In the zone...

Oh dear. It's been a while since my last posting. That's me marked down for the blogging assignment! Must try harder...

This week's MHC sessions were on structuralism (binary opposition) and seemed to go quite well. For the Digital Animation/MSFX students this was my last offering, as Bill will be taking over the lecture slot from next week. A bitter-sweet moment which, if I really wanted to get carried away, I could probably subject to a spot of structuralist analysis: bitter/sweet, happy/sad, relief/regret... And so here we are in the fascinating mythical realms of the anomalous zone, where lecturers reflect on the last five weeks and wonder how they could have done things differently. I've enjoyed the lectures, as I always do, and I hope the students have too - well, some of them at least. And, of course, for the Interactive Media and Screen Cultures folk, there's more of my particular brand of nonsense to come...

What a tangled web we weave...

...and before I finally stop gibbering for the night, just a thought on how semiotics might be applied to web design. Looking at the differences between information-based websites such as, say, Google, Wikipedia or the BBC and more playful, experience-based website such as Andy Campbell's Dreaming Methods, Mark Napier's Potatoland or Nicolas Clauss's Flying Puppet - well, it raises interesting questions about syntagmic choices in relation to the paradigm of interface design, as well as hinting at the connotative potential of image, texture, layout, sound, and so on. Discuss.

Hmmm... I'm not even sure if I understood what I just wrote, but these websites are well worth a look:

Dreaming Methods

Potatoland

  

 Flying Puppet

Twisted, crooked, and just a bit mad

...and thinking about it, the famous twisted sets of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari are another interesting case for semiotic analysis.

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (Robert Weine, 1919) on YouTube

At a denotative level, we see stylised and consciously non-realist streets and houses, but connotatively we get a sense of psychological disturbance and threat. All very appropriate when we think about the plot (especially its final twist) and the themes that run through the film. For those who haven't seen the film, it's very old - but it's also rather wonderful, and has had a massive influence on filmmakers such as Tim Burton, Henry Selick and Paul Berry.

 Tim Burton's Vincent (1982) on YouTube

 Paul Berry's The Sandman (1992) on YouTube

 Trailer for Henry Selick's Coraline (2009) on YouTube

Which brings us back to intertextuality, coming to a lecture near you very soon...

Smile like you mean it...

Since Thursday afternoon's seminar with the good folk of Character Creation I've been pondering the semiotic nastiness of fixed grins. The notion that something as warm, reassuring, and life-affirming as a smile can become so cold, disturbing and psychotic when it lasts too long is weirdly fascinating. Conrad Veidt's slash-grinned portrayal of Gwynplaine in Paul Leni's The Man Who Laughs (1928) is astonishing - almost as astonishing as his portrayal of the blank-faced assassin Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919). Denotation: smile, connotation: loneliness, abuse, mutilation, exile... Myth? God knows... Gwynplaine, 'cut' into a permanent grin so that he must laugh forever at his executed father, is meant to have been the inspiration for Jerry Robinson, Bill Finger and Bob Kane when they invented Batman's arch enemy the Joker in 1940, but the character's origins are in Victor Hugo's novel of 1869. It's a stroke of genius, I think, to have the ultimate sign of human happiness translated into a sign of tragedy, isolation, cruelty and/or menace. And the most recent suggestion of the Gwynplaine/Joker rictus was in the design of the Nightmare Man (played by Julian Bleach) in the Sarah Jane Adventures last week.

The Man Who Laughs (Paul Leni, 1928) on YouTube

It's a larf, innit? And it all leads rather nicely towards next week's subject of intertextuality...

Cum on feel the noize...?

Mulling over the lecture for Interactive Media and Screen Cultures last Tuesday, I start to wonder about the choice of background for this blog. One of the key concepts in communication theory is 'noise' (in other words, anything which distracts from effective transmission and receipt of message) and, from the point of view of design choices in websites, posters, etc., it's important not to overload the page. So, a rich and interesting image - say, a mysterious antique room with bare floorboards, ornately framed paintings, a worn leather chair - might not be the best image... Then again, I like it. And as the graphic designer David Carson once said (sort of), we shouldn't confuse clarity with communication.

Hmmm. I really should get out more...

Silurians? Eocines? Plasticines?

Watching an old - very old (1970) - episode of Dr Who just now, I found myself pondering some of the questions about realism that were covered in Thursday afternoon's lecture for MSFX and Digital Animation students. The Silurians (who, more realistically, should be called 'eocines') were first known to me as characters in the Target novelisation of the TV serial, Dr Who and the Silurians, then as photographs in issues of Dr Who Weekly in the 1980s. When the creatures returned to the series in the early 1980s, facing Peter Davison's (brilliant, much underrated) Doctor, they impressed me a lot (how!?), whereas their cousins, the Sea-Devils, who feature terrifyingly in my earliest memories of the show, were disappointing in their droopy-headed, mock samurai sluggishness. What had scared the living whatsit out of me in 1973 let me down in 1984... Ah well. Expectations change. Notions of realism change. We grow older. So when the redesigned Silurians appeared in the first series of Matt Smith's doctorhood - well, they are obviously so much more convincing, subtle and sophisticated as a race of intelligent prehistoric humanoid reptilians, the materials for facial augmentation are obviously so much more supple, flexible, skin-like. Even so, against all the evidence of my own eyes and ears, there's a part me which continues to prefer the Silurians of 1970 and 1984. This part of me is willful... And it suspends disbelief... And it is also, oh yes, just a bit nostalgic...

Realism, I suspect, isn't an absolute value. It's extremely subjective. Even a silly old emotion like nostalgia can kink its criteria. And that's rather wonderful, I think. So bring on the Sea Devils of the 21st century - I'm looking forward to meeting them, with their flash-lamp death-rays and their big string vests...

Tutor at work, pauses to blog

In the middle of rewriting the outline module guide for Media Histories and Culture. I should be able to post it to StudyNet later today, which will give me a lovely virtuous feeling for at least a couple of minutes...

Tim Burtons' Alice in Wonderland

Watching Burton's version of the Alice in Wonderland story, I still can't work out what I think of it. I mean, it's very, very good - but there's also something about it that's somehow pretty bad. Damn, I hate being vague - but then, I kind of love it. What?