The Digital DIvide

I found this article to be rather interesting with respect to what seems in my eyes to be a rather understated concept that I feel has penetrated a lot of various art forms today. What caught my eye that Bishop touched upon was this idea of art relying now much more heavily on a selective process of picking elements from previously made art, rather than time being invested to make your own new art.

To me this selective process is the very backbone of modern art. Various examples seem to fit into how this is true not just in your conventional sense of art but quite frankly this "sampling" is the basis of most digital art today. My current definition of digital art includes musical pieces as well as film. In today's music industry countless instrumentals are created solely by taking a previous piece and chopping it up and rearranging the sounds to form something new but still musically pleasant.

Artists such as J.Cole and Kanye West made a name off of sampling old soul records but the buck doesn't stop with music. Filmmakers have consistently borrowed various ideas, or even occasionally re-made former films in there own artistic way and by smartly using some iconic characters that would put people back in the seats to view a new take in a heartbeat.

Conventional art, in the sense, sculpture, drawing etc. also draws heavily from inspiration of other artists and previous works to bolster a certain direction for many. Seeing how greatly a good selection can impact the outcome of artists message it makes me without a doubt believe that selection is as much of a tool in today's modern art world as a paintbrush.

Bishop hopes to highlight how the digital world doesn't seem to be as appreciated when it comes to art because people have this preconceived notion of what are is. Yet the the digital aspect is prevalent in many new modern pieces of art. This mental "divide" is what I believe is preventing artists from truly getting with the modern times and doing more and more innovative things with there pieces and embracing the fact that selection of previous work plays in creating art for a different age. A digital age.

Digital Divide

What is digital anyway? Is it a complete new media form or just a new platform to exhibit and consume preexisting art? For example, cinema is an art form, but it can exist on physical film or completely in the digital realm. What is undoubtedly true is the substantial impact digital has had on not only the art world, but of all culture. It is truly a technological paradigm shift. And it's relatively young - it is continuing to evolve and develop. And to Bishop's point about artists not reflecting on this brave new world: it might be that we just don't know how to yet. Forest for the trees or something like that.

The fascination with analog is rooted in nostalgia and nostalgia is rooted in the postmodern condition. Bricolage, pastiche, repurposing - in the scary world of postmodernism, there is nothing new. Everything is a reshaping of the old. And with digital, the infinite mutability of every aspect of art is terrifying. "Questions of originality and authorship are no longer the point." It's futile to consider it. Now, energy has to been spent merely selecting what to use/reference/allude to.

Similarly, on the consumer side, we have to skim an entire sea of information. There is so much media in the world, it's impossible to consume it all. On one hand, having all possible information on a topic makes research a purposeful effort - the knowledge is absolutely out there. You'll just have to put a lot of work into finding it.

Kino Eye

The Kino Eye article presents a progressive and innovative perspective of what it means to experience the world through film. Near the beginning, the article states, "the main and essential thing is: the sensory exploration of the world through film." The key word here is "sensory. " The article calls into question the traditional ways that film has been approached, and goes so far as to state that, “until now, we have violated the movie camera and forced it to copy the work of the eye. And the better the copy, the better the shooting was thought to be.” This speaks to the extent of conformity in film styles up until a certain point. 

I Am Kino-Eye

In this writing Dziga Vertov is arguing that the kino-eye, or eye of the camera is more valuable then the human eye. The base to his theory is that "we cannot improve the making of our eyes, but we can endlessly perfect the camera."

Vertov claims that you can capture so much more with a camera then what you can with a pair of eyes. Vertov wants to push the boundaries using cameras. I think his line, "until now, we have violated the movie camera and forced it to copy the work of our eye," means that he believes that we are only using a camera to record the obvious. Why would you film a ballet from a spectators spot when you could record it from the dancer on stage? He wants people to push and challenge the perspective by which they film.

Vertov wants to make the viewer see in the manner that is best suited for each specific phenomenon. If I don't say so myself, I think Vertov might be the head spokesperson for the modern day GoPro. The idea of why would I film someone jumping off a diving board from the pool deck when I could be filming in the perspective of the person jumping?

The camera has the ability to carry the viewer's eyes from one stimulus to another which human eyes alone wouldn't be able to do. Overall, it seems like Vertov prioritizes perspective and exaggeration of certain stimuli over everything. Vertov is taking a step forwards and want to focus on the cameras ability to create rather than copy.

Week 7

The kino-eye, being a lens that may only capture what is in front of it and no more, may capture reality with no sense of bias; however, I say it is no better than the human eye, as lenses may be subject to the same impurities as the eye. Much as eyes may develop cataracts, the lens may be tainted by a scratch or impurity in the glass. This subjects the kino-eye to the same misfortunes as the human eye if proper care is not taken of it.

And while the kino-eye captures images free of bias, it is subject to the bias of the filmmaker. If you manipulate what the viewer will be viewing so as to guide their eye, the whole reality is still not being presented to the viewer; however, new perspectives may be brought to life that the viewer would not have seen before (if the viewer were to view the actual spaces filmed with their own eyes). Either way it is viewed (with the human eye or the kino-eye), the space viewed would have to be viewed with bias, as what the kino-eye has captured would have to be viewed with the bias of the human eye, much as if the eye were viewing the space itself.

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“You see your nose all the time. Your brain just chooses to ignore it.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIcgyj1F9ms

Kino-Eye vs. Human Eye

Dziga Vertov proposes a different way of comparing the kino-eye (camera) and the human eye.  He provokes the ideas that the eye of the camera and the human eye are distinctly different but in ways that I do not agree with.  He claims the kino-eye is superior to the human eye because it can be perfected, altered, and does not elicit an opportunity for biases.

"We cannot improve the making or our eyes, but we can endlessly perfect the camera"

I do not agree with his statement at all.
First, the camera cannot be perfected endlessly.  You will reach a point where the shutter speed cannot be faster, the exposure will no longer go higher, and the lens cannot extend further - the camera can be perfected to a point. 
Second,  the camera will still create biases like the human eye.  No not the camera itself is bias, but the person looking through the restricted kino-eye can still see something completely different than another person looking at the exact same scene through the lens.  And the picture the camera produces can still be interpreted differently by different people because one person may see something completely different than another even though they are both looking at the exact same image.
Third, the human eye can be enhanced just like the kino-eye thanks to the evolution of contacts, spectacles, and glasses. Both 'eyes' can be enhanced and altered due to technology.

To me, the human eye will forever be superior to the kino-eye because the human eye can capture a moment in 3D and connect that moment with other sensors like smell, taste, touch, emotions, etc.  The camera will forever chase the abilities that the human eye has.  The human eye will forever be faster, smarter, more advanced, not man-made, and an object the camera will forever strive to be, but never achieve.

Kino Eye / Metaphors on Vision

Let me get this out of the way: I'm a film major.

There are two schools of thought, that film should simply capture reality as is or it should manipulate reality. The former is espoused by realist film theorists such as Andre Bazin, who favored long takes and wide lenses to most accurately reflect actual human perception of time and space.

Then you have the Soviets.

A lot of Soviet filmmakers in the early 20th century were constructivists and saw film as a complex machine that can be manufactured to accomplish a singular goal or effect. Vertov illustrates these ideas by comparing the human eye with the kino eye (film camera). He argues that the camera has capabilities special to and beyond those of human vision, so filmmakers should harness those features and make total use of them; it is not enough to simply mirror the human eye.

For me, it depends on what serves the story. Sometimes it's good to have a passive camera that merely observes the on-screen action and other times frantic cutting and elaborate camera movement is called for - whatever induces the most faithful and effective emotional response.

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So... semiotics... and postmodernism...

They say life imitates art. The world bombards us with information and we compartmentalize everything into a semantic network of shorthands, symbols, and stereotypes. It just makes everything so much easier. This translates to more conceptual ideals as well. What we consider "love" to be is an amalgam of not only our life experiences, but the media we consume. That's why we hold onto ideas like "love at first sight" or finding "the one" - it's all made up, but we believe it anyway.

It's the responsibility of the artist to convey some of these ideas, originally or not. They have caught a glimpse of reality and "figured out" at least enough of it to have something worth saying.

Kino-Eye Analysis

Both of these articles come from a standpoint that the kino-eye always sees the world in a perfect manner that the human eye is essentially numb to.

“The kino-eye lives and moves in time and space; it gathers and records impressions in a manner wholly different from that of the human eye,” Vertov said.

I believe that the camera has a perfect depiction of the subject it’s capturing. The lens has an unbiased filter that humans do not have, giving purer characteristics to what the camera can see verses what humans can see. Although in theory the kino-eye seems perfect. The camera can also show different perspectives of a subject portraying the truth, but giving the subject a different meaning. The human eye does this naturally by revealing different subject matter and meaning to an image based on experiences and knowledge.

The kino-eye projects the reality, and the human-eye depicts the true meaning through perspective.

But is the kino-eye ever truly untouched and unprejudiced if we are manipulating it to show us what we want to see?

“In the present time a very few have continued the process of visual perception in its deepest sense and transformed their inspirations into cinematic experiences,” Brakhage said.

Eye v. Camera– What Each Captures

The articles lay out a description of the functionalities of both the lens through which we as humans see things, our eyes, and a camera. What I found interesting from the readings was the point that if we look at something through our own eyes and someone else looks at the same thing through their own eyes, we may see something totally different. Say we take picture and capture the object with a camera, it's still the same thing. What's interesting about this, though, is that although it may be the same image, how we see it may be completely opposite from each other. This is because of our own human bias, perspective, and backgrounds.

I have some reservations in agreeing with Vertov, when he states that the use of the camera as the Kino eye is more perfect than the human eye by saying:

"The position of our bodies while observing on our perception of a certain number of features of a visual phenomenon in a given instant are by no means obligatory limitations for the camera, which, since it is perfected, perceives more and better. We cannot improve the making of our eyes, but we can endlessly perfect the camera."

Where I struggle with this is the fact that what is perfect is completely objective. By endlessly perfecting the camera, or editing the photos, or changing the lenses, focus, etc. where do we stop? How do we draw the line between perfecting what can be seen and changing it completely? If the angle a person stands to view is different from the angle the camera sits at, then the two visions are no longer comparable as more or less perfect because they are two completely different images.

Another thing that bothers me about the camera observing more perfectly than the human eye, is that someone has to see the observation to compare it that of the human eye's and at that point, there will be bias. There has to be opinion there, and no opinion can be deemed perfect or not perfect.

The image below reminded me of theme of articles and perception of images; it's the same image, but different people will see different things, and while the camera may capture it for what it is, someone has to view it.

Kino-eye and metaphors on vision

To be quite blunt I really find that the first article "Kino-eye" to be a bit pedantic. Perhaps that stems from it being so defiant similar to many other previous readings but it does make a rather interesting point as the tirade drags on. A simple idea is that the camera is a more accurate than the human eye. The reason why lies in the cameras inherent tendency to not brand anything it views or captures. A camera doesn't have a bias it merely performs a function and shows a form in a most vulnerable and raw way.

We upon viewing something unconsciously brand it as being something good or bad, something we like or dislike etc. a camera has no such ego it merely reports what it captures. A camera is detached from what it sees, whereas we are all to caught up in the aesthetics of what we view and attached to the various objects and forms we see.

These articles begged me to ask the question if a camera very similar in structure and function of a human eye is able to see these images in such a pure way, is that something we as humans upon breaking our own mental conditioning can view?

The answer to my own question is a clear cut yes. The most intellectual men of our times from artists and scientists to saints and prophets all asked the same things and were able to see whatever it was that they wished to view in such a pure form. Working with that spark of consciousness that enlivens us all.

I really appreciate these articles attempt at highlighting the true subtle concept of mind and eye being two things that we as normal everyday men and women have yet to tap into. what I find to be even more profound is in this world we live in where sedentary behavior is the end goal we have used our intellect to create a device such as a camera to do something we have the ability to do yet are to distracted and lazy to do so.