Dematerialisation.

[version]

Probably just a bunch of blue or whatever color the sky is

I was talking somewhat figuratively.

 

[version]

Maybe its already been touched on but theres also a shrinkage of materials thats part of dematerialisation.

Shades and colours too. The majority of cars and appliances seem to be black, white, grey or silver. The same goes for a lot of domestic interiors.

 

[luka]

no ones read what i wrote in the thread so they make up their own versions of what i meant. stupid ones mostly.

 

[version]

no ones read what i wrote in the thread so they make up their own versions of what i meant. stupid ones mostly.

"Ooh, I'm so hard done by. Ooh, no one will let me be a prophet."

 

[version]

no ones read what i wrote in the thread so they make up their own versions of what i meant. stupid ones mostly.

Go on then. Enlighten us.

 

[luka]

it's already in the thread

 

[version]

i suppose it blurs somewhat into the creation of and representation of purely digital spaces. and again i think this is where it's instructive to look towards architecture, which cant escape its physicality but looks to shed some of the more obvious signifiers of tactility and embodiment eg texture as it aspires to total dematerialisation. opaque glass. trespa. flat blocks of primary colour.

This happened with websites at some point too. You can tell when they're designed to be viewed on a tablet or phone as they get this very flat, blocky appearance. It's in that horrible 'Corporate Memphis' art style that's been so prevalent too.

 

[WashYourHands]

Oh man look at how creative and vivacious they are, they’re def not on benzos

Corporate Memphis is a grand artist name

 

[craner]

Go on then. Enlighten us.

Tell him, Versh. Deck him. Duff him up.

 

[linebaugh]

 

[version]

This is exactly what Luke was talking about.

 

[ghost]

no ones read what i wrote in the thread so they make up their own versions of what i meant. stupid ones mostly.

i don't care what you meant luka i want to talk about dematerialization

 

[luka]

what did you have to say about it

 

[Ian Scuffling]

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 really nowhere elso to go. Even the Actress song is wrapped in old timey AM radio static

Interesting you mention Inland Empire's reevaluation and Twin Peaks 3 as disappointing over-saturation, because isn't it extremely likely that the latter will get the same treatment, with Lynch having already had a case of this and as a veteran director and stylistic experimenter.

I found the color of Twin Peaks 3 synchronous with its earnestness (consider the overwhelming brightness of Ed and Norma's reunion with the live Otis Redding soundtrack, all the scenes with Amanda Seyfried, the uncanniness of the woods), and I think it will get more affective with age and as so few digital filmmakers, even the real innovators like Zahler, make such distinctive choices. So to bring it back to dematerialization, I actually think that oversaturation works against a loss of materiality in how striking and oppressive it is. I've found it more visually memorable than a lot of its contemporaries which I love just as much for other reasons.

 

[shakahislop]

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.

Some of the external environments also matter a lot less now now that so much of peoples time is spent on screens, with headphones on, etc

 

[shakahislop]

What happens when the surroundings also become reflecting glass? Some sort of warping, endless-mirror effect?

there's a massive massive huge residential tower on the lower east side which I think has been designed to reflect the color of the sky. It's the best of all the nyc towers I think. It's in the middle of the projects as well so it sticks up by itself, it's a really distinctive one. On a day with a blue sky it's a really pure light blue

 

[version]

even the real innovators like Zahler

@dilbert1 was bigging up Zahler the other day too. What do you reckon stands out about him?

 

[Ian Scuffling]

I was actually talking about him with a classmate a few hours ago. I think, broadly, his lack of fear to be "problematic" and make the viewer uncomfortable makes him Peckinpah's truest and perhaps only heir currently working in his unflinching engagement with characters and images that the average independent audience would revile. He plumbs the depths of violence and thus the human heart, to paraphrase Peckinpah. The natives in Bone Tomahawk are the obvious example of an image that initially elicits disgust not only in their blatant grotesquerie but also the virulent racism they evoke, but the second one asks why we want to turn away, and why he would show us something so blatantly provocative and reflective of the darkest ideas in the popular imagination, it becomes clear there is a conversation he's having that most other filmmakers are terrified of. Casting Mel Gibson as essentially a cop version of himself is a great choice that makes Dragged Across Concrete stand out from even the best entries in those grander crime epics like Mann's work; he intertwines the political and the personal in ways that give his characters dimensions that really only Paul Schrader other than him is dealing with.

 

[version]

I was actually talking about him with a classmate a few hours ago. I think, broadly, his lack of fear to be "problematic" and make the viewer uncomfortable makes him Peckinpah's truest and perhaps only heir currently working in his unflinching engagement with characters and images that the average independent audience would revile. He plumbs the depths of violence and thus the human heart, to paraphrase Peckinpah. The natives in Bone Tomahawk are the obvious example of an image that initially elicits disgust not only in their blatant grotesquerie but also the virulent racism they evoke, but the second one asks why we want to turn away, and why he would show us something so blatantly provocative and reflective of the darkest ideas in the popular imagination, there is a conversation he's having that most other filmmakers are terrified of. Casting Mel Gibson as essentially a cop version of himself is a great choice that makes Dragged Across Concrete stand out from even the best entries in those grander crime epics like Mann's work; he intertwines the political and the personal in ways that give his characters dimensions that really only Paul Schrader other than him is dealing with.

Does he do anything that sticks out in terms of shooting digitally?

 

[Ian Scuffling]

I've always struggled with describing color grading in detail but to the best of my knowledge I would say his use of contrast stands out. Some other people with more photography knowledge may be able to clarify that.