Expanding Cinema [Thesis]

Expanding Cinema: an investigation of the screen and the spectator

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Contents

Research Methodology Statement •7

Theories•8 Arts-based research•9 Primary Research•11 Secondary Research•12 Output•12 Bibliography •14

Expanding Cinema: An investigation of the screen and the spectator•17

Abstract •18 Introduction•20

Expanded Cinema: A Lexicon•25

Conflicting definitions•26 Binaries •29

Screen•33 Spectatorship•41 Binaries•42 Motion In Form 2 •44

Software•49

360-degree video test•55

Conclusion•57

Expanding cinema: a definition •58 The design project •59 Analysis of Thesis •60 360 video conclusion•63

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Bibliography•65

Books•66 Articles/Journals/Essays/ Magazines/ PDFs/ Ebooks•73 Lectures•75 Online Video•75

Appendix•79

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Research Methodology Statement

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ResearchMethodologyStatement

Theories

I will be analysing Expanded Cinema through a structuralist and poststructuralist perspective. The reason is that there is a range of differing definitions on the subject.

Structuralist thought uses linguist Ferdinand de Saussure’s (b. 1857-1913) concept of seeing ‘language as a network of structures’. That once broken down into their individual parts, such as ‘letter, sound, or word’ could then be defined by the relationships formed between these parts (D’Alleva, 2012, p.126).

The binary method seeks to highlight phenomena by its difference black/white, sick/well and so on. The analysis from this method will help me to narrow the discourse on the subject. The parts I have selected for my investigation are screen, spectatorship and software.

The weakness of structuralist analysis is that knowledge and understanding of the world around us are constantly in flux. One cannot expect to find a system inherent in every phenomenon encountered. The perspective has been labelled as ‘ahistorical’ and ‘monologic’ (D’Alleva, 2012, p.130, 131).

Postructuralists believe that it may not be a flexible system that could accept change.

In addition, that there is a single view of interpretation which disregards other voices according to linguist Mikhail Bakhtin (b. 1895-1975).

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To allow for flexibility, I will be shifting between structuralist and poststructuralist analysis. I view the ‘post’ as meaning ‘in relation to’ structuralism, as opposed to an end in structuralist thought. Poststructuralism opposes the ‘monologic’ perspective with the idea of ‘heteroglossia’, which is the many forms of speech one uses in their daily life. The view turns away from a singular perspective to allow for alternatives of interpretation. They perceived structures as fiction that one invents to understand phenomena. I do not believe this to be a weakness, rather as a creative act in relation to reader response theory.

Reader response theory values the world of the reader as important as the author’s, ‘communication, therefore, always employs pre-existing concepts, patterns, and conventions’ (D’Alleva, 2012, p 129).

The reader brings their own background and sensibilities to reading. Reading can be applied further than just text but also to images and other cultural phenomena.

The process of reading can also be seen as a creative act as one tries to form their own understanding of a text. I will be employing the use of reader response theory when analysing the Motion In Form 2 event in chapter 2.

Arts-based research

The positivist research traditions have a long history and within that time they have been able to reaffirm and refine their methods. The grounding principle is to find out something

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ResearchMethodologyStatement

new by exploring what is already known, using the research as a way of expanding existing knowledge in a linear process.

Arts based research differs in that one creates new knowledge without knowing the desired end result. However, through a process of artistic enquiry one uses a fluid methodology and creates new methods. ‘oftentimes what is known can limit the possibility of what is not and this requires a creative act to see things from a new view.’ (Sullivan, 2010, p 82). This view is aided by the notion that arts-based research operates in a post-disciplinary environment. It allows for more diverse sources of knowledge to inform one’s own by using existing structures of other disciplines.

The thesis will be informed by various positions in art and software that are outside of normative architectural history and theory.

Collage merges the different medias of everyday life creating links between them and thus changing our appreciation of them. It is a method that becomes a form of research when situated in art-based practice because it generates new knowledge. ‘collage as a method of gathering, selecting, analysis, synthesis, and presentation-a process that is strikingly similar to more traditional qualitative research.’ (Leavy, 2008, p.222) Collage’s weakness is that one might not always find the right images or make effective compositions to present an idea. The process

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of finding appropriate images could be down to luck. Some juxtapositions may leave viewers more confused through binary compositions that might not communicate the idea well.

Primary Research

‘Motion in form 2’ was a four-day event taken at the Slade Research Centre, Woburn Square.

Over the four days there were lectures, workshops, discussions, live performances and a public exhibition with film installations related to Expanded Cinema.

The workshop encouraged an explorative manner to creation by one being open to surprise and allowing for tangents in their work. The tangents opened possibilities for the work becoming something other than what was started with for example, a film turns into sculpture or collage.

The workshop gave me an opportunity to pick up on methods and ways of thinking in art from the tutors and fellow students (made up of the Slade School MFA students and Greenwich University Graphic Design students). This was experiential evidence which enlighten my perception of Expanded Cinema. I used collage as a method of research in my output for the event.

I also recorded a panel discussion in which I was able to ask a question on virtual reality to the curators and artists working in Expanded Cinema. I also took note of several conversations through the exhibition night with fellow students and guests to the show.

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Photography was a useful method in recording my process and other students work during the event. I have also used some photographs documented by Graphic Design student Orestis Dikaios, whom I shall be crediting.

Secondary Research

My blog (www.expandedthesis.tumblr.com) was used as a visual board by placing video, images and links to research I came across during my thesis. The blog was in parallel with a thesis wall that allowed for another board for my thoughts, references, diagrams and ideas that I would pass by daily. Both of these outlets were updated regularly and proved helpful in mapping my research visually, instead of holding it in my mind or a notebook hidden away. www.expandedthesis.tumblr.com

Online video sites YouTube and UbuWeb have been valuable to my research on Expanded Cinema and moving image. These practices are poorly substituted by photography stills in books and these sites have allowed me to analyze them.

Literature I have used the university library and their databases for thesis and PhD texts (ProQuest), books and articles online.

Output

The output film will intend to respond to my design site The Royal Victoria Gardens, North Woolwich. The purpose is to communicate

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a definition of expanding cinema in the conclusion of my thesis.

I will be using open-source software Blender and Google’s camera app for manipulating and recording 360-degree images. The film is accessed with QR codes linked to the output on YouTube.

The film creates an interactive practice of consumption considering Semiotician Umberto Eco’s (b. 1932-2016) Open Works as a reader response theoretical paradigm.

‘In other words, the author offers the interpreter, the performer, the addressee, a work to be completed...The author is the one who proposed a number of possibilities which had already been rationally, oriented and endowed with specifications for proper development.’ (Eco, 1962, p. 36) The notion of the Open Works derives from reader response theory of which reception theory is the parent. A person must actively participate to create meaning from the piece, they complete the work through their interaction with it.

The film is a visual conclusion incorporating panoramas of The Royal Victoria Gardens. The 360 video behaves in different to traditional cinema because one has a choice of frame. It is like the participant is directing live. Choosing their cinematographic composition by the movement of their body.

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ResearchMethodologyStatement

Bibliography

Bishop, C. (ed.) (2006) Participation. 3rd edn.

London: Whitechapel Art Gallery D’Alleva, A. (2012) Methods & theories of art history. 2nd edn. London: Laurence King Publishing Eco, U. (1962). The Poetics of the Open Work. In: Bishop, C. (ed.) (2006) Leavy, P. (2008) Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. 1st edn. New York: Guilford Publications Sullivan, G. (2010). The Artist as Research: New Roles for New Realities. In: Wesseling, J. (ed.)

(2011) Wesseling, J. (ed.) (2011) The artist as researcher.

Amsterdam: Valiz

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Expanding Cinema: An investigation of the screen and the spectator

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Abstract Today’s society bathes in images that are passively digested via the internet, television and cinema.

This thesis proposes another alternative, expanded cinema using smartphones.

Proposing a switch from passive to active spectators whilst developing theory for a new kind of spatial cinema.

My thesis will collect and interpret data using theories relating to Arts-based research, Expanded Cinema and Structuralism. I am going to triangulate this research by using first hand evidence collected from the ‘Motion In Form 2’ workshop show in art-based research and reviewing my application of theoretical texts.

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‘Motion In Form 2’ is a four day event taken at the Slade Research Centre, Woburn Square.

Over the four days there were lectures, workshops, discussions, live performances and a public exhibition with film installations. The event is using themes relating to Expanded Cinema and will be useful as primary research for this thesis.

I will also be applying a theoretical paradigm using reader response theory to disseminate my 360-degree video and looking further within this umbrella of theory into semiotician Umberto Eco’s (b. 1932-2016) ‘The Poetics of the Open Works’ (1962).

Keywords:, Participation, Open Works, Virtual/ Augmented Realities, Expanded Cinema, 360 video, Structuralism, Arts-Based Research

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Introduction “Don’t go away we’ll be right back!”

The quote that I used, which was from the television to answer my mother’s question, ‘why didn’t you use the toilet instead of wetting yourself on the couch?’.

This childhood incident sparked an interest into a critique of what critical theorist Theodor Adorno (b. 1903-1969) calls the ‘cheap commercial sphere’ that relives ‘boredom and effort simultaneously’(Adorno, 1941, p38).

Adorno was critiquing the culture industry and the effect it was having on people.

Could passivity be solely linked to the television? The threshold for disseminating culture, news, consumerism, and I loved it. The television brought us an influx of images, of advertisements, of non-stop entertainment.

Passive spectatorship of the cinema was restricted to seeing one production paid for with a set duration. Now with the television one could sit in front of a screen digesting films, shows and advertisements in a continuous stream. Then expanding into the internet, television in the form of web application YouTube, allowed users to choose and create their own content to consume.

Passive spectatorship is defined as by philosopher Jacques Rancière (b. 1940) a person who has divorced themselves from the ability to learn and are acted upon without exerting their independent will. To become active is to learn through participation and not just receive as a ‘passive voyeur’ (Rancière, 2011, p.4).

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Adorno had written about passivity experienced in popular music, Rancière about the place where a community of bodies known as an audience are seated with their eyes locked on the spectacle being perfomed.

Debord used the term spectacle to refer to an audience’s gaze that limits knowledge and their ability to live. Rancière’s version of passivity involves more than just theatre but also performance art and dance. However, I will extend this from merely a community of physical bodies to present day individual consumption (as found in the internet and television).

In my research, looking into active spectatorship I discovered the art practice ‘Expanded Cinema’ which like a language, has multiple routes into it. The term describes an overlapping set of practices which depending on who uses it will differ according to their criteria. A common notion of expanded cinema is for the artist to make visible the mechanisms of cinema. Inspired by the Brechtian model which sought to have the audience hold both the illusion and the dismantling of it in their mind at the same time. The receiver is not allowed to solely sit and receive but to question and become involved within the constructing of the performance.

I should be unpacking the varied definitions of Expanded Cinema in the coming chapter.

However, for the reader I will define it here by its over-lapping practices: participation, performance, situation, multi-screen,

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Introduction

installation and moving image.

‘There have been arguably different expanded cinemas responding in different ways to the question of ‘cinema’’(White, 2011, p.24) My entree into Expanded Cinema is to see it as the practice of cinema expanding through smartphones which have become both instruments of reception and production.

The smartphone today does many more things than just phone calls because of the expansion of technology within it. 360 degree videos are very effective on smartphones because of gyroscopic and stereoscopic technology.

When using virtual reality headsets, the user is immersed in the cinematographic space within the frame. 360-degree video breaks away from the mono-directional view of the single frame picked out by the director. Now the audience participate intuitively by moving their phone around selecting what to view.

The cinema space of reception (the black box) in combination with the distribution by financially powerful movie studios, retain a passive audience. The audience member cannot learn (in the cinema) how to create the illusion being depicted on screen or would even have the means to recreate it. The economic divide between the movie studio and an average audience member is vast.

However, the audience may begin to create, learn and distribute online if they wish to by using smartphones and YouTube.

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My design unit operate in a paradigm of moving image and digital animation for the creation of architecture. The ambition of this thesis is to develop a theory on expanding cinema that can be put into practice in my design unit. It will also help me to develop a position in architecture using expanding cinema with smartphones.

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Expanded Cinema: A Lexicon

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ExpandedCinema: ALexicon

Conflicting definitions

Expanded Cinema is a term that borrows from other genres of art be it moving-image, performance, situation, site-specificity. The term’s definition varies on who you wish to listen to as there have been many different types of it. I am going to define the subject by using a Structuralist method of thought and explore some of the key positions on Expanded Cinema and their weaknesses but also clarify my own definition of expanded cinema through this method. My aim is to have a lexicon to analyse expanded cinema.

Butler, B., 2007. Instructions for films [electronic print] Available at: http://www.no-w-here.org.uk/index. php?cat=2&subCat=docdetail&id=31 [Accessed 27 February 2016]

After a talk held at the ‘Motion in Form 2’ (2015, Slade Research Centre) show, I spoke to Mark Webber (a curator of Expanded Cinema) and attempted to push for a definition. Webber highlighted two points to me, that media theorist Gene Youngblood (b.

1942) confused many with his definition of ‘expanded consciousness’ and that one should not pin down the meaning but at the core is performance and multiscreen projections.

Youngblood’s definition in Fluid Screens, ‘When we say expanded cinema we actually mean expanded consciousness’, was interpreted

by Webber as meaning the consciousness of the drug-fuelled experiences that took place during the 1960s. Youngblood’s definition is confusing and one in which I am struggling to obtain clarity for myself without Webber’s insight.

For artist and co-founder of no.w.here gallery Brad Butler’s (b.1970) definition is a plastic one

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which states during a conversation with Karen Mirza, that any piece of work that deals with the ‘idea of what cinema is’(Butler and Mirza, 2008, p.258) and attempting to find out its limits and epistemological concerns.

He provides evidence for this claim by pointing to a project initiated by no.w.here gallery called ‘Instructions for films’ (2007).

The project was a series of large sheets of card with instructions for film-making written down (I use this phrase loosely as some were made as collage or photographs) by 40 participating moving image artists.

Among the 40 contributors were Jayne Parker, Benedict Drew and Guy Sherwin. All of whom were in the ‘Motion In Form 2’ (2015) workshop show. They also work in academia in combination with their practice as artists and filmmakers.

The subsequent cards were exhibited in the Zoo Art Fair (2007) and a book was then sold with these works included. In short his definition of Expanded Cinema even stretches to publications as long the ‘idea of what cinema is’, is rooted within the work.

Butler, B., 2007. Instructions for films [electronic print] Available at: http://fleischfilm.com/wp-content/ uploads/2008/04/peristaltic1_480.jpg [Accessed 27 February 2016]

In comparison to artist Victor Burgin (b. 1941) who speaks about ‘cinematic heterotopias’ (Burgin, 2006, p. 199). He spoke in relation to one’s interaction with films that stretches away from just the physical space of the cinema and that particular duration of time. Incorporating also the varieties of media one encounters through the internet, television and print of a particular film. I would like to argue that both deal with the ‘idea of what cinema is’. However,

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a couple of distinctions are evident between Butler’s ‘Instructions for films’ and Burgin’s ‘cinematic heterotopias’. The first point is the producer of the work. Butler includes himself and a diverse group of voices from the avantgarde in his project and leaves out mainstream movie directors.

Secondly, the context of reception. The space of reception for Butler is in the gallery, and the output of a book. There is a binary opposition between the marginalised avantgarde and commercial cinema. The movie studios disseminate their films through trailers in television sets and posters on advertising billboards. I believe expanded cinema is more aligned with the world of art than that of mainstream entertainment.

The loose and all-encompassing definition of anything to do with ‘the idea of cinema’ in my opinion is weak. I believe that it leaves the definition open to criticism by its plasticity which can render it watered-down and lacking a core. Initially I was in complete disagreement with this version of expanded cinema. Maybe it is more to do with performance and film mechanisms (be it ideas and or technicalities) within an arts context?

The problem for me was that it is far neater to reject Butler’s proposal as wrong and instead focus on my own argument.

However, one must try to understand Butler’s frame of reference. Butler’s art operates within

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postmodern and postcolonial theories. When seeing his definition as a form of postmodern pastiche his intentions becomes clearer. Also in relation to theories on art as research which rejects a fixed methodology, ‘I feel that as soon as we reduce it down to a single term we create certain creative limitations.’ (Butler and Mirza, 2008, p. 258) The flexible definition offered by Butler leads me to question previous works of art to be considered as Expanded Cinema. If ‘Instructions for films’ can be considered in its print form by questioning the idea of cinema and it epistemological concerns, can The Painted Hall in Greenwich then be considered as expanded cinema as well? I will continue to explore Butler’s open ended definition in the following chapter on screens.

Binaries

The purpose of the next section is to analyse Expanded Cinema through structuralist and poststructuralist theories and begin to understand it as a language broken into units and the relationships found within it. I hope to explore through the relevant evidences the binaries of spectator and the screen.

Within the examples I will be referring to a workshop/show held by the Slade Art School entitled ‘Motion In Form 2’(2015, Slade Research Centre) . The workshop was for 4 days with a group exhibition and talks on Expanded Cinema It is through this experience and the texts reviewed that I have reduced the discussion to spectator and screen. Also

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through this process I have learned about arts based research first hand. I became most impressed by the experimental approach to making work in the Slade art students. In addition, those who ran the workshop gave permission for detours in making work not directly related to the brief. That approach is at the root of arts based research as it is about the process and methods.

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Screen

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Screen

‘Almost anything - glass, architecture, threedimensional objects, and so on - can function as a screen and thus as a connective interface to another (virtual) space.’ (Mondloch, 2010, p31)

Vanderbeek, S., 1963. Movie Drome [electronic print] Available at: https://mediartinnovation.files.wordpress. com/2014/08/1963_vanderbeek_moviedome_c. jpg[Accessed 02 March 2016]

What is the screen? In today’s compounded cinema the screen takes on many forms. In television its shape and size grows overtime as does its resolution. Also in the computer screen and mobile screen, receiving videos via the internet. At the core of all of these different outputs of video is that their form remains a flat rectangle frame which has not changed significantly from its early inception.

Expanded cinema changed the idea of the single screen and the viewer’s position in relation to it. Through multi-screen projections and installations where one moves through a series of screens. In artist and filmmaker Stan Vanderbeek’s (b. 1927-1984) curved Movie Drome (1963-65), the screen was multiplied and projected onto a curved steel interior in Stony Point, New York.

The audience becomes mobile, being released from their seats. They position themselves in relation to the projections around the curved room. The projections were overlapped with multiple images in varying scales, an example of Vanderbeek ‘world picture language’ concept he coined. Vanderbeek saw the Movie Drome as a blurring of programs ‘studio-laboratorytheatre’ (Vanderbeek, Movie Drome pdf, p33).

Whereas the single screen space of reception in the living room and cinema, have no sitespecificity to the moving image or a blurring

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of programs like Movie Drome.

The audience were able to move along the ground plane of the architecture whilst making use of their peripheral vision in trying to enclose all the images witnessed.

Vanderbeek changed the architectural program of the cinema by changing a single mechanism of the cinema which is the number of screens.

The idea of the multiple images is also evident in artist James Thornhill’s (b. 1675-1734) The Painted Hall, Greenwich. Taking 19 years to complete the hall expands the illusion of the image beyond the architecture itself into the heavens. The viewer is in a similar 360-degree immersion as in the Movie Drome.

‘Thornhill’s illusionism, which aims at breaking the boundaries of the painted surface’ (Balakier and Balakier, 1995, p. 59). In The Painted Hall the viewer must rotate to look upwards and move around the room to first of all comprehend the images but then must also try to decipher their actual meaning and allegories. One may also move mirror tables to reflect the paintings on the ceiling. The audience must take a position within the hall in relation to specific parts of the painting instead of the looking into a frame concealing a painting hung on a gallery wall.

Thornhill added layers to his painting weaving narrative figures of myths in juxtaposition to prominent figures, the monarch and society, even himself. I believe The Painted Hall is a form of expanded cinema of its time because the idea of painting was transformed from

Thornhill, J., 1727. The Painted Hall [electronic print] Available at: https://www.ornc.org/ paintedhall[Accessed 02 March 2016]

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canvas to architecture. ‘the physical expansion, in that it expands outside of just one screen, taking on the specificity of its context’(Butler and Mirza, 2008, p. 258) Thornhill has challenged the idea of the painting frame by painting his artwork on to the walls and ceiling of architect Sir Christopher Wren’s (b.1632-1723) Greenwich Hospital.

Eames, C . and R., 1964. IBM Pavilion [electronic print] Available at: http://www.domusweb.it/en/from-thearchive/2012/09/15/charles-eames-ovoid-theatre. htmljpg[Accessed 02 March 2016]

Charles and Ray Eames (b. 1907-1978 and 1912-1988), architect and painter respectively, during New York’s World Fair (1964) created a pavilion to challenge contemporary use of screens. Their concept for a 15 screen installation was that a fragmentation of screens would deliver information to the audience in same way our minds receives it (Stolarz, 2013). The IBM pavilion design

by Eames office was an expanse of metal tree like forms scattered across a landscape surrounding an egg-shaped cinema (designed with Eero Saarinen Associates) depicting a film about problem solving entitled ‘The Information Machine’.

The audience’s transported via a row of seats powered by a hydraulic lift called ‘the people wall’ which takes them up into the ovoid theatre. Immediately one begins to scan the screens and analyse their differing perspectives and information as I found out in the recreation exhibited at the Barbican Centre.

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‘It’s not simply a form of display. The spatial or architectural element is an integral part of the meaning that the work explores’ (Butler and Mirza, 2008, p.258) Another multiscreen project is artist Guy Sherwin’s (b. 1948) Live Cinema which beginning in 2009 has been in collaboration with artist Lynn Loo (b. 1975). Seen as a form of musical performance acted out, it disrupts the logic of pre-recorded footage that the screen has been dominated by. Traditional cinema repeatedly uses the same screen size for every film being play in the dark room, projecting a premade movie. Sherwin mutates the screen live by enlarging and shrinking its scale whilst defocusing and refocusing the projected image. The result is that one is aware of the experimental nature of the performance as the screens are being manipulated.

‘Live cinema’ opened the exhibition night of the ‘Motion In Form 2’(2015, Slade Research Centre) event. Repetitive knocking interrupted the short rushing bursts of machine like distorted buzzing sounds. They had a piercing echo that lingered in the four cornered gallery space. Three tracks of optical sound were played simultaneously emphasising the cuts between different strips of coloured film. The atmosphere was hallucinatory I became totally engrossed. The cyclic repetition of buzz and knock sounds created a desire to anticipate their next sequence. I became aware of the movement of the frames on the wall by Sherwin’s agile navigations in shifting the light of the projectors.

Eames, C . and R., 1964. IBM Pavilion [electronic print] Available at: http://www.domusweb.it/en/from-thearchive/2012/09/15/charles-eames-ovoid-theatre. htmljpg[Accessed 02 March 2016] Sherwin, G. and Lynn, L., 2013. Live Cinema [electronic print] Available at: http://motioninform.tumblr. com/post/54083298989/guy-sherwin-and-lynn-loo [Accessed 02 March 2016]

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Sherwin’s performance needs an audience to be present in the gallery and cannot be repeated with similar effectiveness in other contexts such as television or the internet.

I was in sheer ecstasy but this to me was a cause for protest against this work. One’s thoughts were rendered useless in such an overpowering emotive performance. What kind of expanded cinema is this?

When the piece ended Sherwin took out the three short film strips and began to explain that what we had seen, for possibly more than thirty minutes, was offcuts from other film leaders. These are segments from the beginning other films where single strips of colour were added before the actual production. He fixed disparate parts together creating a loop.

Some of the film strips have a series of holes down either one side only or both. When these strips go through a projector, that hole will make a sound. Through playing with adjacent projectors the optical sound was multiplied creating rhythmic and hallucinatory effects on the audience. The projections when through cycles of development like a ‘classical sonata’ (Sherwin and Loo, 2008, p252).

Our eyes were situated horizontally whilst he began to move and overlay one screen onto another. The seated relationship found in the cinema remains the same but one can also turn back and witness the construction of the work by Sherwin’s interaction with the projectors.

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With traditional films time is established and one knows how long there are to be seated.

There is an understanding of the audience’s time bound occupation of that space. Sherwin delivered no such information before the start of the performance. I asked him what determined his length of his performance, he responded stating he usually went on his own artistic instinct breaking away from set times.

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Binaries

Disney, 1930. Meeting at Mickey Mouse Club [electronic print] Available at: http://i.imgur.com/ TxtlSWN.jpg[Accessed 02 March 2016]

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Rancière outlines a binary of active and passive spectatorship in his text The Emancipated Spectator. The binary is set in the context of theatre (also extending to performance art), he states that the audience are ‘passive voyeurs’ because they are being separated from the action. For Rancière the uncritical eye limits vision. The audience are being captivated by the image without learning about the process of production. The illusion of the theatre becomes another reality that the viewer is separated from by being in their seat unable to move. Mobility becomes a guide to emancipation as he believes that knowledge is gained through action.

The relationship becomes collaborative with Rancière’s proposal, having the audience assimilated into the production and use their world of acquired understanding to learn. The audience bring their codes, representations and knowledge to construct their interpretation of the performance.

Even stating that there should be no spectators in the new theatre but only ‘scientific investigators’ or ‘experimenters’ those who are analysing the spectacle whilst seeking to demystify the illusions being presented. The idea of spectacle being the external, the field of vision which the audience doesn’t learn from by looking. The new theatre must take the idea of a separated reality from the performance and use it against itself like a self-destructive mechanism. One should not digest the images without learning from them but the theatre must reveal the processes of

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production in operation behind the illusion.

(Rancière, 2011) Although the passive/active binary does well to open an argument onto spectatorship it has been used in an ideological battle between the cinema and the museum. ‘…”immobile” and “passive” spectator on the one hand, and the “mobile” and “active” visitor of museums’ (Pantenburg, 2012, p78). The cinema audience is discredited through their association with immobility. The gallery visitor is placed as an superior spectator.

Spectatorship is not a seen by others as meaning either passive or active, ‘there is no such thing as the ‘spectator’, just as there is no such thing as the ‘cinema’’ (Pantenburg, 2012, p.80).

Spectatorship is seen rather through a wider lens of poststructuralist ‘Heteroglossia’ coined by linguist Mikhail Bakhtin (b. 1895-1975) as giving multiple viewpoints on the term spectator instead of the official binary of passive or active.

Spectatorship through reader response theory focuses on the individual and their own conventions and understanding to a text (or image). Reading here is a creative act and not seen as a limiting factor to gaining knowledge.

Actively constructing meaning through reading thereby debunking the authoritative single perspective of the author in the text (or other cultural phenomena).

If expanded cinema is for the active ‘thinking’ audience, what room for interpretation does one actually have?

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In author Tim Griffin’s text ‘On Multiple Screens’ he speaks about the work of artist Gretchen Bender’s (b. 1951-2004) Total Recall video installation. Multiscreen watching doesn’t become an alienating experience in Bender’s installation. The eyes become active through critically scanning the multiple images, gaining knowledge through looking. That there is a structure in her work that becomes evident to the viewer once the single focal point is expanded into multiple focal points.

Through difference and comparison, the viewer is analysing work and not becoming a ‘passive voyeur’ devoid of reason.

[Accessed 25 February 2016]

Motion In Form 2

Bender, G., 1987. Total Recall [electronic print] Available at: http://www.monopol-magazin.de/sites/ default/files/GretchenBender_TotalRecall_1.jpg [Accessed 25 February 2016] Hufton & Crow, 2015. University of Greenwich Stockwell Street Building [electronic print] Available at: http:// www.monopol-magazin.de/sites/default/files/ GretchenBender_TotalRecall_1.jpg [Accessed 02 March 2015]

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The acetate collage that I produced during the course of the workshop was made in a very simple manner. The perceived difficulty in producing the piece – found through listening to what had said in the exhibition - did not exist. The assumption was that it was a long time spent in the darkroom contact printing with some other technique as yet unknown.

The process was terribly simple: inkjet printer, acetate film, scissors and Sellotape. This is in sharp contrast to the opposite: numerous lengths of film being exposing to varieties of brightness, hours of washing 16mm film in chemicals, then finally starting to collage the film strips.

A notion of simplicity leading to a wow factor effect was impressed on me during the event.

I also felt that although the task set during the workshop stage of the event was to produce

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a 16mm film; I was encouraged to explore, taking tangents and detours in the work. To see everything as an opportunity instead of a potential failure is a great technique I saw used by the Slade Art Students (who also produced pieces).

The piece communicated a number of codes, none of which I had pre-planned. I used acetate prints cut to 16mm dimensions to signify 16mm film. However, the key component of the film sprockets was missing meaning that these cut acetate strips would never go through a projector.

I had appropriated vectors from another artist and the response I got was that the overlaying of vectors produced what felt like optical art where static lines appear to be in movement.

I liked the idea that although the work was a still image it became a sort of moving image.

Another response received was that this must be some kind African print work or an emulation of it. The piece was actually made up of a lot of western imagery consisting of colourized stills from the film ‘The Night of the Hunter’(1955), images of Stockwell street building, buildings by architect Paul Rudolf, dots, gradients.

‘Act of reading is an act of creation’ (ref) I began to appreciate that their world (the viewer) was just as important as my world (the author) only through the discussions with students and guests to the exhibition, in conjunction with reading response theory.

Davis, D., 2015. Motion In Form 2

Expanded cinema has adopted ideas on

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Spectatorship

spectatorship from theorist and theatre director Bertolt Brecht (b. 1898-1956). Brecht believed in using artistic devices that make the audience ‘socially active’ (National Theatre Discover, 2012). He would want the audience to hold both a belief in the illusion performed on stage and a disbelief by revealing the devices used to create the illusion. This tension between separate realities comes from Brecht’s theories on alienation. These are displayed on stage by backstage crew members or props outside of the reality of the narrative. The audience are made aware of the crew members presence on stage and the devices that they are using to create theatrical illusion.

McCoy, J. and K., 2007. High Seas [electronic print] Available at: http://www.mccoyspace.com/project/3/ [Accessed 02 March 2016]

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‘We are interested in the difference between the three dimensional unrealistic space of the models and the realistic simulation the computers and cameras can create.’ (McCoy, 2005) A similar tactic to that used by Brecht is seen in the work of artists Jennifer and Kevin McCoy (b. 1968 and 1967). The High Seas (2007) a sculptural video installation using a fixed boat maquette. A miniature video camera and a light circle the boat maquette whilst undulating along a wooden guide. There is a video channel feed from the miniature camera to the video projector.

The projected video creates an illusion of the ship being tossed on stormy seas. The footage is looped by a rubber belt moving the camera and light around the maquette.

The authorship is given to the wooden guide

Expanding Cinema

and the motor. The mechanisms behind the piece are revealed in sharp contrast to its dissemination. One can view the camera looping around the boat in juxtaposition to the illusion projected on the wall. The separation of the two realities are to be held in the gallery visitor’s head simultaneously.

McCoy, J. and K., 2007. High Seas [electronic print] Available at: http://www.mccoyspace.com/project/3/ [Accessed 02 March 2016]

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Software

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Software

McCoy, J. and K., 2001. 201: A Space Algorithm [electronic print] Available at: http://www.mccoyspace. com/project/48/ [Accessed 02 March 2016]

201: A Space Algorithm (2001) is an internet based artwork by the McCoy’s that gives users autonomy in re-editing Stanley Kubrick’s (b.

1928-1999) film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

The edited work can be lengthened or shorten a multiple number of times. The narrative of the story has the meaning changed by the user’s experimentation with the software. The authorship of the work is shared between the user and the software. The project opens up a new audience by being placed on the internet and not limited to a gallery.

The McCoy’s have been developing custom software and hardware that gives their artwork a live, performative aspect whilst implicating the audience in the production of the work. These themes are similar to semiotician Umberto Eco’s (b. 1932-2016) text The Open Work. Eco spoke of the Open Work being a collaboration between the audience and the artist. The artist selects the rules for engagement to be put into place giving the work a level of control. The audience are invited to take part in the work, anticipating its completion but are also given autonomy in their interpretation. The form of the work will be completely different to what the artist had initially started with (Eco, 1962, p. 36).

‘Before their softwarization, the techniques available in a particular medium were part of its “hardware”.’ (Manovich, 2013, p. 200).

If we look at Disney’s Circarama Theatre it is an analogue representation that is now replicated in web application software Google Street Map. A set of nine cameras are attached

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to the roof of a car which is driven around four American cities, recording its journey. The films are processed and projected on screens that form a 360 view of the projected footage.

The technique is called CircleVision360° first used in the film ‘America the Beautiful’ (1955).

The projectors are positioned in between the gaps of screens and project images across to the opposite screen. The audience standing in the middle are surrounded by images of the landscape and can turn to pick another view of it.

Software has been able mimic the effects created by the CircleVision360° technique in Virtual Reality. The Deleuzeian definition of the virtual is that which is in ‘tension with the actual’. That both the actual and virtual are real although one physically and the other conceptually. Virtual reality immerses users in imaginary world where the experience is felt as real even though it is only visual.

‘There is no separation any longer, no empty space, no absence: you enter the screen and the visual image unhindered.’ (Baudrillard, 2002).

The new perspectives achieved in virtual reality is in the removal of the cinematic frame, immersing the users within a completely different world from their actual. The removal of the frame breaks with the old way of filmmaking.

Disney, 1967. Circle Vision 360 [electronic print] Available at: http://www.dchillier.com/expoextra/ telephone_circle_vision.jpg [Accessed 02 March 2016] Disney, 1967. Circle Vision 360 [electronic print] Available at: http://40.media.tumblr. com/4fce1c8042124aac243af0dd711b3d70/tumblr_ mjl0diLEKS1rrmirso1_r1_500.jpg [Accessed 02 March 2016]

In my research, I will be focusing on software now being as of greater importance than hardware. The reasoning behind this is software can expand beyond the hardware

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available through the addition of new information in updates. Software can be taken for granted because it is used habitually. The user’s annoyance with the headset heightens their awareness of it evident through labels such as ‘bulky’ and ‘cumbersome’ (Dean, 2016).

Software already allows designers to create their ideas spatially which can be transferred to view in a virtual reality headset.

Software, using photographs, can manipulate scenes and environments to create a realistic atmosphere or a fantastical one depending on the instruction set by the designer. Designing through software can be a liberating experience as one does not need actual materials because they are emulated digitally (Manovich, 2013, p. 203).

The divide is shrinking between professionals and amateurs in film. Eyewantchange are an organisation promoting the democratic use of mobile phones as creative devices for film-making. Set up by six proactive students opposing the ‘elitist’ access to equipment and economic of mainstream media. They encourage other students and non-students to take part in their annual competition initiated in 2014, including judges such as actor Richard E Grant. Their interests intersect documentary and films relating to social issues inspired by the uprising of the Arab spring and the use of mobile phones to document the violence.

Software has liberated the mobile phone user giving them apps that utilise their hardware

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for creativity purposes. The Camera VR app from Google allows users to record 360-degree panorama with sound that the audience can view in the phone. In addition, they may also view with a Google Cardboard headset by separating the image into stereoscopic vision.

Mobile phones accessibility has blurred the roles of producers and spectators. Networked sites such as YouTube allow anyone to be a spectator and broadcaster. One current goal for YouTube is to now, ‘democratize virtual reality’ (Alba, 2015) transporting an immersive theatre like the Circarama to anyone with a mobile phone and a headset.

Democracy alone is not the only driver for this expansion of cinema, but revenues from advertisements.

A scheme entitled the YouTube Partner Programme allows users to consent to allowing advertisements on their content in return for money. YouTube take 55% of the revenue made from user enabling Google Adsense (Rosenberg, 2015). YouTube’s ad revenue is threatened by competitor Facebook’s expansion of their online video service -which currently generates -‘8 billion daily views’ - into 360 videos as well (Alba, 2015). In addition, Facebook own Oculus (a virtual reality headset company) which are releasing premium headsets unlike low priced cardboard headsets from Google.

Google, 2015. Star Wars CardBoard [electronic print] Available at: http://tech01.us/news/experience-starwars-through-vr-with-google-cardboard-2015-12-03 [Accessed 02 March 2016]

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360-degree video is also replicated in 3D animation using a projection setting called equirectangular in Blender. Blender is an open-source software which is being used for my tests of 360-degree videos. Open Source is software that can be collaboratively developed by a community of participants.

This software is democratic and free, with a community creating works that rival outputs from competitors. One’s mobile phone can also photomap a space in a sphere similar to the Google Street view. This is with the photosphere option in the app that lets users create 360-degree panoramas.

What effect does this have on practice?

There has been a debate of whether smaller firms are able to be transition economically into virtual reality cinema (Dean, 2016) .

The open source movement offers free software like Blender that would remove a lot of the production cost spent on software.

To replace expensive camera equipment one could use their mobile phone.

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360-degree video test

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Conclusion

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Conclusion

Expanding cinema: a definition

Revealing the mechanisms of production.

A pedagogy that asks the audience to simultaneously hold in their minds both the production aesthetics and the back door processes behind them. These may include revealing the technological apparatuses of cinema for example, the idea of the loop. The loop as a structural method of organisation, using the film projector mechanism to loop a sequence but also in QuickTime video software the loop button which creates a continuous repetition. Implicating the audience within the production.

Royal Victoria Gardens, North Woolwich.

The Invitation for spectators to become collaborators. The roles of creator and spectator are blurred. The ownership is gained as they read the work, interpreting it using their acquired codes of representation and knowledge.

A redesign of the single screen.

The birth of environments where one gains new knowledge through scanning multiple focal points refusing to be hypnotised by a single view.

A response to the architectural context with which the film is shown. The audience are actively thinking about the methods and processes within the work. To consider its relevance to their context of reception. The deployment of accessible technology that alters our environment through augmented

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and virtual reality. The mobile phone as both a display for the work and a tool to create it. Reimagining the cinema and its means of production.

The design project

My design project is expanding cinema into the Royal Victoria Gardens, North Woolwich.

The younger generation in North Woolwich felt lost by being sandwiched between new developments part of a regeneration project for the area. They were without a space they felt they owned, apart from a local youth centre that was not opened regularly. The Royal Victoria Gardens although recently refurbished has already become abused by graffiti which deterred some young people from going to the park. (Phil Cohen, 2013) The concept behind my design is to appreciate screens as architectural forms which are sculptural and augmented. The screens are spread across the park that are triggered by geo-locational software in mobiles that display the augmented screens. The sculptures and augmented screens are an interactive open work that responds to the needs of ownership the young people of North Woolwich raised. The design is accessible through the use of a mobile phone.

Davis, D., 2016 . Rotating Virtual Screens

In the process of researching my thesis I discovered that software had been able to emulate the Circarama technique in YouTube 360 video. The format is a new interaction in web video for users and brought a lot of joy to

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Conclusion

my design project. The representation of an architectural project in 360 video is intuitive, fun, and is completed by the individual’s involvement with it. I have been excited to show others my 360 video tests but mostly in showing works from other YouTubers. The reaction people have to it for the first time has been encouraging and helped me not to obey the thoughts of giving up.

Analysis of Thesis

Davis, D., 2015. Chronogram

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The research undertaken is situated in a postdisciplinary environment by its use of new technologies being intersected with theories on screen, spectatorship and software.

The research for thesis gave me a number of new insights into theory. The first was freedom of creation derived from an approach to arts-based research. This was during the Motion In Form 2 workshop, realising that tangents are useful and should be encouraged in generating new knowledge. It was here I learned about reader response theory during the discussions with the Slade students at the exhibition. The responses showed the disparity between their world and mine in relation to the concepts and methods behind my work in the exhibition. My understanding of reader response theory and arts-based research before this event was limited to texts in books. However, at the event these theories became alive in the discussions with others and the experience of arts-based research first hand.

Expanding Cinema

I found the structuralist and poststructuralist approach to analysing projects useful.

Expanded cinema which is vastly open because of the various points of entry many artists have taken. The binary method of analysis helped first to start the discussion narrowly and then with the poststructuralist concept of heteroglossia to expand into wider perspectives.

Some works were difficult to analyse based on photographs as one needed to view the projects in person for a better understanding.

I would not have the same level of enjoyment seeing Guy Sherwin’s Live Cinema in a photograph and not being able to hear him discuss it in person. The photograph on its own divorces the researcher from the world of sound, context, and autonomy of perspective.

The sound in Live Cinema affected me the most out of the whole event.

Being able to see works live can also bring a bias in the research. One can be less critical because of the appreciation of the works displayed and the artists’ efforts in creating them.

Davis, D., 2015 . 360 test still

The software techniques shown in this thesis could become redundant within a couple of years’ time. A new app or plugin for software can replace a lot of the techniques undertaken in my tests. The research into software will need a constant refocusing as this area continues to change daily.

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Conclusion

The wider transferability of the ideas from this discourse could be to architectural design where by the client(s) participates in an open work. They complete the design by their interaction with the work. The architect then sets up rules and organises the work in such a way that its form can be recreated a multiple number of times by different participants. The ideas may also be useful for artists working in performance art with an interest in software and mobile technology. I had met a student during the Motion In Form 2 conference talks, who was expanding cinema by intersecting mobile phone technology with dance.

The teleology beyond this particular thesis is to continue to create new works of expanding cinema. I intend to further participation into and expand the documentary genre of film. During the course of my thesis I had researched about this genre however, it proved distracting for this discourse and was left out. The point of departure is taking Brad Butler’s view on Expanded Cinema as the ‘idea of what cinema is?’ and to rephrase it as the idea of what could cinema become?

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360 video conclusion

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Bibliography

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Bibliography

Books

Balakier, A. S. and Balakier, J. J. (1995) The spatial infinite at Greenwich in works by Christopher Wren, James Thornhill, and James Thomson: The Newton connection. United States: Edwin Mellen Press Bishop, C. (ed.) (2006) Participation. 3rd edn.

London: Whitechapel Art Gallery Bishop, C. H. (2005) Installation art. London: Tate Publishing.

Blomberg, K. (ed.) (2015) Haus-Rucker-Co: Architectural utopia reloaded. Germany: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig Buchanan, I. (2010) A dictionary of critical theory.

Oxford: Oxford University Press Burgin, V. (1996) Some cities. 1st edn. London: Reaktion books Burgin, V. (2006) In different spaces: Place and memory in visual culture. 1st edn. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press Burgin, V. (2006). Possessive, Pensive and Possessed. In: Campany, D. (ed.) (2007) Burgin, V. and Streitberger, er (2009) Situational aesthetics: Selected writings by Victor Burgin.

Leuven: Distributed in North America by Cornell University Press

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Busine, L. and Oursler, T. (2013) Tony Oursler/ Vox vernacular: An anthology. Edited by Denis Gielen. Brussels: Yale University Press.

Butler, B and Mirza, K. (2008). On Expanded Cinema. In: Rees, A. L., Curtis, D. and White, D. (eds.) (2011) Calinescu, M. (1988) Five faces of modernity; modernism, avant-garde, decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. 2nd edn. Durham: Duke University Press Books Campany, D. (ed.) (2007) The cinematic. London: Whitechapel Art Gallery Coates, N. (2003) Guide to ecstacity. London: Laurence King Publishing Coles, A., Kwon, M., Kuchler, S. and Schneider, A. (2000) Site-specificity -the Ethnographic turn: De-, Dis-, ex-, volume 4 (analyses the history of correspondences between art and ethnographic practice). London: Black Dog Publishing Colomina, B. (2008) Domesticity at war.

Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press Crary, J. (2014) 24/7: Late capitalism and the ends of sleep. New York: Verso Books.

Crysler, G., Cairns, S. and Heynen, H. (eds.)

(2012) The sage handbook of architectural theory.

United Kingdom: SAGE Publications

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Diller, E. and Scofidio, R. (1998) Flesh architectural probes the mutant body of architecture. 1st edn. New York: Princeton Architectural Press Eco, U. (2015) How to write a thesis. United States: MIT Press Eco, U. (1962). The Poetics of the Open Work. In: Bishop, C. (ed.) (2006) Garcia, M. (2010) Diagrams of architecture: AD reader. United Kingdom: John Wiley and Sons.

Gordon, D., Yeo, R., Stefano, B., Marclay, C., McCoy, J., Breitz, C., McCoy, K., Lessig, L., Pfeiffer, P., Fast, O. and Grey, M. J. (2004) Cut: Film as found object in contemporary video.

Edited by Stefano Basilico. Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee Art Museum Graham, J. (2015) 2000+: The urgencies of architectural theory. United States: GSAPP Books

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Groat, L.N. and Wang, D. (2012) Architectural research methods / David Wang, Linda N. Groat.

2nd edn. United Kingdom: Wiley, John & Sons.

Hartley, J. (1992) Tele-ology: Studies in television.

United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis Hoesterey, I. (2001) Pastiche: Cultural memory in art, film, literature. United States: Indiana University Press Hunt, J. D. (2014) Historical Ground: The Role of History in Contemporary Landscape Architecture.

United Kingdom: Routledge Hurowitz, S.C. and Weitman, W. (2009) John Baldessari: A catalogue raisonnĂŠ of prints and multiples, 1971 2007. Manchester, VT: Hudson Hills Press Inc.,U.S. Jameson, F. (1992) Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism. 5th edn. London: Verso Books.

Kholeif, O. (ed.) (2015) Moving image. United Kingdom: Whitechapel Gallery Koch, G., Pantenburg, V. and Rothohler, S. (eds.) (2012) Screen dynamics: Mapping the borders of cinema.

Austria: Synema Gesellschaft Fur Film u.

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Koolhaas, R. (2014) Elements. Italy: Marsilio

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Lavin, S. (2011) Kissing architecture. United States: Princeton University Press Leavy, P. (2008) Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. 1st edn. New York: Guilford Publications Lefebvre, M. (ed.) (2006) Landscape and film. 1st edn. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis Manovich, L. (2013) Software takes command.

United States: Continuum Publishing Manovich, L. (2002) The language of new media.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Marchessault, J. and Lord, S. (eds) (2007) Fluid screens, expanded cinema (digital futures).

Torono: University of Toronto Press Marquis, A. G. (2013) The pop revolution: The people who radically transformed the Art World.

London: Tate Publishing Mendini, A. and Spinelli, L. (2009) Domus: V. 9: 1980-1984. Germany: Taschen America Mondloch, K. (2010) Interface Matters: ScreenReliant Installation Art. In: Kholeif, O. (ed.) (2015) Pantenburg, V. (2012) 1970 and Beyond.

Experimental Cinema and Installation Art. In: Koch, G., Pantenburg, V. and Rothohler, S. (eds.) (2012)

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Rancière, J. and Elliott, G. (2007) The future of the image. New York: Verso Books Rancière, J. and Elliott, G. (2011) The emancipated spectator. London: Verso Books Ratti, C. and Claudel, M. (2015) Open source architecture. United Kingdom: Thames & Hudson Rees, A. L., Curtis, D. and White, D. (eds.)

(2011) Expanded cinema: Art, performance, film.

London: Tate Publishing.

Rollins, T. and Ault, J., Group Material (Firm : New York, N.Y.) (2010) Show and tell: A chronicle of group material. United Kingdom: Distributed Art Pub Rush, M. (2007) Video art. London: Thames & Hudson Sadler, S. (1999) The Situationist city. 1st edn.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Salat, S. and Labbe, F., Didier Boy de la Tour (1997) La Releve du reel: Les Arts du chaos et du Virtuel. Paris: HERMANN SCIENCE Schön, D. A. and Schön, D. A. (1991) The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action (arena). Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Shaoqiang, W. (2011) Unlimited page: Innovations in layout design. Edited by Sandu.

Barcelona: Promopress.

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Shaviro, S. (2010) Post cinematic affect. 1st edn.

United Kingdom: Hunt, John Publishing Sherwin, G and Loo, L. (2008). Live Cinema. In: Rees, A. L., Curtis, D. and White, D. (eds.) (2011) Spiller, N. (2008) Visionary architecture: Blueprints of the modern imagination. New York: Thames & Hudson Stallabrass, J. (ed.) (2013) Documentary.

London: Whitechapel Art Gallery.

Sullivan, G. (2010) Art Practice as research: Inquiry in the visual arts. 2nd edn. United States: Sage Publications Wesseling, J. (ed.) (2011) The artist as researcher.

Amsterdam: Valiz White, D. (2011). Expanded Cinema: The Live Record. In: Rees, A. L., Curtis, D. and White, D. (eds.) (2011) Williams, G. (2014) How to write about contemporary art. United Kingdom: Thames & Hudson

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Articles/Journals/Essays/ Magazines/ PDFs/ Ebooks Adorno, T., (1941) “On Popular Music,” Studies in Philosophy and Social Science 9.

Aidan Hehir (2011) Hyper-reality and Statebuilding: Baudrillard and the unwillingness of international administrations to cede control, Third World Quarterly, 32:6,1073-1087, DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2011.584722.

Alba, D., 2015. YouTube’s Grand Plan to Make VR Accessible to Everybody. WIRED, [online] Available at: http://www.wired.com/2015/11/ youtube-360-virtual-reality-video [Accessed 27 February 2016].

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Colomina. B, 2001. Enclosed by Images: The Eameses’ Multimedia Architecture. [pdf] The Grey Room. Available at: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/ abs/10.1162/152638101750172975#.Vsr-d5yLT4Y [Accessed 22 February 2016].

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Edwards, J., 2015. The biggest stars on YouTube make huge incomes ... yet they can’t keep most of it. Business Insider UK, [online] Available at: http://uk.businessinsider.com/ money-youtube-stars-actually-make-20142?r=US&IR=T [Accessed 1 March 2016].

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Myeung-Sook Yoh ,The Reality of Virtual Reality.

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Lectures

Butcher, M. (2016), Post Works, UCL Arch Objects lecture series: London.

Chard, N. (2016), Drawing Uncertainty, UCL Arch Objects lecture series: London.

Haralambidou, P. (2016), The Architecture of Desire, UCL Arch Objects lecture series: London.

Joy, A. (2013), “Aesthetics and consumption”, in Solomon, M.R. (ed.), Why We Buy: Understanding Consumer Behavior, The Business & Management Collection, Henry Stewart Talks Ltd, London (online at http:// hstalks.com/?t=MM1643588)

Online Video

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Phil Cohen, 2013. Young People’s View of Regeneration in North Woolwich [video online] Available at: https://youtu.be/LSR8CJEuUfI [Accessed 28 February 2016].

Stolarz, 2013. View from the People Wall. [video online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=M6BA4baRcVo [Accessed 22 February 2016].

Tate, 2009. What is Expanded Cinema? [video online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=lDJqA6jOXYw&index=37&list=PLpKuPD vrj96AsMO-cKv0jLdcr4CswZmUq [Accessed 13 November 2015].

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Friday, December 4, 2015 1:51 AM

It is into the early hours of Friday morning. I’m very grateful for all the information I found out today. My blog is becoming more and more layered, like a sort of research palimpsest. I have noticed that investigating the things that people talk about (for example Ranciere and Debord about Brecht) has opened up worlds of information.

I realize more now that actually bracketing (I think its called when one places ones thought on paper whilst doing something else) has helped to give me more brain power for other things. I used to hold a lot of information in my head but now when I have an idea for something I just write it on the blog.

I have an enjoyable time when I revisit my blog with new information to post onto it.

Today was quite diverse. Two works by Butler one of which he considers his publication ‘Information for films’ as Expanded Cinema, at first I thought this notion was bonkers but did not write that I thought so in my thesis. I wonder if I was wrong in doing so? I suppose my resistance to saying so was from my acceptance of Andy Warhol’s Brillo boxes as art and remembering the opposition he received for that work. I think sometimes art or any creative work that expands our understanding of the subject/object/ways of interpretation can be considered as art and I changed my view on Butler’s ‘Instructions for films’ from bonkers to a work of expanded cinema but not

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in the traditional sense of course as there is no screen (or maybe the card is the screen?).

Writing had been a bit slow today but I managed to add to the sections on expanded cinema, active spectator (however this needs reordering) and art based research. I made a diagram as well, which really helped to see the parts of the thesis all together and how somethings feed into others. I am trying to restraint myself from making connections yet but it does appear to me that what people call expanded cinema has been around before cinema but uses the conventions of cinema. I think I should re read the cinematic to reinvestigate the notion of the cinematic.

11 December 2015 11:33 I’ve spent the week in the motion in form 2 workshop Jim graciously accepted me onto.

It’s been an open eye opener seeing how the Slade and Greenwich students worked. There was a lot of experimenting and seeing where things go without having a complete overview or appreciation for what it will become, which opened up new knowledge and allowed people to be surprised by the medium. It did feel like quite an intuitive process with a lot of tangents and trial and error for myself.

Some of my darkroom work did not come out well and some sculptures I was making did not show but I’m very grateful for the collage that I managed to make and Jim’s help in finding an

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appropriate structure and Mel’s help with the light box.

The talks were very interesting as well and this week has given me tactics which reading about I can only grasp in part but actually making is a completely different understanding that arises.

We had Mark Webber speak about the London and New York filmmakers’ cooperative and during the q and a things arose between the differences of now and then such as space.

Expanded cinema could have been shown in derelict buildings in central London for cheap short lease rent whereas today there was talk of some surviving places like no-w-here gallery struggling to keep the daily running costs of their establishment. Also through the talks came the limits of the arts council who only support artist projects and not the rent or purchasing of buildings.

Wednesday, January 13, 2016 01:31

I struggled today to write. So took Mark’s advice and began to work something else. I began to play around with ideas about what the output could look like. Did some sketches.

Made some 360 animation test, although crude I felt they were a needed first phase to try out what it would be like to put certain types of images and information into a 360 animation and what that would look like.

Went to Arch Objects Lecture at the Bartlett.

Felt it was an interesting night especially the part about drawing as doing something that

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text could not and using drawing as a means of analyzing a work of Marcel Duchamp. Put the test images from earlier together with some transitions and have noticed some weird things caused by the transitions. Â Â

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Appendix

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Appendix

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Appendix

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Appendix

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Expanding Cinema

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Tutor: SimonWithers ARCT 1060 Architectural Thesis University of Greenwich 04 March 2016 Dominic Davis

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