Case Studies

Here we will look at several examples of recent music video works that arguably reflect the trends in density and montage that Lev Manovich refers to in his essay on New Cinematic Language.

This Binary Universe

1.618

Note that these are long musical and cinematic explorations. Feel free to skip to the key points specified below, for there is no narrative to follow.

We begin with broad establishing shots of desert landscape, the natural, "real-world" environment. At 2:20 we see a radical transition into the realm of digitised graphics, with an emphasis on symmetry. These digitised shots appear far more complex and difficult to comprehend compared to the initial desert sequence.
The emphasis shifts from symmetry to depth, and here it is interesting to note that a depth of field effect is added to the digital environments. Rather than allowing us to break from the constraints of human perception, developing technology is facilitating the reconstruction of these limitations in a digital environment for added "realism".

5:08— Notice here the transition between multiple windows. Previously singular fractal patterns and shots are complicated by what we perceive as a "cut", or a frame shift. We know that between windows, between frames, we could have moved anywhere. We could be looking at the same thing from a different angle, or we could be on another side of the world. It is thus disconcerting to move through frames like this in such a nonsensical graphical world.

5:24—Now we have multiple frames at once — one is larger, dominant, while the others remain dormant, waiting — each will soon expand as the previously dominant one vanishes from view. We are hence exposed to a chain of "active icons", similar to those displayed on a computer desktop (Manovich 2001, p. 326).

(But what tells us that these are "separate frames?" simply figure-ground perception? The fact that within this chaos, we are able to perceive straight lines as "borders"?)

Ultimately we return to the real-world desert and it has suddenly become more dense. A multitude of textures in a rapid temporal montage. This arguably suggests that the "real world" is associated with a time-based aesthetic whereas digital environments involve temporal and spatial dimensions.

The Antikythera Mechanism

Here we see many parallels to themes discussed in the above case study (the juxtaposition/integration of digital and "real" environments, for instance). Of note within this specific example, however, is a section of footage starting at 4:35. Prior to this point, the digitised imagery is extremely nonsensical, disruptive and hard to follow. Yet suddenly the fractured movements and shapes take a recognisable form — they appear as a spiralling torrent of butterflies. Question: is this segment of otherwise dense video rendered informationally sparse by the fact that all this data can be summated in the word "butterflies"? The fact that we can process and effectively reduce this data to words and semantics seems potentially significant.

All That Makes us Human Continues

In stark contrast to the previous example, this video features digitised chaos that remains formless, we can describe it as "jagged", "frantic", "jarring", "colourful"... but we have no nouns for it. Is it possible that this incredible "detail" is made meaningless and utterly devoid of information because this fact? What constitutes information... is a stream of colour and movement information if we cannot name it in any way?

Credit

These music videos can be attributed to Brian Wayne Transeau (BT) and affiliated artists responsible for the creation of video content. See bibliography.