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Reassesses the post-revolutionary Iranian Cinema from a new mnemo-political perspective.
What kind of relationship do we have with artificial beings (avatars, puppets, robots, etc.)? What does it mean to mirror ourselves in them, to perform them or to play trial identity games with them? Actor & Avatar addresses these questions from artistic and scholarly angles. Contributions on the making of »technical others« and philosophical reflections on artificial alterity are flanked by neuroscientific studies on different ways of perceiving living persons and artificial counterparts. The contributors have achieved a successful artistic-scientific collaboration with extensive visual material.
"When Abbas Kiarostami suddenly passed away in July 2016, he was already an iconic figure in world cinema-and his reputation as a master filmmaker has only grown since. In this book, celebrated scholar Hamid Dabashi offers a new way of looking at Kiarostami's art world, one that questions the very idea of film philosophy. Dabashi's authoritative account of the philosophical resonances of Kiarostami's oeuvre offers an iconoclastic critique of the field's Eurocentrism and, in vivid prose, makes the case for a new method of appreciating the work of this essential figure. The result is a provocative perspective on the totality of Kiarostami's legacy that, with deep roots in Iranian aesthetic and Persian poetic and philosophical traditions, overcomes film's provincial preoccupation with its Western heritage and charts a new path forward for film philosophy."--
Since the introduction of photography by commercial studio photographers and the colonial state in Kenya, this global medium has been intensely debated and contested among Muslims on the cosmopolitan East African coast. This book does not only explore the making, circulation, and consumption of popular photographs, but also the other side, their rejection and obliteration, an essential aspect of a medium's history that should not be neglected. It deals with various »social spaces of refusal« in the local Muslim milieu and in that of »traditional« spirit mediums in which (gendered) visibility was (and is) contested in various and creative ways. It focuses on the »aesthetics of withdrawal«: the various ways and techniques that process the photographic act as well as the photographic image to theatricalize the surface of the image in new ways by veiling, masking, and concealing. In a fragmented historical perspective, Heike Behrend seeks to complement, decenter, and counter the history of photography as it has been told by the West and to narrate another history beginning with preceding local media such as textiles and spirit possession.
The COVID-19 pandemic has reorganized existing methods of exchange, turning comparatively marginal technologies into the new normal. Multipoint videoconferencing in particular has become a favored means for web-based forms of remote communication and collaboration without physical copresence. Taking the recent mainstreaming of videoconferencing as its point of departure, this anthology examines the complex mediality of this new form of social interaction. Connecting theoretical reflection with material case studies, the contributors question practices, politics and aesthetics of videoconferencing and the specific meanings it acquires in different historical, cultural and social contexts.
The Technological Introject explores the futures opened up across the humanities and social sciences by the influential media theorist Friedrich Kittler. Joining the German tradition of media studies and systems theory to the Franco-American theoretical tradition marked by poststructuralism, Kittler’s work has redrawn the boundaries of disciplines and of scholarly traditions. The contributors position Kittler in relation to Marshall McLuhan, Jacques Derrida, discourse analysis, film theory, and psychoanalysis. Ultimately, the book shows the continuing relevance of the often uncomfortable questions Kittler opened up about the cultural production and its technological entanglements.
In 1992 it seemed very difficult to answer the question whether it would be possible to develop a portable system for the automatic recognition and translation of spon taneous speech. Previous research work on speech processing had focused on read speech only and international projects aimed at automated text translation had just been terminated without achieving their objectives. Within this context, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) made a careful analysis of all national and international research projects conducted in the field of speech and language technology before deciding to launch an eight-year basic-research lead project in which research groups were to ...
This book explores the historical interrelationships between mathematics, medicine and media, and offers a unique perspective on how video compression has shaped our relationship with moving images and the world. It situates compression in a network of technological, visual and epistemic practices spanning from late 18th-century computational methods to the standardization of electrical infrastructure and the development of neurology throughout the 1900s. Bringing into conversation media archaeology, science and technology studies, disability studies and queer theory, each chapter offers an in-depth look at a different trace of compression, such as interlacing, macroblocking or flicker. This is a story of forgotten technologies, unusual media practices, strange images on the margins of visual culture and inventive ways of looking at the world. Readers will find illuminating discussions of the formation of complex scientific and medical systems, and of the violent and pleasurable interactions between our bodies and media infrastructure.
This volume brings together scholarship from both established scholars and early career academics to provide fresh insights and new research on the cinema of Iran. The book is organised around eight broad themes including cinema before and after the revolution, stylistic innovation, documentary, gender, and genre. Encompassing a diverse range of methodological approaches and disciplinary frameworks including film studies, cultural studies, and political economy, each chapter is a self-contained study on a specific topic engaging with the national and transnational history of Iranian cinema which combined provide readers with original new insights into Iranian film and filmmakers, from fictio...
An Iranian immigrant struggling to integrate into 1970s German society, the filmmaker Sohrab Shahid Saless (1944-98) has become a neglected figure in discussions of diaspora cinema. In this - the first English-language book to reflect on his work and its implications for creativity in the diasporic conditions of urban displacement - a range of international scholars provide a comprehensive account of Shahid Saless's films and production methods. Outlining his affinity with celebrated directors like Chantal Akerman and Abbas Kiarostami, as well as visual artists like Romuald Karmakar, the contributors firmly position Shahid Saless as a filmmaker who speaks forcefully to the traumas of displacement and migration.