Pioneers in Machinima: The Grassroots of Virtual Production

Pioneers in Machinima: The Grassroots of Virtual Production
Author: Tracy G. Harwood
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2021-09-07
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 1648892140

This important new work focuses on the pioneers in machinima, considered to be the grassroots and beginnings of virtual production. Machinima’s impacts are identified by the community, supplemented by Harwood and Grussi’s research and experience over a period of 25 years – from game, film and filmmaking to digital arts practice, creative technologies developments and related research and theory. Machinima is the first digital cultural practice to have emerged from the internet into a mainstream creative genre. Its latest transformation is evident through the increasing convergence of games and film where real-time virtual production as a professional creative practice is resulting in new forms of machine-generated interactive experiences. Using the most culturally significant machinima works (machine-cinema) as lenses to trace its history and impacts, ‘Pioneers in Machinima: The Grassroots of Virtual Production’ provides in-depth testimony by filmmakers and others involved in its emergence. The extensive reference to source materials and interviews bring the story of its impacts up to date through the critical reflections of the early pioneers. This book will be of interest to machinima researchers and practitioners, including game culture, media theorists, students of film studies and game studies, digital artists and those interested in how creative technologies have influenced communities of practice over time.

The Future of Digital Communication

The Future of Digital Communication
Author: Raquel V. Benítez Rojas
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2023-08-31
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1000926036

This collection of essays explores the present and future of digital communication through a range of interdisciplinary approaches, all of which focus on the so-called metaverse. The metaverse is a combination of multiple elements of technology – including virtual reality, augmented reality, and video – where users "live" within a digital universe. The vision for this new universe is that its users can work, play, and stay connected with friends through everything. Such a vision is hinted at in existing phenomena such as online game universes.

Creating Digitally

Creating Digitally
Author: Anthony L. Brooks
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 562
Release: 2024-01-08
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3031313607

This book of 21 chapters shares endeavors associated to the human trait of creative expression within, across, and between digital media in wide-ranging contexts making the contents perfect as a course study book uptake within related educations. Globally located chapter authors share their comprehensive artisan perspectives from works associated with regional cultures, diversities of interpretations, and widespread scopes of meanings. Contents illustrate contemporary works reflecting thought-provoking comprehensions, functions, and purposes, posit as contributing toward shifting of boundaries within the field. Original to this approach is the reflective offerings on creating digitally beyond typical psychological analysis/rapportage. The book's general scope and key uses are thus to contribute to scholarly discussions toward informing future projects by having an intended wide readership including from within educations, to artisans, and wider interested public. Chapter 7 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

The Intermediality of Contemporary Visual Arts

The Intermediality of Contemporary Visual Arts
Author: Asun López-Varela Azcárate
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2023-11-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 180355858X

The Intermediality of Contemporary Visual Arts explores a range of topics within the field. The volume delves into the realm of intermediality within the visual arts. Each chapter explores a different aspect; from the evolution of Intermedial Studies over the past decades to the shifts in print typography and the emergence of “cut-ups” within a context of resistance against conventions, the concept of Visual Music and its relation to pioneering filmmaking, visual representations of intimacy as they evolve from painting to other visual formats like comics, film, and television, and finally the transmedial potential of cultural symbols in virtual reality, all of which involve greater multimodal and emotional elements that enhance audience immersion. The volume closes by highlighting the need for a comprehensive approach to visual art education and pedagogical methods that foster creativity, emphasizing the intermedial aspects present in contemporary visual arts.

Directing the Narrative and Shot Design

Directing the Narrative and Shot Design
Author: Lubomir Kocka
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 445
Release: 2019-07-25
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 1622735226

This book is a “directing-altering book” as it provides high-quality learning resources that encourage and challenge film enthusiasts, aspiring directors, film students, and professionals to strive for new levels of excellence and impact in their film directing, television directing, and new media directing. This book puts forward a well-informed and innovative discussion of critical director’s choices that have not previously been considered by existing texts on film and television directing. This book presents a wide range of directorial concepts and directing exercises that include: • Psycho-physiological regularities in left-right/right-left orientation transferred to a shot design. How directors can manipulate the viewer’s perception of a character and of the journey they are on using screen direction. • Methodology and visual strategy for rendering a scene based on character perspective. • The directorial concept of emotional manipulation. • Demystifying the 180-degree rule.

All Around Monstrous: Monster Media in Their Historical Contexts

All Around Monstrous: Monster Media in Their Historical Contexts
Author: Verena Bernardi
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2019-10-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1622737946

We know all kinds of monsters. Vampires who suck human blood, werewolves who harass tourists in London or Paris, zombies who long to feast on our brains, or Godzilla, who is famous in and outside of Japan for destroying whole cities at once. Regardless of their monstrosity, all of these creatures are figments of the human mind and as real as they may seem, monsters are and always have been constructed by human beings. In other words, they are imagined. How they are imagined, however, depends on many different aspects and changes throughout history. The present volume provides an insight into the construction of monstrosity in different kinds of media, including literature, film, and TV series. It will show how and by whom monsters are really created, how time changes the perception of monsters and what characterizes specific monstrosities in their specific historical contexts. The book will provide valuable insights for scholars in different fields, whose interest focuses on either media studies or history.

Socially Engaged Public Art in East Asia

Socially Engaged Public Art in East Asia
Author: Meiqin Wang
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2022-04-12
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1648894046

This anthology elucidates the historical, global, and regional connections, as well as current manifestations, of socially engaged public art (SEPA) in East Asia. It covers case studies and theoretical inquiries on artistic practices from Hong Kong, Japan, mainland China, South Korea, and Taiwan with a focus on the period since the 2000s. It examines how public art has been employed by artists, curators, ordinary citizens, and grassroots organizations in the region to raise awareness of prevailing social problems, foster collaborations among people of varying backgrounds, establish alternative value systems and social relations, and stimulate action to advance changes in real life situations. It argues that through the endeavors of critically-minded art professionals, public art has become artivism as it ventures into an expanded field of transdisciplinary practices, a site of new possibilities where disparate domains such as aesthetics, sustainability, placemaking, social justice, and politics interact and where people work together to activate space, place, and community in a way that impacts the everyday lives of ordinary people. As the first book-length anthology on the thriving yet disparate scenes of SEPA in East Asia, it consists of eight chapters by eight authors who have well-grounded knowledge of a specific locality or localities in East Asia. In their analyses of ideas and actions, emerging from varying geographical, sociopolitical, and cultural circumstances in the region, most authors also engage with concepts and key publications from scholars which examine artistic practices striving for social intervention and public participation in different parts of the world. Although grounded in the realities of SEPA from East Asia, this book contributes to global conversations and debates concerning the evolving relationship between public art, civic politics, and society at large.

Wikinomics

Wikinomics
Author: Don Tapscott
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2008-04-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1440639485

The acclaimed bestseller that's teaching the world about the power of mass collaboration. Translated into more than twenty languages and named one of the best business books of the year by reviewers around the world, Wikinomics has become essential reading for business people everywhere. It explains how mass collaboration is happening not just at Web sites like Wikipedia and YouTube, but at traditional companies that have embraced technology to breathe new life into their enterprises. This national bestseller reveals the nuances that drive wikinomics, and share fascinating stories of how masses of people (both paid and volunteer) are now creating TV news stories, sequencing the human gnome, remixing their favorite music, designing software, finding cures for diseases, editing school texts, inventing new cosmetics, and even building motorcycles.