium without qualities", which seems true at first, but in reality I think it's more that the digital has qualities that are infinitely ductile.
 
other_life

other_life

bioconfused
kind of something that nagged me about the thread premise to begin with but i probably didn't say anything. or i didn't say anything good
 
V

version

Well-known member
You could perhaps argue something's dematerialised once it's actually decayed, but a digital file decaying is obviously demonstrating its materiality. The screen and flatness is more what this thread's about; a certain smoothness.
 
linebaugh

linebaugh

Well-known member
Ya I think its about virtuality in that it dictates experience less as navigating the otherness of materiality, its interiors and exteriors, and more about the curation of feelings and intensities in the abstract. The screen is important because it gives whatever happens within it an inherent coherence, whatever sequence of events flattened into a single experience. Luka stole this whole thread from jameson talking about the bonaventure hotel in LA. The glass exterior removes the otherness of the building by making it a litteral reflection of its surroundings. The interior is designed to corral a visitor along a specific path that is so essential the building becomes very hard to navigate if you were to step outside the path, like how a movie wont make sense if you watch the scenes out of order. Its the building as experience, not as enviornment.
 
linebaugh

linebaugh

Well-known member
Maybe its already been touched on but theres also a shrinkage of materials thats part of dematerialisation. Theres a trend with interior design we were talking about in the normie thread epitomized by Big Mini's Putt Putt and Gastro pub- astro turf, disco balls, exposed metal girders and piping, 'reclaimed space.' Theres an eye towards materials that goes against the trend of everything resembling the screen, but seeing as the trend is ubiquitous we lose material diversity. Were all howard hughes with identical apartments in different cities. The space becomes the zone where you go to have x experience and x feelings in whatever city you are in.
 
V

version

Well-known member
linebaugh said:
Theres a trend with interior design we were talking about in the normie thread epitomized by Big Mini's Putt Putt and Gastro pub- astro turf, disco balls, exposed metal and piping, 'reclaimed space.' Theres an eye towards materials that goes against the trend of everything resembling the screen, but seeing as the trend is ubiquitous we lose material diversity.
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Also the deployment of those disparate elements can feel more 'unreal' than the screen due to being a grab bag of earlier styles thrown together specifically to respond to it. The disco ball's there for how jarring and artificial it is to have a disco ball there.
 
V

version

Well-known member
linebaugh said:
Luka stole this whole thread from jameson talking about the bonaventure hotel in LA. The glass exterior removes the otherness of the building by making it a litteral reflection of its surroundings.
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What happens when the surroundings also become reflecting glass? Some sort of warping, endless-mirror effect?
 
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