Video Vortex Reader II: moving images beyond YouTube

34 Video Vortex Reader II Moving Images Beyond Youtubetheory & aesthetics35ReferencesBazin, André. What is Cinema? Volume 1, trans. Hugh Gray, Berkeley: University of California Press,1967.Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007.Carroll, Noël and Jinhee Choi (eds) Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures, Malden: BlackwellPublishing, 2006.Cubitt, Sean. The Cinema Effect, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2005.Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema I: The Movement-Image, London: Continuum, 2004.Düd, Yazan. ‘Kareler 2: Rosemary’s Baby’. Eylem Planı – Bildigim ˘ Kadarının Anlatabildigim ˘ Kadarı,http://www.eylemplani.com/kareler-2-rosemarys-baby/.Eisenstein, Sergei. (1949) Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, New York: Hartcourt. Trans. Jay Leyda.,1969.Eisner, Will. Comics & Sequential Art, Florida: Poorhouse Press, 1985.Elsaesser, Thomas and Malte Hagener. Filmtheorie zur Einführung, Hamburg: Junius Verlag, 2007.Flaxman, Gregory (ed.) The Brain Is the Screen, Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema, Minneapolis:University of Minnesota, 2000.Flusser, Vilém. Images in the New Media, in Andreas Ströhl (ed.) Writings, Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 2004.Friedberg, Anne. The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006.Goldberg, David. ‘EnterFrame: Cage, Deleuze and Macromedia Director’, Afterimage 30.1(2002): 8-9.Greenaway, Peter. Cinema Militans Lecture 2003, 28/09/2003, http://petergreenaway.co.uk/essay3.htm.Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2002.McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, New York: Harper Collins, 1994.Web Video and the Screen as a Mediatorand Generator of RealityRobrecht VanderbeekenIn order to learn more about web video, this article does not begin with its peculiarities, buttries to grasp its cultural backdrop by considering the screen as a virtual invader in our dailylives, which sometimes even seems to assume control. It aims to challenge the claim that theaudiovisual screen of television, cinema, video, and web video is but a window onto the world.A screen is not a neutral display of fact and fiction in addition to what a person can experienceon their own behalf. Rather, it has a massive effect on the constitutive relation betweena viewer and the world she or he lives in. It manipulates this relation in a double manner: itmediates our perception of reality, and it generates another reality in a new, mediated environment.Early film spectators once believed that they could become infected when they sawsick people on the screen; yet the days when the screen was clearly misunderstood to embodyreal objects are long gone. Today, the screen is no longer something special or strange‘out there’, but rather something close to us, and everywhere. The screen has become humanized,it is now accepted as an ordinary part of our everyday environment. Because ofthis shift in the locus of our psychological perception, the screen becomes immanent andubiquitous, and hence more influential. As a familiar object, the screen invades our existenceboth radically and constantly, and yet its influence passes unnoticed. At the same time, thescreen is evolving into new technological forms that generate a remarkable and eye-catchingreality of their own, a new world. Web video plays a significant part in this evolution.The Screen as MediatorEclipsing, Interpassivity and Truth-proceduresWhat do we take as real nowadays? Ideally, an analysis of the influence of audiovisual mediaon our perception of reality should be based upon a comparison between our perception beforeand after the rise of audiovisual media. Of course, such an approach is problematic, dueto the difficulty of retroactive reconstruction of past perceptions of reality. 1 What we do know,however, is that a general feeling of detachment has become predominant today: experiencing‘reality’ includes the experience of the loss of reality – that is, the lack of a transparent,undeniable and convincing manifestation of reality.In what sense does the screen, as that which inserts itself in-between subjects and their environment,create a loss of reality? In its innocent version, the screen is but a ‘window on theworld’ that provides the viewer with audiovisual material, containing facts as well as fiction.Put differently, it is an extension of man that displays representations and interpretations of1. From a philosophical perspective, every perception of reality is ‘mediated’ in terms ofembodiment, common worldviews, personal opinions, etc. In this article the term ‘mediation’primarily revolves around the impact of audiovisual media.