2016/1 – #Smalldata

Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 20 of 24
  • Article
    Editorial Necsus
    NECSUS Editorial Board (2016) , S. 1-4
  • Article
    Forms of binding: On data and not ‘fitting in’
    Gupta-Nigam, Anirban (2016) , S. 111-130
    Small data is often invoked as an antidote to the aggregative logic of big data which binds the world into a whole through the combination of discrete bits of information. This essay suggests that small and big data actually complement each other, particularly since the former refines (rather than challenges) the logic of the latter. If data binds individuals and the social into a relational whole, how can we begin to comprehend the desire to break free of such a relation? At a time when relation has become common sense – we are told to be social, network, and connect – is there any hope of locating a space away from the informational bind of relation? The essay historicises these questions by conceptualising moments when the relational bind of data frays ever so slightly to allow some relief from the landscape of big and small data. In so doing it engages Nigel Thrift’s concept of qualculation, Georges Canguilhem’s work on abnormality, and Ian Hacking’s examination of the taming of chance.
  • Article
    Compact cinematics
    Hesselberth, Pepita; Poulaki, Maria (2016) , S. 131-147
    In this essay we propose the term ‘compact cinematics’ for the study of the various compact, short, compressed, and miniature (audio)visual artifacts, forms, and practices that circulate in our everyday multimedia environment across technologies, genres, and disciplines. We situate the current surge of compact cinematic phenomena against the backdrop of three discursive frameworks: screen studies; the current discussions on the economy of attention; and the human-technology nexus in a section on capture. These three paradigms provide fertile grounds to unpack some of the questions compact cinematics invoke, including the problematic of boundary fetishism and medium specificity, the balance between leisure and labour, and the functioning of compact cinematics within the cybernetic system of which it currently partakes.
  • Article
    From Saul Bass to participatory culture: Opening title sequences in contemporary television series
    Re, Valentina (2016) , S. 149-175
    In the contemporary media landscape the opening title sequence continues to provide its traditional, paratextual function by introducing a storyworld, orienting the spectator, and managing expectations. Moreover, it consolidates other functions while nevertheless assuming new ones. As well as branding content, thus expressing its visual identity and putting it in relation to an audience, main titles connect viewers and contribute to creating ‘networked communities’ or ‘brand communities’ based on a shared passion for media content. This article discusses this renewed, double role of main titles – branding content, branding communities – with special regard to the television shows MAD MEN, THE WIRE, GAME OF THRONES, and SUPERNATURAL.
  • Article
    Database aesthetics, modular storytelling, and the intimate small worlds of Korsakow documentaries
    Wiehl, Anna (2016) , S. 177-197
    Within the context of digitalisation and networked media new documentary configurations keep emerging. This contribution explores the epistemological potential of an alternative to ‘the call of Big Data’ in current media ecologies through KORSAKOW documentaries, a special form of autopoietic, non-linear, interactive database storytelling. Adopting Bergson’s thoughts on the interval and the living image, Deleuze’s specifications on cinematic movement-images, and Adrian Miles’ notion of ‘affective assemblage’, I argue that the formal and dramaturgic minimalism in KORSAKOW allow both authors and users to rethink structures and practices of perception, memory, emotional engagement, and the complexity and correlations of existence.
  • Article
    Remake: Chantal Akerman’s and John Smith’s plays on reality
    Scherffig, Clara Miranda (2016) , S. 19-39
    The essay explores Chantal Akerman’s NEWS FROM HOME (1976) and John Smith’s THE MAN PHONING MUM (2011) through the notion of the remake. Drawing on Svetlana Boym’s writing, the ideas of reflective nostalgia and restorative nostalgia are employed to outline the structure of both films, respectively situated within the framework of autoethnography and structural/materialist film. The role of soundscapes emerges then as a crucial challenger of the cinematic language, revealing formal aspects of both films. The article suggests that such formal awareness combined with the notion of the remake as well as the realistic core of both works trigger in the spectator an impression of hyperreality.
  • Article
    Towards a ‘minor data’ manifesto
    Smolicki, Jacek; Frigo, Alberto (2016) , S. 199-214
    With this paper we aim to introduce a concept of minor data. In relation to debates around data that concentrate on utilitarian and security-related implications of data production, aggregation, and dissemination practices, we have identified a lack of attention toward the aesthetic and cultural value of personal data practices. Minor data as we discuss it here is intended to be seen not as a solution to problems related to big data. Similarly, minor data is not motivated to compete with the concept of big or small data; it is not an attempt to counter-act but rather to build a parallel narrative on how personal data practices can be conceptualised and performed differently; it is a reflective and critical contribution to the debate on the pervasiveness of data practices at large, performed from a particular, minor perspective constituted by a set of artistic practices. Through a performative, semi-structured conversation we discuss our aesthetics as concerned with crafting personal data practices to shed light on alternative forms of talking about and living with data and technologies concerned with data accumulation and dissemination. The paper consists of a brief introduction in which minor data is introduced in relation to other concepts that use data and a modifying adjective (big and small) that stresses the quantitative dimension and scale. After this introduction and a brief contextualisation we present the reader with a draft of a manifesto in which several important attributes of minor data are laid out. This manifesto is followed by a conversation that addresses the conceptualisation of the manifesto. The conversation is a retroactive step, moving back as to reveal the flux of thoughts and observations that led us to the more solidified points of the manifesto.
  • Review
    Ryoji Ikeda at ZKM
    Lee, Joo Yun (2016) , S. 215-223
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    Of calendars and industries: IDFA and CPH:DOX
    Vallejo, Aida (2016) , S. 245-254
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    Rediscovering Frantz Fanon at Scotland’s Africa in Motion film festival
    Sankanu, Prince Bubacarr Aminata (2016) , S. 265-272
  • Review
    Complex series and struggling cable guys
    Wabeke, Anne Gre (2016) , S. 273-282
  • Review
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  • Article
    Live Streaming US
    Albuquerque, Paula (2016) , S. 297-298
  • Article
    re_making
    Molero, Juan Daniel F. (2016) , S. 299-300
  • Article
    Warped Reflections: The Cinematic Identity of Helmut Berger
    Emmerzael, Hugo (2016) , S. 301-304
  • Article
    Videographic film studies and the analysis of camera movement
    Pantenburg, Volker (2016) , S. 41-58
    Although camera movement is universally acknowledged as a crucial cinematographic operation, the discipline of film studies has had trouble approaching it as a theoretical subject. Compared to montage, which establishes a firm and explicit sense of relation, camera movement implies flowing developments, gradual and continual shifts that are difficult to describe and interpret. This article argues that the emerging practice of videographic film studies as championed by Kevin B. Lee and others opens up new ways of dealing with this phenomenon. With its capacities to display movement and comment on it at the same time, but also by simultaneously showing different shots and sequences, the juxtaposition of moving imaging as an epistemic and aesthetic gesture now appears on the scene.