PCMS: Bob Rehak on Effects and Apparatus Theory
Next Friday is the next Philadelphia Cinema and Media Seminar, with Bob Rehak from Swarthmore and of Graphic Engine fame speaking on special effects and apparatus theory. I'll be responding.
The PCMS listing has more, including directions.
Bob Rehak, Swarthmore College
"Revisiting Apparatus Theory in a Transmedia Age"
Friday, March 28, 20086:30-8pm5:30-7pm
Apparatus theory of the 1970s emphasized ideological effects of the cinematic "machine," in particular the elision of labor through the concealment of moviemaking's technical base. But in the contemporary world of transmedia franchises and convergence culture, technologies of image manufacture, distribution, and even storytelling itself have become spectacularized and monetized as sources of additional "content," providing an ever-expanding universe of paratextual information and cross-platform branding of entertainment properties. As media texts multiply and every consumer potentially becomes a producer, what happens to ideological critique at the level of the media apparatus? What new forms of invisibility attend transmedia's engines of visualization and behind-the-scenes information? How are we constituted as subjects in and by a sea of seriality, narrative expansion, and other aspects of what Jim Collins has termed the "architecture of excess"? Finally, how might these questions illuminate continuities between classical Hollywood cinema and its digitalized, narrowcast descendents?
Respondent: Chris Cagle, Temple University
Temple University Center City Campus
Room 420
The PCMS listing has more, including directions.
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