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Images Most of the images and scenes in Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988–98) are citations. If their origins cannot be found, it is probable, nevertheless, that in time they will be. Some scenes in the film are staged, for example monologues by professional actors: Alain Cuny, Sabine Azema, Julie Delpy, Juliette Binoche and Godard. The monologues are quotations from philosophy and poetry either directly or in a collage of phrases from different sources. There is an argument in Histoire(s), or allusions to one, that historically the cinema did not realise its true
Still and moving images are crucial factors in contemporary political conflicts. They not only have representational, expressive or illustrative functions, but also augment and create significant events. Beyond altering states of mind, they affect bodies, and often life or death is at stake. Various forms of image operations are currently performed in the contexts of war, insurgency and activism. Photographs, videos, interactive simulations and other kinds of images steer drones to their targets, train soldiers, terrorise the public, celebrate protest icons, uncover injustices, or call for help. They are often parts of complex agential networks and move across different media and cultural environments. This book is a pioneering interdisciplinary study of the role and function of images in political life. Balancing theoretical reflections with in-depth case studies, it brings together renowned scholars and activists from different fields to offer a multifaceted critical perspective on a crucial aspect of contemporary visual culture.
In television scholarship, sound and image have been attended to in different ways, but image has historically dominated. The chapters gathered here attend to both: they weigh the impact and significance of specific choices of sound and image, explore their interactions, and assess their roles in establishing meaning and style. The contributors address a wide range of technical and stylistic elements relating to the television image. They consider production design choices, the spatial organisation of the television frame and how camera movements position and reposition parts of the visible world. They explore mise-en-scène, landscapes and backgrounds, settings and scenery, and costumes and props. They attend to details of actors’ performances, as well as lighting design and patterns of colour and scale. As regards sound, each chapter distinguishes different components on a soundtrack, delineating diegetic from non-diegetic sound, and evaluating the roles of elements such as music, dialogue, voice-over, bodily sounds, performed and non-performed sounds. Attending to sound design, contributors address motifs, repetition and rhythm in both music and non-musical sound. Consideration is also given to the significance of quietness, the absence of sounds, and silence. Programmes studied comprise The Twilight Zone, Inspector Morse, Children of the Stones, Dancing on the Edge, Road, Twin Peaks: The Return, Bodyguard, The Walking Dead and Mad Men. Sound and image are evaluated across these examples from a wide range of television forms, formats and genres, which includes series, serial and one-off dramas, children’s programmes, science fiction, thrillers and detective shows.
49 Working images: Harun Farocki and the operational image Volker Pantenburg ‘Images without a social goal, not for edification, not for reflection.’ This is the negative definition of ‘operational images’ that Harun Farocki provides in the first part of his three-part installation Eye/Machine.1 The filmmaker and video artist was one of the first to examine in depth the various uses of images as instruments. His work consists in a continuous examination of the operational potential of images in different fields of practice. Farocki’s Eye/Machine series (2000
This book is about images of Africa – how they are produced, by whom and for what purposes; and about how they are understood. These questions are fraught because of the continent’s relationship with the wider world, particularly the European world, which for many years assumed the right to create images of Africa, in fiction, travel writing, anthropological research, maps, missionary accounts, colonial records and reports produced by aid agencies. Since the middle of the twentieth century, when the majority of African states began to move
This book is about images of Africa; who creates them, how they are manipulated, and what the effects are for African actors and their relationships in the wider world. While the role of image in international politics is taken seriously by practitioners and academics, no one has yet produced a systematic account of the particularly important role it plays in the relationships between Africa and the wider world. This book seeks to do this by focusing on the politics of image and Africa, broadly defined to encompass the way political elites, media organisations and individual writers and artists together construct and project images of the continent. The book explores the dynamic processes of image creation in an imaginative way. First, it brings together different disciplinary approaches. Second, it draws on experiences of a wide range of actors and forms of image, including central governments, traditional authorities, journalists, individual artists and authors. Finally, the book brings together ten researchers currently engaged in fieldwork-based research across Africa who together present an empirically rich, fresh take on an important topic.
89 Image operations: refracting control from virtual reality to the digital battlefield Timothy Lenoir and Luke Caldwell In the post-Cold War era, the US military invested heavily in a makeover to replace the massive US ground forces of the post-World War II era with smaller, more flexible organisational units typified by special operations forces and weapons systems that exploited the new information technologies: what military historian Max Boot called ‘a new American way of war’ grounded in ‘speed, maneuver, flexibility … precision firepower, special
Images of terror come as a shock, each time anew. The closer they approach our own lives, the more we are involved and the more we are reminded of other, comparable attacks. Media and communication research on the psychological impact of news images has shown that visuals produce a stronger sense of involvement than texts and carry a more powerful emotional charge. 1 Although we all know that photographs and film or video footage only show part of what could be seen and might sometimes even be manipulated, we do not realise this when we look at them. 2 As
6 Public image The public image of the amateur and regular forces is often overlooked by historians discussing military forces.1 This includes the image of the various arms of the military during their existence, but also the legacy in the collective memory of a population. Within Ireland, this sort of remembrance, particularly in the form of memorials which commemorate the First World War, often has to be balanced with the remembrance of nationalist opposition, culminating in independence, and the sacrifices of those in British military service are often
The final chapter takes its departure point from Didi-Huberman’s enigmatic proposal in Images in Spite of All that ‘Montage is the art of producing this form that thinks.’ 1 Didi-Huberman’s passing observation was made in respect to the series of four photographs taken by ‘Alex’, the member of the Sonderkommando in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The sentence is slight, and he does not elaborate, leaving us to question what it means for an image to think. If montage and images can generate thought, what state is the subject left in? In this