Lev Manovich www.manovich.net
Installation proposal for CINEMA FUTURE exhibition at ZKM (2002)
0/2001

SOFT CINEMA

Concept:

3 short (256 seconds each) digital films are displayed within a single installation. The films are non-interactive and are looped. The films share some of the same visuals and audio. Each film presents a different concept about Cinema Future.

Film 1: Macro-cinema

If a computer user works with multiple windows of GUI, should not future cinema similarly go from a single image/single space towards multiple co-existing windows? And if the viewers of TV financial shows such as Bloomberg TV already deal with multiple co-existing streams of information (an announcer reading the news; still graphics; constantly moving market ticker; etc.), should not future cinema try to adopt and push this aesthetics further?

In this film the screen is broken into a number of separate tiled windows (using one of Mondrian's paintings as a grid). A larger window plays a video sequences; other windows present text information, graphics, and other images which supplement the video narrative in the larger window. While narrative video runs at a "normal" speed, information in other windows changes very slowly or very fast.

Video narrative played in the larger window will also be used in Film 2 and Film 3.

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Film 2: Soft Cinema

Programmability, this key new operation of computer culture, has yet to be fully employed in cinema. In this film certain percentage of shots are selected at run-time under a computer program control (using Macromedia Director). For instance: first shot and the second shot are pre-edited; third shot is selected at run time from a directory containing possible shot; shot four again is pre-edited; fifth shot again is selected at run time and so on. 

Many of the shots will be the same as in the video narrative of Film 1.

Film 3: Scalable Cinema

Today Internet-enabled cell phones display stripped-down, minimal versions of the Web pages. When you access the same pages over a Web browser running on a PC, you get a rich multimedia version. This is one of the first examples of scaleable media: creating different versions of the same program for different displays. But what would happen if we apply scalability not just to information displays but also to films and other visible fictions?

This film would involve taking the same "content" and creating three different versions: one for a standard TV quality display of today (640x 480) one version for super-high resolution future display, another version for a "poor" low-res monochrome display (64 x 48).

The content will come from video narrative of Film 1.

Production:

All films will use my own video footage and graphics and will be produced completely by me.

Some custom computer programming (in Director) will be done for Film 2 ("Soft Cinema.")

Architectural solution:

A different solution will be designed for each of three films. For instance, one film may play in a simulated living room of a future that will include furniture; another may play on a large flat screen.

At the same time, the three projections will form a single architectural whole.

Projection solutions:

Each of three films will use a different projection technology. Consequently, I see the installation use a number of different projection technologies: for instance, a small LCD screen, 3 plasma panels, and a data projection. No special hardware will be required; I plan to use commercially available equipment.

File Format:

I will output the films on DVDs so they can play on either standard DVD players or on DVD equipped PCs.

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