Conclusion
There is of course a marked aesthetic difference between the cinema, the television, the video and the net today. The format of these technical appearances dominates each different aspect of a common language. It seems like a spoken regional dialect existing outside of the grammatical. This common language is or was developed as a language of cinema, a set of conventions dominated by the aesthetic condition of the apparatus cinema. The transformation of the cinematic through television and video practice added simultaneity as a major factor to the repository of the formed cinema language – meaning the emphasis of the live event. Of course, cinema’s imitation in amateur and semiprofessional practice contrasts to the development of its own form of expression in video.
The artist in transition, a transition technically caused by or through changing tools and their availability, aesthetically caused by or through expanding image formats and their availability, will have to use techniques of simplified or adapted design and gestures in or through time, gestures like pointing to or emphasizing this detail, while detailing her/his work strategically politicizing the formation of an aesthetic of an medium in becoming, a medium which is not there but already there in its formation. Machinima movies point back to the game as simulation. Moving images produced in Second Life point towards the ‘real’ character of a simultaneously experienced mass medium.
What is called in German Gestaltung, the design, the presentation of the moving image, here exaggerated in reference to the close up, the pointer, the detail, emphasizing simple shapes in a minimized area of change through moving images, strengthen a reduced number of colors, increasing the influence of sound (and therefore the characteristics of radio) for the small screen, might be consciously or unconsciously influential factors on art works in the transition we are currently experiencing.
In a complex and multiple viewing environment the small screen is only one part of the attractions on offer. While cinema is necessary a two-eye view, the aesthetic conditions of the small screen are referencing only one eye and may be only one point in the field of view of the viewer.
While cinema was, like Kafka claimed, shutting down the senses to take you in to one illusion space, here the artist is competing with the senses, the circumstances, and the environment. Therefore he or she is forced to create that immersive impact for a short span of time, to point and focus, to point and shoot. The pointer as the close up is called here is a relative of the joke, the fable, the aphorism, the haiku, or the quote – short literary forms.
The haiku is characterized as a combination of form, language and content in one. Referring to lecture notes taken from Stephen Heath talk on ‘Identification’ on the 20th April 1999 in METU Ankara, Turkey. The haiku enunciates everyday experiences like nature, feelings or experiences. Because of its simple words and grammar it can be shared with a wide spread audience. The haiku would paint a mental image in the mind of its readers or viewers. What many today would see as an operation of a ripping-apart of audiovisual content and a subsequent re-distribution could be seen in light of this discussion as parallel to the literary form of the quotation. The re-distributed video quotation becomes marked and distinguished. The short dramatic form might appear at first glance a source of the unusual, the extraordinary, but it becomes less innovative, and less deep, and less differentiated, because it will repeat what is already established.
‘Close’, short span videos on small screens might result in a wider variation of genres and subgenres, which were already developed in more or less comparable artistic forms. Of course, genres are already merging and not easily identifiable any more in a wide range of media. Convergence will smooth the borderlines as it already does, but in practice the artist in discussion might refer to the structural constitution of those mentioned forms and genres to stand out of the mass with her or his artistic reflection and work. Therefore a video language might evolve closer to the characteristics of video than cinema where cinematic narrative structure and form is just one element or possibility in the evaluation of its mediated contents and forms. The juxtaposition of shared user generated online video images potentially then expands beyond a non-fictional and non-dramatic form, leaving the realm of old media. Here finally in the closeness of the screen the close-up might reach its destination.
Treske, Andreas.
Detailing and Pointing.
In Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer, eds. Video Vortex Reader: Responses to YouTube, 215–221. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2008.
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