#OutlookMagazine | Should we be insurgent and turn off the seduction of futuristic technology; or should we grudgingly hand it over to machines?
Sayandeb Chowdhury writes.
Listen to the excerpts from the latest issue of Outlook - only by Pragya Vats.
#VirtualProduction #Cinema #Films #Technology #ArtificialIntelligence
Read more:
https://www.outlookindia.com/art-entertainment/homo-technologicus-the-threat-of-ai-to-cinema-magazine-337466
Sayandeb Chowdhury writes.
Listen to the excerpts from the latest issue of Outlook - only by Pragya Vats.
#VirtualProduction #Cinema #Films #Technology #ArtificialIntelligence
Read more:
https://www.outlookindia.com/art-entertainment/homo-technologicus-the-threat-of-ai-to-cinema-magazine-337466
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NewsTranscript
00:00 I am Pragya and I bring to you excerpts from the current issue of Outlook.
00:05 Outlook looks at two cover stories.
00:07 One, titled "Almost Real, But Not Quite".
00:11 Virtual production can make the filmmaking much cheaper and convenient.
00:16 But will the AI-powered tech also forever alter the essence of cinema itself?
00:22 Second, it's titled "Paradise Lost".
00:25 Can we row the Shikara Isles and have the heritage walks?
00:29 The cover carries the image and words from the visual artist Veer Munshi.
00:34 He says, "My installation depicts the fast-changing characteristics of Indian cities.
00:40 So I was wondering about the fate of our paradise on earth called Kashmir."
00:45 "Homo Technologicus" by Shayandev Chaudhary.
00:48 He teaches at the School of Interwoven Arts and Sciences, Criya University.
00:53 Cinema and technology, a besotted couple across the arc of industrial modernity,
00:58 is headed for a split.
01:00 Those of us who have had the privilege to see the astonishing Stanley Kubrick film saw it coming.
01:07 Arguably the greatest sci-fi film ever made, 2001, A Space Odyssey in 1968,
01:14 dealt with apparently staple science fiction themes.
01:18 Evolution, technology, artificial intelligence and extraterrestrial life.
01:23 But Kubrick was no Cold War pushover.
01:26 Instead, he assembled his severe dislike for campy cheapness and tacky thrills.
01:32 Science writer Arthur C. Clarke, spectacular special effects, minimal dialogues, surreal imagery
01:38 and the waltzes of Johan and Richard Strauss.
01:42 The resultant kinetic energy and meditative power of the film is still unrivaled.
01:48 But what is genuinely lingering is how much Clarke and Kubrick were philosophically concerned
01:54 about the limit of human intelligence.
01:57 And here, intelligence meant both.
01:59 That we are cognizant of ourselves and we are able to decipher similar intelligence elsewhere.
02:06 That pivotal scene where astronaut Dave switches off HAL to dull its desire for control of the ship
02:12 is in some ways the metaphor for the predicament that humanity in general,
02:17 and cinema in particular, faces in the present.
02:21 Should we be insurgent and turn off the seduction of futuristic technology?
02:26 Or should we grudgingly hand it over to machines?
02:30 But it did not begin this way, for through the arc of Western industrial modernity,
02:35 technology was cinema's most steady and reliable bedfellow.
02:39 In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that cinema came in the wake of the technologies of reproduction
02:47 that became a fetish for the quickly industrializing West.
02:51 From the large-scale ticketed painted panoramas that debuted in the years of the Bosch French Revolution,
02:57 to the dioramas of the 1830s, to the stereoscope from Magic Lantern, to Zoopraxifolk and Kynotoscope,
03:06 it is not difficult to comprehend how the 19th century, moving consciously and stealthily through each decade,
03:14 marched towards cinema which came into being after several false starts in 1895.
03:21 And then, within cinema, technologies galloped.
03:25 From bigger and better film stocks to sound equipments,
03:29 fairground free play to ticketed Nickelodeons, natural to artificial lighting, talkies and color,
03:36 cinemascope and panavisions, VHS and CDs, Dolby to IMAX, so much and so forth.
03:44 Then, everything went digital.
03:47 These were all technology in the textbook sense.
03:50 A friendly, each of them for their time, architecture of advanced equipments built on sound scientific knowledge
03:58 and observation about the motion of light and human optics on one side,
04:03 and photosensitive salts and chemicals on the other.
04:07 They were also technology because they enhanced the power of cognition.
04:11 This was most famously explained by philosopher Walter Benjamin's proclamation
04:16 that photography revealed the persistence of an optical unconscious,
04:21 which brought under the purview of seeing those objects that were considered beyond it.
04:27 Cinema went a step ahead and made everything that was so far imaginable also viewable.
04:35 As early as 1902 and 1903, the likes of Georges Méliès and Edwin S. Porter
04:42 were making wondrous things like A Trip to the Moon and The Great Train Robbery.
04:48 From the dawn of cinema to these days of sweeping superhero fantasy universes,
04:53 cinema has been consistently fortified by advancements in visual, aural and simulation technologies.
05:01 For this and more, read the current issue of Outlook.