True Colors: Chromaticity, Realism and Technological Honesty

I propose an application of agential realism to my practice as research, a film about my mother getting one tattoo covered with a new one, to investigate the material-discursive role played by the camera in determining meaning within the film image. I use my practice as a comparative case study, considering how a specific camera apparatus determines and negotiates standards of colour accuracy, and what it means to remove those colour values in post-production. I argue that the different colour processing of the same footage produces perceptible onto-epistemological difference, even while it remains indexically equivalent. Second, I will show exactly how this particular digital photosensitive technology meets the pro-filmic event to record colour, enacting agencies that reduce matter to fit a specifically programmed colour system, prior to any manipulation in post-production. The system itself draws the boundaries of accuracy it claims to achieve, with inevitable ethical implications.

Anna May Wong and the Color Image

In Cinema 1, Deleuze proposes the “color-image,” a type of film image with an “absorbent characteristic” that does not refer to a particular object but seizes all that happens within its range. Like color-images, racial categories have an absorbent, seizing quality: they assert “color” at the expense of the object of representation. Deleuze does not address the potential applications of his concept to race, but they are especially illuminating when applied to early color-process cinema. This essay approaches The Toll of the Sea (dir. Chester M. Franklin, 1922), starring Anna May Wong and set in China, the first Technicolor film to be widely distributed in general release, as a feature-length “China Girl” and feature-length color-image, in Deleuze's sense. It further shows how Wong and her world are virtualized in this film under the rubric of a fictional orientalist palette.

The Voice of the Operating System in the Spike Jonze Film Her as a Hyperreal Object of Love

The article raises the topic of “new sensuality” (“new sensualism”) as a phenomenon that revived the sentimentalism of the 1960s movie drama in the computer age and was embodied in a number of films of the last decade. In such films as Blade Runner 2049 (dir. Denis Villeneuve, 2017), Ex machina (dir. Alex Garland, 2015), I’m Here (dir. Spike Jonze, 2010) robots, replicant androids, and even laser projections act as men and women; and in the Spike Jonze film Her (2013), the main character, although a real man named Theodore, falls in love with the voice of the operating system Samantha, an affair with which becomes more real and valuable for him than anything he has previously experienced in relationships with real women. The plot of the film provides the basis for further practical and theoretical development of the film image of “akousmêtre”, a voice without a body. Digital technologies embodied in the film provide an opportunity to apply and rethink the concept of corporeality, which is relevant in phenomenological aesthetics, as well as to develop the meaning of synesthetic perception in the modern art space. At a new level of correlation between reality and virtuality, the ideas of dialogism that developed within the framework of philosophical anthropology in the twentieth century can be applied in the analysis of the film. Thus, the material of the presented films allows us to expand the art history discourse and raise a number of issues that are relevant not only for the screen arts of the 21st century, but also for people living in the world of digital technologies, but who have not lost the need for genuine human feelings.

Два фильма о советско-польской войне: этюд забвения советского киномифа

The article examines the «birth», construction and deconstruction of the artistic film image of the Soviet-Polish War, it conceptualizes various intellectual projects of the Soviet study and understanding of military operations in the chronological framework of the events of 1919-1921. Two films «P. K. P.» and «The First Horse» are analyzed. The process of transformation and subsequent social oblivion of the propaganda discourse of this military confrontation are considered.

Restoring scratched cine-film via reducing light scattering

Scratches on cine-film significantly affect the quality of projected film images forming blackness or brightness. Only blackness can be restored by restoration dispersion. However, why the scratches can or can not be restored is unknown. Herein, unscratched and scratched films were selected, treated with restoration dispersion and investigated from composition and microstructure and its interaction with light. Both superficial and penetrating scratches make film rough and the applying of restoration dispersion decreases the roughness. The darkness in the projected film image resulted by superficial scratch can be restored by restoration dispersion through reducing light scattering, while the brightness induced by penetrating scratch can not be restored by restoration dispersion due to the removal of emulsion layer. This investigation is beneficial for developing new restoration dispersion to improve the quality of projected film images.

The argumentation of the use of CBCT examination in endodontic treatment

Purpose: to provide an overview in optimizing endodontic treatment using CBCT imaging. Objectives: 1. To evaluate the role of CBCT in the assessment of patients with periododontic disease. 2. Comparison of 2D imaging protocols (OPG, retroalveolar radiological film) image quality, information and commonly used radiation dose. Studying the literature and after analyzing our own clinical cases we argued the value of CBCT in endodontic treatment.

A Gift Economy: G. W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1929)

The first chapter offers a fresh approach to this canonical silent film by focusing on Louise Brooks’s kinetic performance as Lulu and the tradition of dance and abstract movements she draws on. The early twentieth-century feminist political slogan, the ‘New Woman’, is embodied, contested, and rendered ambiguous in this late Weimar silent film through Brooks’s technical skills as a modern dancer. Pabst and Brooks as co-creators draw an intimate link between the dynamism of the silent-film image and that of Lulu as dancer. I see these as a gift to the rather sedentary female scholar of cinema.

DNA: prawie niezniszczalny i najbardziej pojemny nośnik danych

Dzięki ewolucji technologicznej prawie całkowicie zrezygnowano współcześnie z analogowej archiwizacji informacji (papier, klisza, obraz) na rzecz zapisu cyfrowego. Obecnie potrzeba magazynowania wytwarzanych i przetwarzanych informacji wzrasta w eksponencjalnym tempie. Coraz większą popularnością cieszą się tzw. chmury (cloud) internetowe. Rozwój naukowy podsuwa inne rozwiązanie, zainspirowane najstarszym, ale także niesamowicie trwałym nośnikiem informacji, czyli ciągiem kwasów nukleinowych: DNA. Co więcej, DNA jest bardzo trwałe, a zakonserwowane w odpowiednich warunkach niemal niezniszczalne w odniesieniu do długości ludzkiego życia. Ponadto informacja zawarta w kwasach nukleinowych jest bardzo skondensowana. Oznacza to, że w kilku probówkach możemy zapisać informację o całych serwerach danych. Naukowcy od lat myślą o zastąpieniu cyfrowych nośników danych informacjami zapisanymi w kodzie genetycznym. Dzięki rozwojowi nauki ta perspektywa staje się atrakcyjna. DNA: an almost indestructible data carrier with incomparable capacity Thanks to the technological evolution, analog methods of archiving information (paper, film, image) have been almost entirely replaced by digital storage. Currently, the need for storage of generated and processed information is growing at an exponential rate. The so-called clouds are becoming increasingly popular. Scientific advances suggest yet another solution, inspired by the oldest but also incredibly durable information carrier, i.e. a sequence of nucleic acids: DNA. Moreover, DNA is very durable, and preserved in appropriate conditions, almost indestructible in relation to human lifespan. Further, the information contained in nucleic acids is very condensed. This means that in a scant few test tubes we could store servers’ worth of information. Scientists have been thinking for years about replacing digital data carriers with information stored in the genetic code. Thanks to new scientific developments, this prospect is becoming attractive.