Week 8

 Materiality:

- Materiality of film (16mm film, filmstrip) = creative medium in experimental cinema

- London Filmmakers Co-op and New York Filmmaker’s Co-op under Jonas Mekas championed experimental film practices

- Direct Animation / Camera-less Filmmaking: Stan Brakhage (Mothlight, 1963) and Len Lye (1930s–40s)

- Involves painting, scratching, manipulating film directly without a camera

- Expands language and conceptual aspects of cinema

Connection to Expanded Cinema: 

- Direct animation highlights Expanded Cinema’s goal to expand cinema beyond the camera

- Emphasizes experimenting the film material as an artistic medium

Reflection:

I appreciate how cinema is both a physical and conceptual medium when learning of Stan Brakhage and Len Lye and how they manipulated the filmstrip itself. I got the chance to practice this in class and it was an honest, messy, confusing, but one that expands my creativity overall, because you are free to do anything with the filmstrip yourself. Moreover, I was encouraged to think about materiality of media in my own practice and see possibilities in the tools and materials I usually don't think are useful.

Week 6

 Projector Performances:

- Bradley Eros and Karl Lemieux manipulate projectors live as creative instruments

- Techniques: optical manipulation, altering frame rates, painting on film, using multiple projectors

Microcinemas:

- Emerged: mid-1990s as small, intimate screening spaces

- Emphasize communal and participatory cinema experiences

- Counteracts solitary digital viewing -> strengthens connection between filmmaker and audience

Digital Technologies:

- Digital mixing, projection, and VJ culture expand the language of Expanded Cinema

- Integrates analog and digital techniques, offering new creative and conceptual possibilities

- "Digital turn” reflects a broader cultural shift: analog to digital media

Third Wave Expanded Cinema:

- Revives avant-garde experimentation -> media convergence and commercial cinema

- Maintains ties to cinema history and language while challenging traditional narratives

- Focuses on multi-art practices and unique interactions between artist, material, and audience

Reflection:

Cinema to me now is more active and experimental than I realized before. Integrating digital techs shows that media changes and artists continue to push new boundaries, like blending analog and digital in creative ways. Cinema is more than a place to tell a story, it can also be a playground for experimentation and interpretation.

Week 5

Waves of Expanded Cinema: 

- First Wave Liberation (1965): experimental, intermedia, avant-garde exploration

- Second Wave Identity crisis (1966–1975): narrative-driven, politically conscious, intermedia performances

- Third Wave Re-vis(it)ed (mid-1990s–present): revives avant-garde principles in response to media convergence and commercial cinema

- Reflects skepticism toward mainstream cinema and “death of cinema” claims

- Maintains connection to cinema history, language, avant-garde craft

Characteristics of Contemporary EC: 

- References cinema history or language while separating from traditional narrative

- Emphasizes media convergence and multi-art practices

- Can incorporate analog film aesthetics, even in digital contexts

- Unique relationship between artist, material, audience

Conceptual Framing -> contemporary EC differs from video art or multimedia art because it must engage with cinema in some way

Reflection:

As someone who enjoys analog crafts, I am fascinated by how contemporary EC blends analog and digital techniques, as it suits my personal taste in filmmaking. Furthermore, it engages the audience uniquely, while also challenges traditional narratives. 

Week 4

 Assignment submissions and deadlines:

- Written response got extended -> Sunday 17th Aug 

Copy right use:

- Found footage + media sampling allowed

- Copyrighted material permitted for educational use (Copyright Act 1968)

- Studio Journals: Film and document creative process, schedule filming on Friday

Contemporary/expanded cinema practices:

- Example: The Tree of Life by Maotik (Portugal, 2025): cycle of nature represented with animated leaves via TouchDesigner

- Encouraged to explore TouchDesigner software

Presentation tips:

- Use QuickTime with loop function ON

- DIY lens caps if needed

- Sync video start with music

Week 3

Media archaeology:

- School, field, and methodology studying new media through past media cultures

- Connections between past and present media practices are formed

- Insights into contemporary media, communications, society

- Examines artifacts, ideas, concepts, and practices, as they're no longer just objects 

- Shares strong relationship with expanded cinema through historical and conceptual engagement

Expanded cinema and media archaeology:

- Expanded Cinema emerged in mid-60s experimental film movement (US/UK)

- Engaging with historical cinema practices (e.g., multi-screen, live performance) -> applies media archaeology

- Multi-screen film Napoléon (1927) can be analyzed through both frameworks

Silent cinemas (1890s–1920s):

- "Silent film” can be misleading: live musical accompaniment (piano, organ, orchestra, phonograph). - Early experimentation in narrative, form, and multi-sensory experiences -> suits Expanded Cinema concepts

- E.g. Nosferatu (1922) with live orchestra

Multi-screen cinema and polyvision:

- Early experimentation in France and Germany in 1920s with multi-screen formats

- Napoléon (1927): 

+ Polyvision = three simultaneous projections in a horizontal row

+ Precursor to 1950s Cinerama and 1960s Expanded Cinema

+ Inspiration from fine art (triptychs, polyptychs, Renaissance painting)

Cinemara (1950s, US) 

- Three synchronized projectors on wide and curved screen -> immerse viewers

- Invented by Fred Waller, first film: This Is Cinerama (1952)

- Purpose-built theaters created immersive cinematic experiences

- Techniques influenced later multi-frame and split-screen approaches

Reflection:

I was very impressed by how intertwined past and present of film culture are. I was introduced to a range of different film forms, from the ones with older history (silent cinema) to later immersive formats (Cinerama), and I understand that expanded cinema is built from decades of experimentation and innovation. 

Week 2

 - Video = to see in Latin (supports video arts' broad scope)

- Video art includes analogue video, digital video, film, multimedia moving-image practices

- Strong crossover with other art forms (expanded cinema, performance, sculpture, installation)

- Emerged in the 60s-70s alongside expanded cinema through formal and conceptual experimentation

- Can be single-channel works or multi-screen immersive; immersed in galleries, museums, online

- Often explores time, space, body

- Narratives and dialogue are optional

- Historically linked to analogue videotape until digital technologies opened up the category

- Video art is time-based, audio-visual, highly experimental

- Nam June Paik and others pioneered video art in 1965 using portable video technology

- Video art is now a major part of contemporary art culture but still has contested boundaries with expanded cinema

Reflection:

I got to understand video art is a very wide and flexible category, rooted from its original meaning in Latin. Knowing this encourages me to be bolder and stepping out of my comfort zone when doing my future creative work, because there is no "right way to do it".

Week 1

Expanded cinema elements:

- Challenges traditional cinema's codes and conventions

- Expands creative possibilities of cinema = artistic and cultural expression

Involves:

+ Multi-screen + multi-source projection 

+ Live performance elements 

+ Multimedia and unconventional exhibition spaces 

+ Immersive, mixed-media experiences 

+ Not a single cohesive movement - a broad set of practices including 

+ Video/media installation and projection art AV performances, VJing, live visuals with music 

+ Multi-screen films and performance art 

+ Materialist, flicker, camera-less films

...

- Breaks away from norms (continuity editing - seamless storytelling across time and space) 

- Originated in late 1960s and early 1970s in USA, Uk, Europe, emerging from experimental film culture and counterculture movements 

- Created as a response to the limitations of traditional cinema 

- Push to explore new artistic forms

Reflection:

This is my first time getting introduced to expanded cinema. I am very inspired by how these practices turn cinema into an immersive and experimental event, which feels more like an exhibition or museum than normal cinematic experience. I am motivated to think beyond fixed screens and linear storytelling in my own future works.

Key artist insights

Carolee Schneemann 16mm film Viet-Flakes (1965)

- Extensive archive of Vietnam War atrocity images

- Collected obsessively over 5-year period from foreign newspapers and magazines

- 16mm camera with close-up lenses and magnifying glasses to visually enter the photographs

- Imagery forms a volatile, unsettling animation -> exposes the violence embedded in the images

- Format: 

+ Projection onto circular white disc at the rear of the stage

+ Dual projectors rotating 360 degrees -> activate entire surrounding space (Duncan White, p.25)

- Filming technique intensifies distortion -> heightening emotional impact and forcing confrontation with horrors of war

- Disturbing and shocking viewers' affective response 

- Strong anti-war intent => challenge media representation of conflict

Dirk de Bruyn 

- Not someone we talked about in class but is the artist whom I did research for my personal artist research

- His work draws from themes of migration, trauma, family history

- Intimate memories expressed through highly experimental visual language

- Immersive environments that confront viewers; intense visual and auditory experiences

- Highlights the physicality of medium: film stock, grain, flicker, afterimages

- Uses destruction, distortion, repetition -> evoke memory erosion 

- His works inspired me with my approach when doing the final major production of Wind is Time when doing group discussion, I suggested that we can do materials to emphasize the physicality like what Bruyn did, as well as doing grains in the afterimages

- I was very inspired by his works Homecomings (1987) and Conversations with my mother (1990), as they both took on the theme that our group chose for our project: memories and childhood, while distorted by migration, trauma and other events, his works took "distortment" into experimentation where he plays with different storytelling forms, different setups from documentary to non-linear sequences

Production and Exhibition Documentation

 

Expanded cinema theory integration

Materials:

- Projected onto fabric instead of flat-screen

- Moving fabric and wind highlight the material surface of projection; screen is part of the work

Audience as participants:

- Viewers can move around and see images warp and overlap

- Audience becomes part of the distortion 

- Breaks the passive spectator model; transforms them into participants

Intermedia approach:

- Combine fabric structure projection, and wind

- Fusing different mediums to create sensory experiences

Collaborative process (technical and production details)

 Camera: Canon IXY 410F: old digital aesthetic suitable for memory and nostalgia

(Real footage from behind the scenes)

Editing:

- Adobe Premiere: sequencing and visual effects

- CapCut: stylized color work and accessibility

(Real footage from behind the scenes)

Challenges:

- Original three-screen plan considered infeasible by tutor so we prompted a refined direction with him

- Filming children required consent from parents, although we didn't film directly into their faces, so we sent out permission emails to them right on set

- Deciding on how to set up the installation was uncertain for us because we only had it in vision before, however we had the help with the tutor, additionally single-screen set up was very much easier than triple-screen plan

Narrative structure and installation design

 Childhood:

- Soft green leaves, pinwheels, child on a swing

- Symbolizing vitality, innocence, new beginnings

Middle age:

- Adult portrait, flowing hair, scattered papers

- Swing occupied by a mother and child, shows responsibility and growth

=> Creates an image of moving on through life, the person now seeing their own children playing on the swing they once played, showing how life changes and the cycle of life

Elderhood:

- Dry leaves, clock pendulum imagery

- Empty swing still moving => reflection, absence, transition

=> Time proofs that nothing is permanent, every moment will then becomes a memory to cherish

Installation design:

- Wind as the connection and influencing memories across 3 stages of life 

- The swing as the central motif symbolizing the cycle and momentum of time 

- Projection on transparent/sheer fabric handing by a clothes rack → creates a ghostly and epheral visual quality → highlighting memory’s ambiguity 

- A seamless media loop encompassing all 3 stages 

- Physical element - use of fans/airflow directed at the sheer screen → generating real-time image distortion 

- Nostalgic music + ambient wind sounds to enhance introspection 2-3 sets of headphones → ensures an intimate, focused and undisturbed auditory experience

Artistic influences and expanded cinema references

 Bill Viola (1 example)

- Layered imagery, translucent projection surfaces, poetic spirituality

- Wind used as a physical and symbolic factor to link sound, movement, time

- Expanded cinema principles incorporated:

+ Optical experimentation

+ Atypical projection surfaces

+ Blurring boundaries between physical and digital elements

+ Focus on performativity, immersion, spectator experience

(We also got many of our ideas for mood board from Pinterest, a good source for visualization)

Concept Development

We decided to pick up the central theme of time and memory, mainly focusing on how memories shift and distort across life stages. The initial concept we planned was a multi-screen installation to create a highly immersive and interactive experience for audiences.

Our initial concept was using a multi-screen installation to create a highly immersive and interactive experience for audiences. However, after considering the feasibility of the project, we nailed down to a single-screen installation for spatial clarity while retaining conceptual depth.

Visual direction:

- Blurred faces and overlapping silhouettes

- Scenes of a swing and playground

- Wind-influenced elements: pinwheels, flowers, fluttering paper 

- Portraits representing different ages and phases of life

- Conceptual metaphor: memories as unstable projections; overlap and transform over time