http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=Jessiehyojin&feedformat=atomDead Media Archive - User contributions [en]2024-03-28T18:15:28ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.25.2http://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9936Town Crier2010-05-04T02:44:34Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Historical Sketch on Town Crier */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:towncrier1.jpg|300px|thumb|right|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
[[File:towncrier.jpg|300px|thumb|left|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin.<br />
<br />
Although we have access to many different, almost instant, types of communication these days there is still a place for “communication with a human face”. Town criers are used to lead parades, open supermarkets, launch ships, attend official functions and act as ambassadors of good will on any occasion when a flamboyantly dressed character can be deployed to draw attention to what is happening. <br />
Criers or bellmen were usually people of some standing in the community, as they had to be able to read and write the proclamations. The crier would read a proclamation, usually at the door of the local inn, then nail it to the door post – which is where the expression “posting a notice” comes from, as well as naming newspapers as the post.<br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
[[File:Hermes and two women at right.jpg|400px|thumb|photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of Harvard University Art Museums, 1990]]<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
From the perspective of audience, there are no more people those who are just dependent on what town criers – on the material level – are saying. If so, I would like to deploy the networks of information in terms of players. <br />
<br />
[[File:cyborg.jpg|300px|thumb|left|cyborg]]<br />
<br />
When technologies comes to us, people need to examine how they came to get their knowledge and advocate self-examination to identify possible biases so that individuals can avoid believing in “unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims” not just being dependent on messengers who let us know what is happening. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges 583). Reiterating the importance of acknowledging one’s hybridism, she emphasizes the danger of acquiring knowledge from only one source: “the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (583). She encourages objectivism, deconstruction, partiality and critical interpretation. Her insistence that partial perspectives must be used to build situated knowledge is reflective of her construction of the hybrid-cyborg: The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (586).<br />
<br />
The cyborg is a utopian figure that is representative of a possible world-view and a political figure that Haraway wants women to embrace and “code”. However, the cyborg is also dangerous. In the same way that cyborgs build networks of affinities with no beginning and no end, they also represent networks of communication that can exert control with no beginning and no end. The irony that the cyborg figure embodies both of these optimistic and terrible possibilities is one of the more challenging concepts within A Manifesto For Cyborgs. Haraway believes that it is impossible to escape the cyborg as a site of contestation (Penley et al 13). The challenge, she believes, is to “see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (Haraway, A Manifesto For Cyborgs 154). That is, in order to embrace the metaphor of the cyborg as a way to build coalitions and value partial identities, one must be prepared to recognize the dangers of this mythical figure. The dangers arise when we stop contesting the boundary definitions of human and animal, organism and machine; without such contestation, biological and technological determinism will prevail.<br />
<br />
== Where do media go to die? ==<br />
<br />
We can say that town crier does not work anymore, but we can see it as remediated forms in daily routine life as the technology used is in a very literal sense extinct. Unless there are definitely monumental leaps regarding the historical newscasters, there are no more town criers. On the aspect of media, what are the necessities of a media that degrade the long term utility of the media itself, or of the social conditions that cause its use? In the case of town criers, it is pretty hard to being existed. Due to ‘pop and hiss’, town criers are unnecessary at the material level but are still nevertheless necessary at the semiotic level. We are still eager to know how newscasters probe the fact with their own situated knowledge.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
* Donald, Kelley R. ".Hermes, Clio, Themis: Historical Interpretation and Legal Hermeneutics." The Journal of Modern History, 55(4),644-668<br />
* Haraway, Donna. "Situated Knowledge:The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective." Feminist Studies,14(3),1988. 575-599.<br />
* Haraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991),149-181.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9935Town Crier2010-05-04T02:43:47Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Reference */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:towncrier1.jpg|300px|thumb|right|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
[[File:towncrier.jpg|300px|thumb|left|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
[[File:Hermes and two women at right.jpg|400px|thumb|photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of Harvard University Art Museums, 1990]]<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
From the perspective of audience, there are no more people those who are just dependent on what town criers – on the material level – are saying. If so, I would like to deploy the networks of information in terms of players. <br />
<br />
[[File:cyborg.jpg|300px|thumb|left|cyborg]]<br />
<br />
When technologies comes to us, people need to examine how they came to get their knowledge and advocate self-examination to identify possible biases so that individuals can avoid believing in “unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims” not just being dependent on messengers who let us know what is happening. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges 583). Reiterating the importance of acknowledging one’s hybridism, she emphasizes the danger of acquiring knowledge from only one source: “the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (583). She encourages objectivism, deconstruction, partiality and critical interpretation. Her insistence that partial perspectives must be used to build situated knowledge is reflective of her construction of the hybrid-cyborg: The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (586).<br />
<br />
The cyborg is a utopian figure that is representative of a possible world-view and a political figure that Haraway wants women to embrace and “code”. However, the cyborg is also dangerous. In the same way that cyborgs build networks of affinities with no beginning and no end, they also represent networks of communication that can exert control with no beginning and no end. The irony that the cyborg figure embodies both of these optimistic and terrible possibilities is one of the more challenging concepts within A Manifesto For Cyborgs. Haraway believes that it is impossible to escape the cyborg as a site of contestation (Penley et al 13). The challenge, she believes, is to “see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (Haraway, A Manifesto For Cyborgs 154). That is, in order to embrace the metaphor of the cyborg as a way to build coalitions and value partial identities, one must be prepared to recognize the dangers of this mythical figure. The dangers arise when we stop contesting the boundary definitions of human and animal, organism and machine; without such contestation, biological and technological determinism will prevail.<br />
<br />
== Where do media go to die? ==<br />
<br />
We can say that town crier does not work anymore, but we can see it as remediated forms in daily routine life as the technology used is in a very literal sense extinct. Unless there are definitely monumental leaps regarding the historical newscasters, there are no more town criers. On the aspect of media, what are the necessities of a media that degrade the long term utility of the media itself, or of the social conditions that cause its use? In the case of town criers, it is pretty hard to being existed. Due to ‘pop and hiss’, town criers are unnecessary at the material level but are still nevertheless necessary at the semiotic level. We are still eager to know how newscasters probe the fact with their own situated knowledge.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
* Donald, Kelley R. ".Hermes, Clio, Themis: Historical Interpretation and Legal Hermeneutics." The Journal of Modern History, 55(4),644-668<br />
* Haraway, Donna. "Situated Knowledge:The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective." Feminist Studies,14(3),1988. 575-599.<br />
* Haraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991),149-181.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9934Town Crier2010-05-04T02:38:59Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Reference */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:towncrier1.jpg|300px|thumb|right|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
[[File:towncrier.jpg|300px|thumb|left|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
[[File:Hermes and two women at right.jpg|400px|thumb|photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of Harvard University Art Museums, 1990]]<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
From the perspective of audience, there are no more people those who are just dependent on what town criers – on the material level – are saying. If so, I would like to deploy the networks of information in terms of players. <br />
<br />
[[File:cyborg.jpg|300px|thumb|left|cyborg]]<br />
<br />
When technologies comes to us, people need to examine how they came to get their knowledge and advocate self-examination to identify possible biases so that individuals can avoid believing in “unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims” not just being dependent on messengers who let us know what is happening. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges 583). Reiterating the importance of acknowledging one’s hybridism, she emphasizes the danger of acquiring knowledge from only one source: “the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (583). She encourages objectivism, deconstruction, partiality and critical interpretation. Her insistence that partial perspectives must be used to build situated knowledge is reflective of her construction of the hybrid-cyborg: The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (586).<br />
<br />
The cyborg is a utopian figure that is representative of a possible world-view and a political figure that Haraway wants women to embrace and “code”. However, the cyborg is also dangerous. In the same way that cyborgs build networks of affinities with no beginning and no end, they also represent networks of communication that can exert control with no beginning and no end. The irony that the cyborg figure embodies both of these optimistic and terrible possibilities is one of the more challenging concepts within A Manifesto For Cyborgs. Haraway believes that it is impossible to escape the cyborg as a site of contestation (Penley et al 13). The challenge, she believes, is to “see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (Haraway, A Manifesto For Cyborgs 154). That is, in order to embrace the metaphor of the cyborg as a way to build coalitions and value partial identities, one must be prepared to recognize the dangers of this mythical figure. The dangers arise when we stop contesting the boundary definitions of human and animal, organism and machine; without such contestation, biological and technological determinism will prevail.<br />
<br />
== Where do media go to die? ==<br />
<br />
We can say that town crier does not work anymore, but we can see it as remediated forms in daily routine life as the technology used is in a very literal sense extinct. Unless there are definitely monumental leaps regarding the historical newscasters, there are no more town criers. On the aspect of media, what are the necessities of a media that degrade the long term utility of the media itself, or of the social conditions that cause its use? In the case of town criers, it is pretty hard to being existed. Due to ‘pop and hiss’, town criers are unnecessary at the material level but are still nevertheless necessary at the semiotic level. We are still eager to know how newscasters probe the fact with their own situated knowledge.<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
* Donald,Kelley R. ".Hermes, Clio, Themis: Historical Interpretation and Legal Hermeneutics." The Journal of Modern History, 55(4),644-668<br />
* Haraway, Donna. "Situated Knowledge:The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective." Feminist Studies,14(3),1988. 575-599.<br />
* Haraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991),149-181.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9933Town Crier2010-05-04T02:32:41Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Reference */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:towncrier1.jpg|300px|thumb|right|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
[[File:towncrier.jpg|300px|thumb|left|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
[[File:Hermes and two women at right.jpg|400px|thumb|photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of Harvard University Art Museums, 1990]]<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
From the perspective of audience, there are no more people those who are just dependent on what town criers – on the material level – are saying. If so, I would like to deploy the networks of information in terms of players. <br />
<br />
[[File:cyborg.jpg|300px|thumb|left|cyborg]]<br />
<br />
When technologies comes to us, people need to examine how they came to get their knowledge and advocate self-examination to identify possible biases so that individuals can avoid believing in “unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims” not just being dependent on messengers who let us know what is happening. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges 583). Reiterating the importance of acknowledging one’s hybridism, she emphasizes the danger of acquiring knowledge from only one source: “the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (583). She encourages objectivism, deconstruction, partiality and critical interpretation. Her insistence that partial perspectives must be used to build situated knowledge is reflective of her construction of the hybrid-cyborg: The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (586).<br />
<br />
The cyborg is a utopian figure that is representative of a possible world-view and a political figure that Haraway wants women to embrace and “code”. However, the cyborg is also dangerous. In the same way that cyborgs build networks of affinities with no beginning and no end, they also represent networks of communication that can exert control with no beginning and no end. The irony that the cyborg figure embodies both of these optimistic and terrible possibilities is one of the more challenging concepts within A Manifesto For Cyborgs. Haraway believes that it is impossible to escape the cyborg as a site of contestation (Penley et al 13). The challenge, she believes, is to “see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (Haraway, A Manifesto For Cyborgs 154). That is, in order to embrace the metaphor of the cyborg as a way to build coalitions and value partial identities, one must be prepared to recognize the dangers of this mythical figure. The dangers arise when we stop contesting the boundary definitions of human and animal, organism and machine; without such contestation, biological and technological determinism will prevail.<br />
<br />
== Where do media go to die? ==<br />
<br />
We can say that town crier does not work anymore, but we can see it as remediated forms in daily routine life as the technology used is in a very literal sense extinct. Unless there are definitely monumental leaps regarding the historical newscasters, there are no more town criers. On the aspect of media, what are the necessities of a media that degrade the long term utility of the media itself, or of the social conditions that cause its use? In the case of town criers, it is pretty hard to being existed. Due to ‘pop and hiss’, town criers are unnecessary at the material level but are still nevertheless necessary at the semiotic level. We are still eager to know how newscasters probe the fact with their own situated knowledge.<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
* Haraway, Donna. "Situated Knowledge:The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective." Feminist Studies,14(3),1988. 575-599.<br />
* Haraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991),149-181.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=File:Cyborg.jpg&diff=9932File:Cyborg.jpg2010-05-04T02:14:20Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div></div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9931Town Crier2010-05-04T02:13:25Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:towncrier1.jpg|300px|thumb|right|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
[[File:towncrier.jpg|300px|thumb|left|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
[[File:Hermes and two women at right.jpg|400px|thumb|photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of Harvard University Art Museums, 1990]]<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
From the perspective of audience, there are no more people those who are just dependent on what town criers – on the material level – are saying. If so, I would like to deploy the networks of information in terms of players. <br />
<br />
[[File:cyborg.jpg|300px|thumb|left|cyborg]]<br />
<br />
When technologies comes to us, people need to examine how they came to get their knowledge and advocate self-examination to identify possible biases so that individuals can avoid believing in “unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims” not just being dependent on messengers who let us know what is happening. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges 583). Reiterating the importance of acknowledging one’s hybridism, she emphasizes the danger of acquiring knowledge from only one source: “the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (583). She encourages objectivism, deconstruction, partiality and critical interpretation. Her insistence that partial perspectives must be used to build situated knowledge is reflective of her construction of the hybrid-cyborg: The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (586).<br />
<br />
The cyborg is a utopian figure that is representative of a possible world-view and a political figure that Haraway wants women to embrace and “code”. However, the cyborg is also dangerous. In the same way that cyborgs build networks of affinities with no beginning and no end, they also represent networks of communication that can exert control with no beginning and no end. The irony that the cyborg figure embodies both of these optimistic and terrible possibilities is one of the more challenging concepts within A Manifesto For Cyborgs. Haraway believes that it is impossible to escape the cyborg as a site of contestation (Penley et al 13). The challenge, she believes, is to “see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (Haraway, A Manifesto For Cyborgs 154). That is, in order to embrace the metaphor of the cyborg as a way to build coalitions and value partial identities, one must be prepared to recognize the dangers of this mythical figure. The dangers arise when we stop contesting the boundary definitions of human and animal, organism and machine; without such contestation, biological and technological determinism will prevail.<br />
<br />
== Where do media go to die? ==<br />
<br />
We can say that town crier does not work anymore, but we can see it as remediated forms in daily routine life as the technology used is in a very literal sense extinct. Unless there are definitely monumental leaps regarding the historical newscasters, there are no more town criers. On the aspect of media, what are the necessities of a media that degrade the long term utility of the media itself, or of the social conditions that cause its use? In the case of town criers, it is pretty hard to being existed. Due to ‘pop and hiss’, town criers are unnecessary at the material level but are still nevertheless necessary at the semiotic level. We are still eager to know how newscasters probe the fact with their own situated knowledge.<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
* Haraway, Donna. "Situated Knowledge:The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective." Feminist Studies,14(3),1988. 575-599.<br />
* Haraway, Donna. <br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9930Town Crier2010-05-04T02:10:54Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:towncrier1.jpg|300px|thumb|right|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
[[File:towncrier.jpg|300px|thumb|left|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
[[File:Hermes and two women at right.jpg|400px|thumb|photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of Harvard University Art Museums, 1990]]<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
From the perspective of audience, there are no more people those who just dependent on what town criers – on the material level – are saying. If so, I would like to deploy the networks of information in terms of players. <br />
<br />
[[File:cyborg.jpg|300px|thumb|left|cyborg]]<br />
<br />
When technologies comes to us, people need to examine how they came to get their knowledge and advocate self-examination to identify possible biases so that individuals can avoid believing in “unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims” not just being dependent on messengers who let us know what is happening. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges 583). Reiterating the importance of acknowledging one’s hybridism, she emphasizes the danger of acquiring knowledge from only one source: “the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (583). She encourages objectivism, deconstruction, partiality and critical interpretation. Her insistence that partial perspectives must be used to build situated knowledge is reflective of her construction of the hybrid-cyborg: The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (586).<br />
<br />
The cyborg is a utopian figure that is representative of a possible world-view and a political figure that Haraway wants women to embrace and “code”. However, the cyborg is also dangerous. In the same way that cyborgs build networks of affinities with no beginning and no end, they also represent networks of communication that can exert control with no beginning and no end. The irony that the cyborg figure embodies both of these optimistic and terrible possibilities is one of the more challenging concepts within A Manifesto For Cyborgs. Haraway believes that it is impossible to escape the cyborg as a site of contestation (Penley et al 13). The challenge, she believes, is to “see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (Haraway, A Manifesto For Cyborgs 154). That is, in order to embrace the metaphor of the cyborg as a way to build coalitions and value partial identities, one must be prepared to recognize the dangers of this mythical figure. The dangers arise when we stop contesting the boundary definitions of human and animal, organism and machine; without such contestation, biological and technological determinism will prevail.<br />
<br />
== Where do media go to die? ==<br />
<br />
We can say that town crier does not work anymore, but we can see it as remediated forms in daily routine life as the technology used is in a very literal sense extinct. Unless there are definitely monumental leaps regarding the historical newscasters, there are no more town criers. On the aspect of media, what are the necessities of a media that degrade the long term utility of the media itself, or of the social conditions that cause its use? In the case of town criers, it is pretty hard to being existed. Due to ‘pop and hiss’, town criers are unnecessary at the material level but are still nevertheless necessary at the semiotic level. We are still eager to know how newscasters probe the fact with their own situated knowledge.<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
* Haraway, Donna. "Situated Knowledge:The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective." Feminist Studies,14(3),1988. 575-599.<br />
* Haraway, Donna. <br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9929Town Crier2010-05-04T02:10:10Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:towncrier1.jpg|300px|thumb|right|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
[[File:towncrier.jpg|300px|thumb|left|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
[[File:Hermes and two women at right.jpg|400px|thumb|photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of Harvard University Art Museums, 1990]]<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
From the perspective of audience, there are no more people those who just dependent on what town criers – on the material level – are saying. If so, I would like to deploy the networks of information in terms of players. <br />
<br />
[[File:cyborg.jpg|300px|thumb|right|cyborg]]<br />
<br />
When technologies comes to us, people need to examine how they came to get their knowledge and advocate self-examination to identify possible biases so that individuals can avoid believing in “unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims” not just being dependent on messengers who let us know what is happening. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges 583). Reiterating the importance of acknowledging one’s hybridism, she emphasizes the danger of acquiring knowledge from only one source: “the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (583). She encourages objectivism, deconstruction, partiality and critical interpretation. Her insistence that partial perspectives must be used to build situated knowledge is reflective of her construction of the hybrid-cyborg: The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (586).<br />
<br />
The cyborg is a utopian figure that is representative of a possible world-view and a political figure that Haraway wants women to embrace and “code”. However, the cyborg is also dangerous. In the same way that cyborgs build networks of affinities with no beginning and no end, they also represent networks of communication that can exert control with no beginning and no end. The irony that the cyborg figure embodies both of these optimistic and terrible possibilities is one of the more challenging concepts within A Manifesto For Cyborgs. Haraway believes that it is impossible to escape the cyborg as a site of contestation (Penley et al 13). The challenge, she believes, is to “see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (Haraway, A Manifesto For Cyborgs 154). That is, in order to embrace the metaphor of the cyborg as a way to build coalitions and value partial identities, one must be prepared to recognize the dangers of this mythical figure. The dangers arise when we stop contesting the boundary definitions of human and animal, organism and machine; without such contestation, biological and technological determinism will prevail.<br />
<br />
== Where do media go to die? ==<br />
<br />
We can say that town crier does not work anymore, but we can see it as remediated forms in daily routine life as the technology used is in a very literal sense extinct. Unless there are definitely monumental leaps regarding the historical newscasters, there are no more town criers. On the aspect of media, what are the necessities of a media that degrade the long term utility of the media itself, or of the social conditions that cause its use? In the case of town criers, it is pretty hard to being existed. Due to ‘pop and hiss’, town criers are unnecessary at the material level but are still nevertheless necessary at the semiotic level. We are still eager to know how newscasters probe the fact with their own situated knowledge.<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
* Haraway, Donna. "Situated Knowledge:The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective." Feminist Studies,14(3),1988. 575-599.<br />
* Haraway, Donna. <br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9928Town Crier2010-05-04T02:08:12Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:towncrier1.jpg|300px|thumb|right|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
[[File:towncrier.jpg|300px|thumb|left|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
[[File:Hermes and two women at right.jpg|400px|thumb|photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of Harvard University Art Museums, 1990]]<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
From the perspective of audience, there are no more people those who just dependent on what town criers – on the material level – are saying. If so, I would like to deploy the networks of information in terms of players. <br />
<br />
When technologies comes to us, people need to examine how they came to get their knowledge and advocate self-examination to identify possible biases so that individuals can avoid believing in “unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims” not just being dependent on messengers who let us know what is happening. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges 583). Reiterating the importance of acknowledging one’s hybridism, she emphasizes the danger of acquiring knowledge from only one source: “the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (583). She encourages objectivism, deconstruction, partiality and critical interpretation. Her insistence that partial perspectives must be used to build situated knowledge is reflective of her construction of the hybrid-cyborg: The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (586).<br />
<br />
The cyborg is a utopian figure that is representative of a possible world-view and a political figure that Haraway wants women to embrace and “code”. However, the cyborg is also dangerous. In the same way that cyborgs build networks of affinities with no beginning and no end, they also represent networks of communication that can exert control with no beginning and no end. The irony that the cyborg figure embodies both of these optimistic and terrible possibilities is one of the more challenging concepts within A Manifesto For Cyborgs. Haraway believes that it is impossible to escape the cyborg as a site of contestation (Penley et al 13). The challenge, she believes, is to “see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (Haraway, A Manifesto For Cyborgs 154). That is, in order to embrace the metaphor of the cyborg as a way to build coalitions and value partial identities, one must be prepared to recognize the dangers of this mythical figure. The dangers arise when we stop contesting the boundary definitions of human and animal, organism and machine; without such contestation, biological and technological determinism will prevail.<br />
<br />
== Where do media go to die? ==<br />
<br />
We can say that town crier does not work anymore, but we can see it as remediated forms in daily routine life as the technology used is in a very literal sense extinct. Unless there are definitely monumental leaps regarding the historical newscasters, there are no more town criers. On the aspect of media, what are the necessities of a media that degrade the long term utility of the media itself, or of the social conditions that cause its use? In the case of town criers, it is pretty hard to being existed. Due to ‘pop and hiss’, town criers are unnecessary at the material level but are still nevertheless necessary at the semiotic level. We are still eager to know how newscasters probe the fact with their own situated knowledge.<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
* Haraway, Donna. "Situated Knowledge:The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective." Feminist Studies,14(3),1988. 575-599.<br />
* Haraway, Donna. <br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9927Town Crier2010-05-04T02:04:45Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:towncrier1.jpg|300px|thumb|right|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
[[File:towncrier.jpg|300px|thumb|left|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
[[File:Hermes and two women at right.jpg|400px|thumb|photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of Harvard University Art Museums, 1990]]<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
From the perspective of audience, there are no more people those who just dependent on what town criers – on the material level – are saying. If so, I would like to deploy the networks of information in terms of players. <br />
<br />
When technologies comes to us, people need to examine how they came to get their knowledge and advocate self-examination to identify possible biases so that individuals can avoid believing in “unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims” not just being dependent on messengers who let us know what is happening. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges 583). Reiterating the importance of acknowledging one’s hybridism, she emphasizes the danger of acquiring knowledge from only one source: “the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (583). She encourages objectivism, deconstruction, partiality and critical interpretation. Her insistence that partial perspectives must be used to build situated knowledge is reflective of her construction of the hybrid-cyborg: The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (586).<br />
<br />
The cyborg is a utopian figure that is representative of a possible world-view and a political figure that Haraway wants women to embrace and “code”. However, the cyborg is also dangerous. In the same way that cyborgs build networks of affinities with no beginning and no end, they also represent networks of communication that can exert control with no beginning and no end. The irony that the cyborg figure embodies both of these optimistic and terrible possibilities is one of the more challenging concepts within A Manifesto For Cyborgs. Haraway believes that it is impossible to escape the cyborg as a site of contestation (Penley et al 13). The challenge, she believes, is to “see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (Haraway, A Manifesto For Cyborgs 154). That is, in order to embrace the metaphor of the cyborg as a way to build coalitions and value partial identities, one must be prepared to recognize the dangers of this mythical figure. The dangers arise when we stop contesting the boundary definitions of human and animal, organism and machine; without such contestation, biological and technological determinism will prevail.<br />
<br />
== Where do media go to die? ==<br />
<br />
We can say that town crier does not work anymore, but we can see it as remediated forms in daily routine life as the technology used is in a very literal sense extinct. Unless there are definitely monumental leaps regarding the historical newscasters, there are no more town criers. On the aspect of media, what are the necessities of a media that degrade the long term utility of the media itself, or of the social conditions that cause its use? In the case of town criers, it is pretty hard to being existed. Due to ‘pop and hiss’, town criers are unnecessary at the material level but are still nevertheless necessary at the semiotic level. We are still eager to know how newscasters probe the fact with their own situated knowledge.<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=File:Towncrier1.jpg&diff=9926File:Towncrier1.jpg2010-05-04T01:59:01Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div></div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=File:Towncrier_1.jpg&diff=9925File:Towncrier 1.jpg2010-05-04T01:54:30Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div></div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9924Town Crier2010-05-04T01:29:28Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:towncrier1.jpg|300px|thumb|right|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
[[File:towncrier.jpg|300px|thumb|left|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
[[File:Hermes and two women at right.jpg|400px|thumb|photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of Harvard University Art Museums, 1990]]<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
From the perspective of audience, there are no more people those who just dependent on what town criers – on the material level – are saying. If so, I would like to deploy the networks of information in terms of players. <br />
<br />
When technologies comes to us, people need to examine how they came to get their knowledge and advocate self-examination to identify possible biases so that individuals can avoid believing in “unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims” not just being dependent on messengers who let us know what is happening. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges 583). Reiterating the importance of acknowledging one’s hybridism, she emphasizes the danger of acquiring knowledge from only one source: “the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (583). She encourages objectivism, deconstruction, partiality and critical interpretation. Her insistence that partial perspectives must be used to build situated knowledge is reflective of her construction of the hybrid-cyborg: The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (586).<br />
<br />
The cyborg is a utopian figure that is representative of a possible world-view and a political figure that Haraway wants women to embrace and “code”. However, the cyborg is also dangerous. In the same way that cyborgs build networks of affinities with no beginning and no end, they also represent networks of communication that can exert control with no beginning and no end. The irony that the cyborg figure embodies both of these optimistic and terrible possibilities is one of the more challenging concepts within A Manifesto For Cyborgs. Haraway believes that it is impossible to escape the cyborg as a site of contestation (Penley et al 13). The challenge, she believes, is to “see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (Haraway, A Manifesto For Cyborgs 154). That is, in order to embrace the metaphor of the cyborg as a way to build coalitions and value partial identities, one must be prepared to recognize the dangers of this mythical figure. The dangers arise when we stop contesting the boundary definitions of human and animal, organism and machine; without such contestation, biological and technological determinism will prevail.<br />
<br />
== Where do media go to die? ==<br />
<br />
We can say that town crier does not work anymore, but we can see it as remediated forms in daily routine life as the technology used is in a very literal sense extinct. Unless there are definitely monumental leaps regarding the historical newscasters, there are no more town criers. On the aspect of media, what are the necessities of a media that degrade the long term utility of the media itself, or of the social conditions that cause its use? In the case of town criers, it is pretty hard to being existed. Due to ‘pop and hiss’, town criers are unnecessary at the material level but are still nevertheless necessary at the semiotic level. We are still eager to know how newscasters probe the fact with their own situated knowledge.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9923Town Crier2010-05-04T01:28:53Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:towncrier1.jpg|300px|thumb|left|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
[[File:towncrier.jpg|300px|thumb|left|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
[[File:Hermes and two women at right.jpg|400px|thumb|photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of Harvard University Art Museums, 1990]]<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
From the perspective of audience, there are no more people those who just dependent on what town criers – on the material level – are saying. If so, I would like to deploy the networks of information in terms of players. <br />
<br />
When technologies comes to us, people need to examine how they came to get their knowledge and advocate self-examination to identify possible biases so that individuals can avoid believing in “unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims” not just being dependent on messengers who let us know what is happening. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges 583). Reiterating the importance of acknowledging one’s hybridism, she emphasizes the danger of acquiring knowledge from only one source: “the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (583). She encourages objectivism, deconstruction, partiality and critical interpretation. Her insistence that partial perspectives must be used to build situated knowledge is reflective of her construction of the hybrid-cyborg: The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (586).<br />
<br />
The cyborg is a utopian figure that is representative of a possible world-view and a political figure that Haraway wants women to embrace and “code”. However, the cyborg is also dangerous. In the same way that cyborgs build networks of affinities with no beginning and no end, they also represent networks of communication that can exert control with no beginning and no end. The irony that the cyborg figure embodies both of these optimistic and terrible possibilities is one of the more challenging concepts within A Manifesto For Cyborgs. Haraway believes that it is impossible to escape the cyborg as a site of contestation (Penley et al 13). The challenge, she believes, is to “see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (Haraway, A Manifesto For Cyborgs 154). That is, in order to embrace the metaphor of the cyborg as a way to build coalitions and value partial identities, one must be prepared to recognize the dangers of this mythical figure. The dangers arise when we stop contesting the boundary definitions of human and animal, organism and machine; without such contestation, biological and technological determinism will prevail.<br />
<br />
== Where do media go to die? ==<br />
<br />
We can say that town crier does not work anymore, but we can see it as remediated forms in daily routine life as the technology used is in a very literal sense extinct. Unless there are definitely monumental leaps regarding the historical newscasters, there are no more town criers. On the aspect of media, what are the necessities of a media that degrade the long term utility of the media itself, or of the social conditions that cause its use? In the case of town criers, it is pretty hard to being existed. Due to ‘pop and hiss’, town criers are unnecessary at the material level but are still nevertheless necessary at the semiotic level. We are still eager to know how newscasters probe the fact with their own situated knowledge.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9922Town Crier2010-05-04T01:27:36Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures */</p>
<hr />
<div>== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
[[File:towncrier.jpg|300px|thumb|left|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
[[File:Hermes and two women at right.jpg|400px|thumb|photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of Harvard University Art Museums, 1990]]<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
From the perspective of audience, there are no more people those who just dependent on what town criers – on the material level – are saying. If so, I would like to deploy the networks of information in terms of players. <br />
<br />
When technologies comes to us, people need to examine how they came to get their knowledge and advocate self-examination to identify possible biases so that individuals can avoid believing in “unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims” not just being dependent on messengers who let us know what is happening. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges 583). Reiterating the importance of acknowledging one’s hybridism, she emphasizes the danger of acquiring knowledge from only one source: “the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (583). She encourages objectivism, deconstruction, partiality and critical interpretation. Her insistence that partial perspectives must be used to build situated knowledge is reflective of her construction of the hybrid-cyborg: The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (586).<br />
<br />
The cyborg is a utopian figure that is representative of a possible world-view and a political figure that Haraway wants women to embrace and “code”. However, the cyborg is also dangerous. In the same way that cyborgs build networks of affinities with no beginning and no end, they also represent networks of communication that can exert control with no beginning and no end. The irony that the cyborg figure embodies both of these optimistic and terrible possibilities is one of the more challenging concepts within A Manifesto For Cyborgs. Haraway believes that it is impossible to escape the cyborg as a site of contestation (Penley et al 13). The challenge, she believes, is to “see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (Haraway, A Manifesto For Cyborgs 154). That is, in order to embrace the metaphor of the cyborg as a way to build coalitions and value partial identities, one must be prepared to recognize the dangers of this mythical figure. The dangers arise when we stop contesting the boundary definitions of human and animal, organism and machine; without such contestation, biological and technological determinism will prevail.<br />
<br />
== Where do media go to die? ==<br />
<br />
We can say that town crier does not work anymore, but we can see it as remediated forms in daily routine life as the technology used is in a very literal sense extinct. Unless there are definitely monumental leaps regarding the historical newscasters, there are no more town criers. On the aspect of media, what are the necessities of a media that degrade the long term utility of the media itself, or of the social conditions that cause its use? In the case of town criers, it is pretty hard to being existed. Due to ‘pop and hiss’, town criers are unnecessary at the material level but are still nevertheless necessary at the semiotic level. We are still eager to know how newscasters probe the fact with their own situated knowledge.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9921Town Crier2010-05-04T01:27:07Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures */</p>
<hr />
<div>== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
[[File:towncrier.jpg|300px|thumb|left|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
[[File:Hermes and two women at right.jpg|400px|thumb|photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of Harvard University Art Museums, 1990]]<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
From the perspective of audience, there are no more people those who just dependent on what town criers – on the material level – are saying. If so, I would like deploy the networks of information in terms of players. <br />
<br />
When technologies comes to us, people need to examine how they came to get their knowledge and advocate self-examination to identify possible biases so that individuals can avoid believing in “unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims” not just being dependent on messengers who let us know what is happening. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges 583). Reiterating the importance of acknowledging one’s hybridism, she emphasizes the danger of acquiring knowledge from only one source: “the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (583). She encourages objectivism, deconstruction, partiality and critical interpretation. Her insistence that partial perspectives must be used to build situated knowledge is reflective of her construction of the hybrid-cyborg: The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (586).<br />
<br />
The cyborg is a utopian figure that is representative of a possible world-view and a political figure that Haraway wants women to embrace and “code”. However, the cyborg is also dangerous. In the same way that cyborgs build networks of affinities with no beginning and no end, they also represent networks of communication that can exert control with no beginning and no end. The irony that the cyborg figure embodies both of these optimistic and terrible possibilities is one of the more challenging concepts within A Manifesto For Cyborgs. Haraway believes that it is impossible to escape the cyborg as a site of contestation (Penley et al 13). The challenge, she believes, is to “see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (Haraway, A Manifesto For Cyborgs 154). That is, in order to embrace the metaphor of the cyborg as a way to build coalitions and value partial identities, one must be prepared to recognize the dangers of this mythical figure. The dangers arise when we stop contesting the boundary definitions of human and animal, organism and machine; without such contestation, biological and technological determinism will prevail.<br />
<br />
== Where do media go to die? ==<br />
<br />
We can say that town crier does not work anymore, but we can see it as remediated forms in daily routine life as the technology used is in a very literal sense extinct. Unless there are definitely monumental leaps regarding the historical newscasters, there are no more town criers. On the aspect of media, what are the necessities of a media that degrade the long term utility of the media itself, or of the social conditions that cause its use? In the case of town criers, it is pretty hard to being existed. Due to ‘pop and hiss’, town criers are unnecessary at the material level but are still nevertheless necessary at the semiotic level. We are still eager to know how newscasters probe the fact with their own situated knowledge.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9920Town Crier2010-05-04T01:06:13Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div>== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
[[File:towncrier.jpg|300px|thumb|left|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
[[File:Hermes and two women at right.jpg|400px|thumb|photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of Harvard University Art Museums, 1990]]<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
When technologies comes to us, people need to examine how they came to get their knowledge and advocate self-examination to identify possible biases so that individuals can avoid believing in “unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims” not just being dependent on messengers who let us know what is happening. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges 583). Reiterating the importance of acknowledging one’s hybridism, she emphasizes the danger of acquiring knowledge from only one source: “the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (583). She encourages objectivism, deconstruction, partiality and critical interpretation. Her insistence that partial perspectives must be used to build situated knowledge is reflective of her construction of the hybrid-cyborg: The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (586).<br />
<br />
The cyborg is a utopian figure that is representative of a possible world-view and a political figure that Haraway wants women to embrace and “code”. However, the cyborg is also dangerous. In the same way that cyborgs build networks of affinities with no beginning and no end, they also represent networks of communication that can exert control with no beginning and no end. The irony that the cyborg figure embodies both of these optimistic and terrible possibilities is one of the more challenging concepts within A Manifesto For Cyborgs. Haraway believes that it is impossible to escape the cyborg as a site of contestation (Penley et al 13). The challenge, she believes, is to “see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (Haraway, A Manifesto For Cyborgs 154). That is, in order to embrace the metaphor of the cyborg as a way to build coalitions and value partial identities, one must be prepared to recognize the dangers of this mythical figure. The dangers arise when we stop contesting the boundary definitions of human and animal, organism and machine; without such contestation, biological and technological determinism will prevail.<br />
<br />
== Where do media go to die? ==<br />
<br />
We can say that town crier does not work anymore, but we can see it as remediated forms in daily routine life as the technology used is in a very literal sense extinct. Unless there are definitely monumental leaps regarding the historical newscasters, there are no more town criers. On the aspect of media, what are the necessities of a media that degrade the long term utility of the media itself, or of the social conditions that cause its use? In the case of town criers, it is pretty hard to being existed. Due to ‘pop and hiss’, town criers are unnecessary at the material level but are still nevertheless necessary at the semiotic level. We are still eager to know how newscasters probe the fact with their own situated knowledge.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=File:Towncrier.jpg&diff=9919File:Towncrier.jpg2010-05-04T01:04:08Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div></div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9918Town Crier2010-05-04T01:03:08Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div><br />
== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
[[File:towncrier.jpg|400px|thumb|left|towncrier]]<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
[[File:Hermes and two women at right.jpg|400px|thumb|photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of Harvard University Art Museums, 1990]]<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
When technologies comes to us, people need to examine how they came to get their knowledge and advocate self-examination to identify possible biases so that individuals can avoid believing in “unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims” not just being dependent on messengers who let us know what is happening. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges 583). Reiterating the importance of acknowledging one’s hybridism, she emphasizes the danger of acquiring knowledge from only one source: “the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (583). She encourages objectivism, deconstruction, partiality and critical interpretation. Her insistence that partial perspectives must be used to build situated knowledge is reflective of her construction of the hybrid-cyborg: The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (586).<br />
<br />
The cyborg is a utopian figure that is representative of a possible world-view and a political figure that Haraway wants women to embrace and “code”. However, the cyborg is also dangerous. In the same way that cyborgs build networks of affinities with no beginning and no end, they also represent networks of communication that can exert control with no beginning and no end. The irony that the cyborg figure embodies both of these optimistic and terrible possibilities is one of the more challenging concepts within A Manifesto For Cyborgs. Haraway believes that it is impossible to escape the cyborg as a site of contestation (Penley et al 13). The challenge, she believes, is to “see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (Haraway, A Manifesto For Cyborgs 154). That is, in order to embrace the metaphor of the cyborg as a way to build coalitions and value partial identities, one must be prepared to recognize the dangers of this mythical figure. The dangers arise when we stop contesting the boundary definitions of human and animal, organism and machine; without such contestation, biological and technological determinism will prevail.<br />
<br />
== Where do media go to die? ==<br />
<br />
We can say that town crier does not work anymore, but we can see it as remediated forms in daily routine life as the technology used is in a very literal sense extinct. Unless there are definitely monumental leaps regarding the historical newscasters, there are no more town criers. On the aspect of media, what are the necessities of a media that degrade the long term utility of the media itself, or of the social conditions that cause its use? In the case of town criers, it is pretty hard to being existed. Due to ‘pop and hiss’, town criers are unnecessary at the material level but are still nevertheless necessary at the semiotic level. We are still eager to know how newscasters probe the fact with their own situated knowledge.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=File:Hermes_and_two_women_at_right.jpg&diff=9917File:Hermes and two women at right.jpg2010-05-04T00:59:57Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div></div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9916Town Crier2010-05-04T00:59:35Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div>== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
[[File:Hermes and two women at right.jpg|400px|thumb|photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of Harvard University Art Museums, 1990]]<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
When technologies comes to us, people need to examine how they came to get their knowledge and advocate self-examination to identify possible biases so that individuals can avoid believing in “unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims” not just being dependent on messengers who let us know what is happening. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges 583). Reiterating the importance of acknowledging one’s hybridism, she emphasizes the danger of acquiring knowledge from only one source: “the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (583). She encourages objectivism, deconstruction, partiality and critical interpretation. Her insistence that partial perspectives must be used to build situated knowledge is reflective of her construction of the hybrid-cyborg: The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (586).<br />
<br />
The cyborg is a utopian figure that is representative of a possible world-view and a political figure that Haraway wants women to embrace and “code”. However, the cyborg is also dangerous. In the same way that cyborgs build networks of affinities with no beginning and no end, they also represent networks of communication that can exert control with no beginning and no end. The irony that the cyborg figure embodies both of these optimistic and terrible possibilities is one of the more challenging concepts within A Manifesto For Cyborgs. Haraway believes that it is impossible to escape the cyborg as a site of contestation (Penley et al 13). The challenge, she believes, is to “see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (Haraway, A Manifesto For Cyborgs 154). That is, in order to embrace the metaphor of the cyborg as a way to build coalitions and value partial identities, one must be prepared to recognize the dangers of this mythical figure. The dangers arise when we stop contesting the boundary definitions of human and animal, organism and machine; without such contestation, biological and technological determinism will prevail.<br />
<br />
== Where do media go to die? ==<br />
<br />
We can say that town crier does not work anymore, but we can see it as remediated forms in daily routine life as the technology used is in a very literal sense extinct. Unless there are definitely monumental leaps regarding the historical newscasters, there are no more town criers. On the aspect of media, what are the necessities of a media that degrade the long term utility of the media itself, or of the social conditions that cause its use? In the case of town criers, it is pretty hard to being existed. Due to ‘pop and hiss’, town criers are unnecessary at the material level but are still nevertheless necessary at the semiotic level. We are still eager to know how newscasters probe the fact with their own situated knowledge.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9915Town Crier2010-05-04T00:54:45Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Where do media go to die? */</p>
<hr />
<div>== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
When technologies comes to us, people need to examine how they came to get their knowledge and advocate self-examination to identify possible biases so that individuals can avoid believing in “unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims” not just being dependent on messengers who let us know what is happening. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges 583). Reiterating the importance of acknowledging one’s hybridism, she emphasizes the danger of acquiring knowledge from only one source: “the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (583). She encourages objectivism, deconstruction, partiality and critical interpretation. Her insistence that partial perspectives must be used to build situated knowledge is reflective of her construction of the hybrid-cyborg: The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (586).<br />
<br />
The cyborg is a utopian figure that is representative of a possible world-view and a political figure that Haraway wants women to embrace and “code”. However, the cyborg is also dangerous. In the same way that cyborgs build networks of affinities with no beginning and no end, they also represent networks of communication that can exert control with no beginning and no end. The irony that the cyborg figure embodies both of these optimistic and terrible possibilities is one of the more challenging concepts within A Manifesto For Cyborgs. Haraway believes that it is impossible to escape the cyborg as a site of contestation (Penley et al 13). The challenge, she believes, is to “see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (Haraway, A Manifesto For Cyborgs 154). That is, in order to embrace the metaphor of the cyborg as a way to build coalitions and value partial identities, one must be prepared to recognize the dangers of this mythical figure. The dangers arise when we stop contesting the boundary definitions of human and animal, organism and machine; without such contestation, biological and technological determinism will prevail.<br />
<br />
== Where do media go to die? ==<br />
<br />
We can say that town crier does not work anymore, but we can see it as remediated forms in daily routine life as the technology used is in a very literal sense extinct. Unless there are definitely monumental leaps regarding the historical newscasters, there are no more town criers. On the aspect of media, what are the necessities of a media that degrade the long term utility of the media itself, or of the social conditions that cause its use? In the case of town criers, it is pretty hard to being existed. Due to ‘pop and hiss’, town criers are unnecessary at the material level but are still nevertheless necessary at the semiotic level. We are still eager to know how newscasters probe the fact with their own situated knowledge.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9914Town Crier2010-05-04T00:54:13Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div>== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
When technologies comes to us, people need to examine how they came to get their knowledge and advocate self-examination to identify possible biases so that individuals can avoid believing in “unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims” not just being dependent on messengers who let us know what is happening. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges 583). Reiterating the importance of acknowledging one’s hybridism, she emphasizes the danger of acquiring knowledge from only one source: “the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (583). She encourages objectivism, deconstruction, partiality and critical interpretation. Her insistence that partial perspectives must be used to build situated knowledge is reflective of her construction of the hybrid-cyborg: The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (586).<br />
<br />
The cyborg is a utopian figure that is representative of a possible world-view and a political figure that Haraway wants women to embrace and “code”. However, the cyborg is also dangerous. In the same way that cyborgs build networks of affinities with no beginning and no end, they also represent networks of communication that can exert control with no beginning and no end. The irony that the cyborg figure embodies both of these optimistic and terrible possibilities is one of the more challenging concepts within A Manifesto For Cyborgs. Haraway believes that it is impossible to escape the cyborg as a site of contestation (Penley et al 13). The challenge, she believes, is to “see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (Haraway, A Manifesto For Cyborgs 154). That is, in order to embrace the metaphor of the cyborg as a way to build coalitions and value partial identities, one must be prepared to recognize the dangers of this mythical figure. The dangers arise when we stop contesting the boundary definitions of human and animal, organism and machine; without such contestation, biological and technological determinism will prevail.<br />
<br />
== Where do media go to die? ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9913Town Crier2010-05-04T00:53:03Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures */</p>
<hr />
<div>== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
When technologies comes to us, people need to examine how they came to get their knowledge and advocate self-examination to identify possible biases so that individuals can avoid believing in “unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims” not just being dependent on messengers who let us know what is happening. (Haraway, Situated Knowledges 583). Reiterating the importance of acknowledging one’s hybridism, she emphasizes the danger of acquiring knowledge from only one source: “the moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (583). She encourages objectivism, deconstruction, partiality and critical interpretation. Her insistence that partial perspectives must be used to build situated knowledge is reflective of her construction of the hybrid-cyborg: The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (586).<br />
<br />
The cyborg is a utopian figure that is representative of a possible world-view and a political figure that Haraway wants women to embrace and “code”. However, the cyborg is also dangerous. In the same way that cyborgs build networks of affinities with no beginning and no end, they also represent networks of communication that can exert control with no beginning and no end. The irony that the cyborg figure embodies both of these optimistic and terrible possibilities is one of the more challenging concepts within A Manifesto For Cyborgs. Haraway believes that it is impossible to escape the cyborg as a site of contestation (Penley et al 13). The challenge, she believes, is to “see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (Haraway, A Manifesto For Cyborgs 154). That is, in order to embrace the metaphor of the cyborg as a way to build coalitions and value partial identities, one must be prepared to recognize the dangers of this mythical figure. The dangers arise when we stop contesting the boundary definitions of human and animal, organism and machine; without such contestation, biological and technological determinism will prevail.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9912Town Crier2010-05-04T00:52:12Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div>== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
== Isn’t it still “Alive”? Pops and hisses: Cyborg as Double-Headed figures ==<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9911Town Crier2010-05-04T00:50:05Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* The Medium is NOT the message */</p>
<hr />
<div>== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
'''Hermes,''' the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
''"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."''<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9910Town Crier2010-05-04T00:49:26Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div>== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message ==<br />
<br />
Hermes, the fleet-footed messenger with wings on his heels and cap symbolizes fast floral delivery. However, Hermes was originally neither winged nor a messenger - that role was reserved for the rainbow goddess Iris. He was, instead, clever, tricky, a thief, and, with his awakening or sleep-conferring wand, the original sandman whose descendants include a major Greek hero and a noisy, fun-loving god.<br />
<br />
In the Iliad, Iris is the messenger god and in the Odyssey, it's Hermes, but even in the Iliad (Book 2), there is a passage where in the words of Timothy Ganz, Hermes serves as courier:<br />
<br />
"Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the isles."<br />
<br />
In this sense, town criers have been took their role as Hermes and then were used to issue warnings and acted as conveyors of local news. In Haddington, East Lothian, after a fire which destroyed one side of the High Street in 1598, the “coal and candle” proclamation was introduced. This was an instruction to the burghers to acquaint themselves with every device for fire prevention. The proclamation was announced by the town crier nightly except Sunday from Martinmas to Candlemas. <br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9909Town Crier2010-05-04T00:48:40Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div>== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
== The Medium is NOT the message. ==<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9908Town Crier2010-05-04T00:45:38Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Historical Sketch on Town Crier */</p>
<hr />
<div><br />
== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice.<br />
<br />
The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. <br />
<br />
As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9907Town Crier2010-05-04T00:45:05Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Historical Sketch on Town Crier */</p>
<hr />
<div><br />
== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as '''“historical newscasters”.''' It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice. The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9906Town Crier2010-05-04T00:44:50Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Historical Sketch on Town Crier */</p>
<hr />
<div><br />
== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
Town criers could well be described as “historical newscasters”. It is known that the tradition was started in ancient Greece, when heralds were used to announce the severing of relationships which would lead to an official proclamation of war. The herald would also be used to bear proposals of truce or armistice. The origin of the word “stentorian” has been attributed to the Greek warrior Stentor, who played a part in the Trojan war and whose voice was said to be as powerful as the voices of 50 other men. The first use of criers in the British Isles was said to date back to Norman times, when the cry “oyez, oyez, oyez”, (old French for “hear ye”) was used to draw the attention of the mostly illiterate public to matters of importance. As town criers enjoyed royal protection, the command “don’t shoot the messenger” had very real significance. In the capital city of Edinburgh, one of the last known town criers was George Pratt – about the year 1784 – who was noted for his pompous delivery in discharging his duties. George had a high opinion of the importance and dignity of his situation as a public officer. They persecuted him with the cry of “quack, quack!” – a monosyllable which was particularly offensive to his ears. This cry was sometimes varied into “swallow’s nest”, a phrase which he also abominated, as it made an allusion to a personal deformity – a large wen that grew beneath his chin. <br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9905Town Crier2010-05-04T00:44:12Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div><br />
== Historical Sketch on Town Crier ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Town_Crier&diff=9904Town Crier2010-05-04T00:43:48Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div><br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Scopitone&diff=9898Scopitone2010-05-03T19:25:07Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Brief Description */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:color6.jpg|thumb|right|Scopitone]] “Before music videos and MTV there was their great-granddaddy, Scopitone.”<br />
<br />
(San Francisco Chronicle, Mar 19, 1992)<br />
<br />
== Brief Description ==<br />
<br />
[[File:S_1_1963Canada.jpg|thumb|left|Scopitone]] <br />
<br />
<br />
Today we take music videos on MTV and VH1 for granted. But did you know these musical cinematic gems have roots dating back to the start of World War II? And then they developed out of a "visual jukebox" called a Scopitone which was fashionable in the early 1960's.<br />
<br />
Invented in France right after World War Ⅱ, Scopitone were short 16mm films named after the modified jukeboxes they used to be player on. The first Scopitones were made in France in 1960. The ancestors of music videos, they hit their golden age in the early ‘60s, neatly concinciding with the explosion of teen-driven pop music in both France and the United States, the two main purveyors of the genre.<br />
<br />
Judging by this selection of almost 30 short films, there were two basic schools of Scopitones: the one where the singers were surrounded by bikini-clad, buxom vixens frantically twisting on location, and the one where you dropped the same indefatigable dancers into ostentatiously fake-looking sets. They run the gamut, from the Exciters singing “Tell Him” to the Kessler Sisters, blond twins who were regulars on European variety shows and whose Scopitone is a grandiose exercise in Teutonic kitsch.<br />
<br />
== How it works ==<br />
<br />
In 1939, a device called a "Panoram" was invented by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. The Panoram played eight three-minute musical shorts in a wooden jukebox fitted with a 17 x 22.5 inch translucent screen. The image was projected in a rear-screen manner via 16mm black and white film. These shorts became known as "soundies" and starred many of the most well-known jazz acts of the day. When World War II erupted, production halted and by war's end, the craze that had captured the public's attention so much in 1939 and 1940 was totally over. <br />
<br />
After the war ended in Europe, two French technicians saw all the tons of war surplus and military spare parts lying around and decided to use some of it to recreate the soundie experience and, hopefully, improve upon it. Using a 16mm camera that had been used by the French Air Force for reconnaissance flights, they converted it into a 16mm projector.<br />
<br />
[[File:s_2_CarouselOfStars.jpg|thumb|Right|Scopitone]]<br />
<br />
Mastering the problems of providing enough light and devising reliable mechanisms for threading and rewinding the films cost them lots of time and it wasn't until the late '50s that the invention was ready for the public. The resultant machine was the size of a refrigerator and was dubbed "Scopitone." Much improved from the 1939 version, the Scopitone played color films and, like a conventional jukebox, the customer was able to choose which video to watch, instead of whatever was conveniently loaded on the machine.<br />
<br />
== The demystification of audio-visual hegemony ==<br />
<br />
=== Towards an audio-visual hegemony: Remediation and the “obvious” ===<br />
<br />
The recording industry is quite interested in the laser scan system, because of the durability factor and greater possible quality and range of audio information. We can look forward to a unification of TV, hi-fi, and video-disc components in a single system. The audio quality of TV would finally be raised to stereophonic high-fidelity, improving the level and range of broadcast material. If the same unit could play back music and video, and also display printed pages, it is hard to see how there would be many homes without the system.<br />
<br />
There is already talking about the adding of a vision track to future record releases. The first form these visuals take will no doubt resemble concert film footage and what we have seen on the Scopitone Super-8 cartridge juke boxes. If you decide to buy a record of Sonny and Cher’s songs, you will jolly well see the pair doing their things, much as on the TV show.<br />
It is a cross between a jukebox and TV. For $.25 a throw, Scopitone projects any one of 36 musical movies on a 26 inch screen, flooding the premises with delicious color and hi-fi scooby-ooby-doo for three whole minutes. It makes a sobering combination." <br />
<br />
But more exciting and profound possibilities are opened up by this additional audio-visual flood gate. Media-technological differentiations opened up the possibility for media links. After the storage capacities for optics, acoustics, and writing had been separated, mechanized, and extensively utilized, their distinct data flows could also be reunited. Sound film combined the storage of acoustics and optics; shortly thereafter, television combined their transmission. (Kittler, 170)<br />
<br />
[[File:s_3color1.jpg|thumb|left]]<br />
<br />
The innovative rock groups will no doubt take the lead with dazzling optical trips. The widened opportunity for creative filmmakers for work will find a legion of compatible collaborations, just as many independent films have long used existing music tracks.<br />
<br />
The art of abstract vision will be furthered by the work of light-show artists, videographic experimenters, and computer graphics. A more limited, but no less interesting probability, is the availability of optical-effects generator components to be added to your color TV. With random sequencing, chroma-keving and phasing, etc., it would translate audio signals into visual patterns much as a cybernetic color organ. The more you and I can shape and form our own developing imagery on the screen, the more valuable the new technology will be. At the least, it can remain but mindless electric wallpaper. (Reveaux, 1973;49)<br />
<br />
== Where do media go die ==<br />
<br />
By 1969, Scopitone had closed its doors for good. What had seemed like a sure thing only five years before, faded away in a sea of accusations and murky accounting practices. So what was the appeal of the Scopitone videos? In 1964, with the big introduction to the clubs and restaurants, new American films needed to come faster than ever. The previous dependence on French videos and storytelling simply could not last to maintain interest here. <br />
<br />
Harmon-ee Productions, a subsidiary of a company owned by Debbie Reynolds, became the main supplier of American films. Debbie herself starred in the first American Scopitone video, singing "If I Had a Hammer," the Trini Lopez hit. Later, she covered Gale Garnett's "We'll Sing in the Sunshine." <br />
<br />
In keeping with the strategy of keeping teenagers out of the mix, the artists viewed on the Scopitone tended toward the lounge acts of the day- Vic Damone, Julie London- only occasionally a Bobby Vee or Petula Clark might surface. But in spite of the seemingly static nature of these artists, the resulting videos were visually stunning, if not mystifying with their direction. <br />
<br />
If anything set the Scopitone films apart from anything else, it was their use of eye-popping colors, wild scenery and wilder enthusiastic girls dancing the Twist, usually in bikinis, in the backgrounds as the singers performed in the craziest of places- on trains, in the woods, in cars, on carnival rides.<br />
<br />
In many cases, what was filmed didn't seem to make sense in the context of the song- for example, Dion singing "Ruby Baby" while seated in the cockpit of an obviously stationary airplane on a runway or Dionne Warwick singing "Walk on By" while lying seductively on a white bear rug. <br />
<br />
Some of these films have been described as risque, even by our standards today, not surprising, considering their French lineage and their appeal to cocktail lounges and clubs where "sophisticated" gentlemen could be found. In an age when Playboy magazine was redefining the American male, is it any wonder then that certain Scopitones would gravitate towards a more permissive point of view? <br />
<br />
Jack Stevenson, who wrote a definitive article on Scopitones, stated, "...people were reduced to decoration. They were lip-synchers, gyrating dolls and puppets and mannequins." It was a hypnotic effect and for those three minutes, it was riveting. <br />
<br />
The Scopitone may have gone the way of the dinosaur but many remain safely in collectors' hands. And you can still find one out there, though you may have to travel a bit to find it. The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee has what they've termed "the last public Scopitone in America" in its lobby. <br />
<br />
It has embraced the Scopitone so much that it recently held a Scopitone-themed membership drive, complete with "fashion contests, nonstop Scopitones and '60s-themed food and drink." Just the thing if you're in a groovy mood.[http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm]<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich. ''Gramophone, Film, Typewriter''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Stanley,John. ''Scopitones on View--Pre-MTV Era Music Film Loops''. San Francisco Chronicle. San Francisco, Calif.: Mar 19, 1992. pg. E.3<br />
* Reveaux, Anthony. ''New Technologies for the Demystification of Cinema'', Film Quarterly, 27(1). 1973.42-51.<br />
* Vincentelli, Elisabeth. ''Scopitone-a-Go-Go'', The village voice,Apr 22,1997, 42,16; Proquest Newsstand. 86.<br />
<br />
== External Links ==<br />
<br />
* Scoptione - The Visual Jukebox[http://http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm] <br />
<br />
* History of Scopitone [http://http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/9.4/scopitone/scopitone-09.4.html]<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Scopitone&diff=9894Scopitone2010-05-03T19:14:17Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Reference */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:color6.jpg|thumb|right|Scopitone]] “Before music videos and MTV there was their great-granddaddy, Scopitone.”<br />
<br />
(San Francisco Chronicle, Mar 19, 1992)<br />
<br />
== Brief Description ==<br />
<br />
[[File:S_1_1963Canada.jpg|thumb|left|Scopitone]] <br />
<br />
<br />
Today we take music videos on MTV and VH1 for granted. But did you know these musical cinematic gems have roots dating back to the start of World War II? And that they developed out of a "visual jukebox" called a Scopitone which was fashionable in the early 1960's?<br />
<br />
Invented in France right after World War Ⅱ, Scopitone were short 16mm films named after the modified jukeboxes they used to be player on. The first Scopitones were made in France in 1960. The ancestors of music videos, they hit their golden age in the early ‘60s, neatly concinciding with the explosion of teen-driven pop music in both France and the United States, the two main purveyors of the genre.<br />
<br />
Judging by this selection of almost 30 short films, there were two basic schools of Scopitones: the one where the singers were surrounded by bikini-clad, buxom vixens frantically twisting on location, and the one where you dropped the same indefatigable dancers into ostentatiously fake-looking sets. They run the gamut, from the Exciters singing “Tell Him” to the Kessler Sisters, blond twins who were regulars on European variety shows and whose Scopitone is a grandiose exercise in Teutonic kitsch.<br />
<br />
== How it works ==<br />
<br />
In 1939, a device called a "Panoram" was invented by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. The Panoram played eight three-minute musical shorts in a wooden jukebox fitted with a 17 x 22.5 inch translucent screen. The image was projected in a rear-screen manner via 16mm black and white film. These shorts became known as "soundies" and starred many of the most well-known jazz acts of the day. When World War II erupted, production halted and by war's end, the craze that had captured the public's attention so much in 1939 and 1940 was totally over. <br />
<br />
After the war ended in Europe, two French technicians saw all the tons of war surplus and military spare parts lying around and decided to use some of it to recreate the soundie experience and, hopefully, improve upon it. Using a 16mm camera that had been used by the French Air Force for reconnaissance flights, they converted it into a 16mm projector.<br />
<br />
[[File:s_2_CarouselOfStars.jpg|thumb|Right|Scopitone]]<br />
<br />
Mastering the problems of providing enough light and devising reliable mechanisms for threading and rewinding the films cost them lots of time and it wasn't until the late '50s that the invention was ready for the public. The resultant machine was the size of a refrigerator and was dubbed "Scopitone." Much improved from the 1939 version, the Scopitone played color films and, like a conventional jukebox, the customer was able to choose which video to watch, instead of whatever was conveniently loaded on the machine.<br />
<br />
== The demystification of audio-visual hegemony ==<br />
<br />
=== Towards an audio-visual hegemony: Remediation and the “obvious” ===<br />
<br />
The recording industry is quite interested in the laser scan system, because of the durability factor and greater possible quality and range of audio information. We can look forward to a unification of TV, hi-fi, and video-disc components in a single system. The audio quality of TV would finally be raised to stereophonic high-fidelity, improving the level and range of broadcast material. If the same unit could play back music and video, and also display printed pages, it is hard to see how there would be many homes without the system.<br />
<br />
There is already talking about the adding of a vision track to future record releases. The first form these visuals take will no doubt resemble concert film footage and what we have seen on the Scopitone Super-8 cartridge juke boxes. If you decide to buy a record of Sonny and Cher’s songs, you will jolly well see the pair doing their things, much as on the TV show.<br />
It is a cross between a jukebox and TV. For $.25 a throw, Scopitone projects any one of 36 musical movies on a 26 inch screen, flooding the premises with delicious color and hi-fi scooby-ooby-doo for three whole minutes. It makes a sobering combination." <br />
<br />
But more exciting and profound possibilities are opened up by this additional audio-visual flood gate. Media-technological differentiations opened up the possibility for media links. After the storage capacities for optics, acoustics, and writing had been separated, mechanized, and extensively utilized, their distinct data flows could also be reunited. Sound film combined the storage of acoustics and optics; shortly thereafter, television combined their transmission. (Kittler, 170)<br />
<br />
[[File:s_3color1.jpg|thumb|left]]<br />
<br />
The innovative rock groups will no doubt take the lead with dazzling optical trips. The widened opportunity for creative filmmakers for work will find a legion of compatible collaborations, just as many independent films have long used existing music tracks.<br />
<br />
The art of abstract vision will be furthered by the work of light-show artists, videographic experimenters, and computer graphics. A more limited, but no less interesting probability, is the availability of optical-effects generator components to be added to your color TV. With random sequencing, chroma-keving and phasing, etc., it would translate audio signals into visual patterns much as a cybernetic color organ. The more you and I can shape and form our own developing imagery on the screen, the more valuable the new technology will be. At the least, it can remain but mindless electric wallpaper. (Reveaux, 1973;49)<br />
<br />
== Where do media go die ==<br />
<br />
By 1969, Scopitone had closed its doors for good. What had seemed like a sure thing only five years before, faded away in a sea of accusations and murky accounting practices. So what was the appeal of the Scopitone videos? In 1964, with the big introduction to the clubs and restaurants, new American films needed to come faster than ever. The previous dependence on French videos and storytelling simply could not last to maintain interest here. <br />
<br />
Harmon-ee Productions, a subsidiary of a company owned by Debbie Reynolds, became the main supplier of American films. Debbie herself starred in the first American Scopitone video, singing "If I Had a Hammer," the Trini Lopez hit. Later, she covered Gale Garnett's "We'll Sing in the Sunshine." <br />
<br />
In keeping with the strategy of keeping teenagers out of the mix, the artists viewed on the Scopitone tended toward the lounge acts of the day- Vic Damone, Julie London- only occasionally a Bobby Vee or Petula Clark might surface. But in spite of the seemingly static nature of these artists, the resulting videos were visually stunning, if not mystifying with their direction. <br />
<br />
If anything set the Scopitone films apart from anything else, it was their use of eye-popping colors, wild scenery and wilder enthusiastic girls dancing the Twist, usually in bikinis, in the backgrounds as the singers performed in the craziest of places- on trains, in the woods, in cars, on carnival rides.<br />
<br />
In many cases, what was filmed didn't seem to make sense in the context of the song- for example, Dion singing "Ruby Baby" while seated in the cockpit of an obviously stationary airplane on a runway or Dionne Warwick singing "Walk on By" while lying seductively on a white bear rug. <br />
<br />
Some of these films have been described as risque, even by our standards today, not surprising, considering their French lineage and their appeal to cocktail lounges and clubs where "sophisticated" gentlemen could be found. In an age when Playboy magazine was redefining the American male, is it any wonder then that certain Scopitones would gravitate towards a more permissive point of view? <br />
<br />
Jack Stevenson, who wrote a definitive article on Scopitones, stated, "...people were reduced to decoration. They were lip-synchers, gyrating dolls and puppets and mannequins." It was a hypnotic effect and for those three minutes, it was riveting. <br />
<br />
The Scopitone may have gone the way of the dinosaur but many remain safely in collectors' hands. And you can still find one out there, though you may have to travel a bit to find it. The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee has what they've termed "the last public Scopitone in America" in its lobby. <br />
<br />
It has embraced the Scopitone so much that it recently held a Scopitone-themed membership drive, complete with "fashion contests, nonstop Scopitones and '60s-themed food and drink." Just the thing if you're in a groovy mood.[http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm]<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich. ''Gramophone, Film, Typewriter''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Stanley,John. ''Scopitones on View--Pre-MTV Era Music Film Loops''. San Francisco Chronicle. San Francisco, Calif.: Mar 19, 1992. pg. E.3<br />
* Reveaux, Anthony. ''New Technologies for the Demystification of Cinema'', Film Quarterly, 27(1). 1973.42-51.<br />
* Vincentelli, Elisabeth. ''Scopitone-a-Go-Go'', The village voice,Apr 22,1997, 42,16; Proquest Newsstand. 86.<br />
<br />
== External Links ==<br />
<br />
* Scoptione - The Visual Jukebox[http://http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm] <br />
<br />
* History of Scopitone [http://http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/9.4/scopitone/scopitone-09.4.html]<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Scopitone&diff=9433Scopitone2010-04-26T12:07:47Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Reference */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:color6.jpg|thumb|right|Scopitone]] “Before music videos and MTV there was their great-granddaddy, Scopitone.”<br />
<br />
(San Francisco Chronicle, Mar 19, 1992)<br />
<br />
== Brief Description ==<br />
<br />
[[File:S_1_1963Canada.jpg|thumb|left|Scopitone]] <br />
<br />
<br />
Today we take music videos on MTV and VH1 for granted. But did you know these musical cinematic gems have roots dating back to the start of World War II? And that they developed out of a "visual jukebox" called a Scopitone which was fashionable in the early 1960's?<br />
<br />
Invented in France right after World War Ⅱ, Scopitone were short 16mm films named after the modified jukeboxes they used to be player on. The first Scopitones were made in France in 1960. The ancestors of music videos, they hit their golden age in the early ‘60s, neatly concinciding with the explosion of teen-driven pop music in both France and the United States, the two main purveyors of the genre.<br />
<br />
Judging by this selection of almost 30 short films, there were two basic schools of Scopitones: the one where the singers were surrounded by bikini-clad, buxom vixens frantically twisting on location, and the one where you dropped the same indefatigable dancers into ostentatiously fake-looking sets. They run the gamut, from the Exciters singing “Tell Him” to the Kessler Sisters, blond twins who were regulars on European variety shows and whose Scopitone is a grandiose exercise in Teutonic kitsch.<br />
<br />
== How it works ==<br />
<br />
In 1939, a device called a "Panoram" was invented by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. The Panoram played eight three-minute musical shorts in a wooden jukebox fitted with a 17 x 22.5 inch translucent screen. The image was projected in a rear-screen manner via 16mm black and white film. These shorts became known as "soundies" and starred many of the most well-known jazz acts of the day. When World War II erupted, production halted and by war's end, the craze that had captured the public's attention so much in 1939 and 1940 was totally over. <br />
<br />
After the war ended in Europe, two French technicians saw all the tons of war surplus and military spare parts lying around and decided to use some of it to recreate the soundie experience and, hopefully, improve upon it. Using a 16mm camera that had been used by the French Air Force for reconnaissance flights, they converted it into a 16mm projector.<br />
<br />
[[File:s_2_CarouselOfStars.jpg|thumb|Right|Scopitone]]<br />
<br />
Mastering the problems of providing enough light and devising reliable mechanisms for threading and rewinding the films cost them lots of time and it wasn't until the late '50s that the invention was ready for the public. The resultant machine was the size of a refrigerator and was dubbed "Scopitone." Much improved from the 1939 version, the Scopitone played color films and, like a conventional jukebox, the customer was able to choose which video to watch, instead of whatever was conveniently loaded on the machine.<br />
<br />
== The demystification of audio-visual hegemony ==<br />
<br />
=== Towards an audio-visual hegemony: Remediation and the “obvious” ===<br />
<br />
The recording industry is quite interested in the laser scan system, because of the durability factor and greater possible quality and range of audio information. We can look forward to a unification of TV, hi-fi, and video-disc components in a single system. The audio quality of TV would finally be raised to stereophonic high-fidelity, improving the level and range of broadcast material. If the same unit could play back music and video, and also display printed pages, it is hard to see how there would be many homes without the system.<br />
<br />
There is already talking about the adding of a vision track to future record releases. The first form these visuals take will no doubt resemble concert film footage and what we have seen on the Scopitone Super-8 cartridge juke boxes. If you decide to buy a record of Sonny and Cher’s songs, you will jolly well see the pair doing their things, much as on the TV show.<br />
It is a cross between a jukebox and TV. For $.25 a throw, Scopitone projects any one of 36 musical movies on a 26 inch screen, flooding the premises with delicious color and hi-fi scooby-ooby-doo for three whole minutes. It makes a sobering combination." <br />
<br />
But more exciting and profound possibilities are opened up by this additional audio-visual flood gate. Media-technological differentiations opened up the possibility for media links. After the storage capacities for optics, acoustics, and writing had been separated, mechanized, and extensively utilized, their distinct data flows could also be reunited. Sound film combined the storage of acoustics and optics; shortly thereafter, television combined their transmission. (Kittler, 170)<br />
<br />
[[File:s_3color1.jpg|thumb|left]]<br />
<br />
The innovative rock groups will no doubt take the lead with dazzling optical trips. The widened opportunity for creative filmmakers for work will find a legion of compatible collaborations, just as many independent films have long used existing music tracks.<br />
<br />
The art of abstract vision will be furthered by the work of light-show artists, videographic experimenters, and computer graphics. A more limited, but no less interesting probability, is the availability of optical-effects generator components to be added to your color TV. With random sequencing, chroma-keving and phasing, etc., it would translate audio signals into visual patterns much as a cybernetic color organ. The more you and I can shape and form our own developing imagery on the screen, the more valuable the new technology will be. At the least, it can remain but mindless electric wallpaper. (Reveaux, 1973;49)<br />
<br />
== Where do media go die ==<br />
<br />
By 1969, Scopitone had closed its doors for good. What had seemed like a sure thing only five years before, faded away in a sea of accusations and murky accounting practices. So what was the appeal of the Scopitone videos? In 1964, with the big introduction to the clubs and restaurants, new American films needed to come faster than ever. The previous dependence on French videos and storytelling simply could not last to maintain interest here. <br />
<br />
Harmon-ee Productions, a subsidiary of a company owned by Debbie Reynolds, became the main supplier of American films. Debbie herself starred in the first American Scopitone video, singing "If I Had a Hammer," the Trini Lopez hit. Later, she covered Gale Garnett's "We'll Sing in the Sunshine." <br />
<br />
In keeping with the strategy of keeping teenagers out of the mix, the artists viewed on the Scopitone tended toward the lounge acts of the day- Vic Damone, Julie London- only occasionally a Bobby Vee or Petula Clark might surface. But in spite of the seemingly static nature of these artists, the resulting videos were visually stunning, if not mystifying with their direction. <br />
<br />
If anything set the Scopitone films apart from anything else, it was their use of eye-popping colors, wild scenery and wilder enthusiastic girls dancing the Twist, usually in bikinis, in the backgrounds as the singers performed in the craziest of places- on trains, in the woods, in cars, on carnival rides.<br />
<br />
In many cases, what was filmed didn't seem to make sense in the context of the song- for example, Dion singing "Ruby Baby" while seated in the cockpit of an obviously stationary airplane on a runway or Dionne Warwick singing "Walk on By" while lying seductively on a white bear rug. <br />
<br />
Some of these films have been described as risque, even by our standards today, not surprising, considering their French lineage and their appeal to cocktail lounges and clubs where "sophisticated" gentlemen could be found. In an age when Playboy magazine was redefining the American male, is it any wonder then that certain Scopitones would gravitate towards a more permissive point of view? <br />
<br />
Jack Stevenson, who wrote a definitive article on Scopitones, stated, "...people were reduced to decoration. They were lip-synchers, gyrating dolls and puppets and mannequins." It was a hypnotic effect and for those three minutes, it was riveting. <br />
<br />
The Scopitone may have gone the way of the dinosaur but many remain safely in collectors' hands. And you can still find one out there, though you may have to travel a bit to find it. The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee has what they've termed "the last public Scopitone in America" in its lobby. <br />
<br />
It has embraced the Scopitone so much that it recently held a Scopitone-themed membership drive, complete with "fashion contests, nonstop Scopitones and '60s-themed food and drink." Just the thing if you're in a groovy mood.[http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm]<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich. ''Gramophone, Film, Typewriter''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Stanley,John. ''Scopitones on View--Pre-MTV Era Music Film Loops''. San Francisco Chronicle. San Francisco, Calif.: Mar 19, 1992. pg. E.3<br />
* Reveaux, Anthony. ''New Technologies for the Demystification of Cinema'', Film Quarterly, 27(1). 1973.42-51.<br />
* Vincentelli, Elisabeth. ''Scopitone-a-Go-Go'', The village voice;Apr 22,1997; 42,16; Proquest Newsstand. 86.<br />
<br />
== External Links ==<br />
<br />
* Scoptione - The Visual Jukebox[http://http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm] <br />
<br />
* History of Scopitone [http://http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/9.4/scopitone/scopitone-09.4.html]<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Scopitone&diff=9432Scopitone2010-04-26T12:07:02Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Reference */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:color6.jpg|thumb|right|Scopitone]] “Before music videos and MTV there was their great-granddaddy, Scopitone.”<br />
<br />
(San Francisco Chronicle, Mar 19, 1992)<br />
<br />
== Brief Description ==<br />
<br />
[[File:S_1_1963Canada.jpg|thumb|left|Scopitone]] <br />
<br />
<br />
Today we take music videos on MTV and VH1 for granted. But did you know these musical cinematic gems have roots dating back to the start of World War II? And that they developed out of a "visual jukebox" called a Scopitone which was fashionable in the early 1960's?<br />
<br />
Invented in France right after World War Ⅱ, Scopitone were short 16mm films named after the modified jukeboxes they used to be player on. The first Scopitones were made in France in 1960. The ancestors of music videos, they hit their golden age in the early ‘60s, neatly concinciding with the explosion of teen-driven pop music in both France and the United States, the two main purveyors of the genre.<br />
<br />
Judging by this selection of almost 30 short films, there were two basic schools of Scopitones: the one where the singers were surrounded by bikini-clad, buxom vixens frantically twisting on location, and the one where you dropped the same indefatigable dancers into ostentatiously fake-looking sets. They run the gamut, from the Exciters singing “Tell Him” to the Kessler Sisters, blond twins who were regulars on European variety shows and whose Scopitone is a grandiose exercise in Teutonic kitsch.<br />
<br />
== How it works ==<br />
<br />
In 1939, a device called a "Panoram" was invented by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. The Panoram played eight three-minute musical shorts in a wooden jukebox fitted with a 17 x 22.5 inch translucent screen. The image was projected in a rear-screen manner via 16mm black and white film. These shorts became known as "soundies" and starred many of the most well-known jazz acts of the day. When World War II erupted, production halted and by war's end, the craze that had captured the public's attention so much in 1939 and 1940 was totally over. <br />
<br />
After the war ended in Europe, two French technicians saw all the tons of war surplus and military spare parts lying around and decided to use some of it to recreate the soundie experience and, hopefully, improve upon it. Using a 16mm camera that had been used by the French Air Force for reconnaissance flights, they converted it into a 16mm projector.<br />
<br />
[[File:s_2_CarouselOfStars.jpg|thumb|Right|Scopitone]]<br />
<br />
Mastering the problems of providing enough light and devising reliable mechanisms for threading and rewinding the films cost them lots of time and it wasn't until the late '50s that the invention was ready for the public. The resultant machine was the size of a refrigerator and was dubbed "Scopitone." Much improved from the 1939 version, the Scopitone played color films and, like a conventional jukebox, the customer was able to choose which video to watch, instead of whatever was conveniently loaded on the machine.<br />
<br />
== The demystification of audio-visual hegemony ==<br />
<br />
=== Towards an audio-visual hegemony: Remediation and the “obvious” ===<br />
<br />
The recording industry is quite interested in the laser scan system, because of the durability factor and greater possible quality and range of audio information. We can look forward to a unification of TV, hi-fi, and video-disc components in a single system. The audio quality of TV would finally be raised to stereophonic high-fidelity, improving the level and range of broadcast material. If the same unit could play back music and video, and also display printed pages, it is hard to see how there would be many homes without the system.<br />
<br />
There is already talking about the adding of a vision track to future record releases. The first form these visuals take will no doubt resemble concert film footage and what we have seen on the Scopitone Super-8 cartridge juke boxes. If you decide to buy a record of Sonny and Cher’s songs, you will jolly well see the pair doing their things, much as on the TV show.<br />
It is a cross between a jukebox and TV. For $.25 a throw, Scopitone projects any one of 36 musical movies on a 26 inch screen, flooding the premises with delicious color and hi-fi scooby-ooby-doo for three whole minutes. It makes a sobering combination." <br />
<br />
But more exciting and profound possibilities are opened up by this additional audio-visual flood gate. Media-technological differentiations opened up the possibility for media links. After the storage capacities for optics, acoustics, and writing had been separated, mechanized, and extensively utilized, their distinct data flows could also be reunited. Sound film combined the storage of acoustics and optics; shortly thereafter, television combined their transmission. (Kittler, 170)<br />
<br />
[[File:s_3color1.jpg|thumb|left]]<br />
<br />
The innovative rock groups will no doubt take the lead with dazzling optical trips. The widened opportunity for creative filmmakers for work will find a legion of compatible collaborations, just as many independent films have long used existing music tracks.<br />
<br />
The art of abstract vision will be furthered by the work of light-show artists, videographic experimenters, and computer graphics. A more limited, but no less interesting probability, is the availability of optical-effects generator components to be added to your color TV. With random sequencing, chroma-keving and phasing, etc., it would translate audio signals into visual patterns much as a cybernetic color organ. The more you and I can shape and form our own developing imagery on the screen, the more valuable the new technology will be. At the least, it can remain but mindless electric wallpaper. (Reveaux, 1973;49)<br />
<br />
== Where do media go die ==<br />
<br />
By 1969, Scopitone had closed its doors for good. What had seemed like a sure thing only five years before, faded away in a sea of accusations and murky accounting practices. So what was the appeal of the Scopitone videos? In 1964, with the big introduction to the clubs and restaurants, new American films needed to come faster than ever. The previous dependence on French videos and storytelling simply could not last to maintain interest here. <br />
<br />
Harmon-ee Productions, a subsidiary of a company owned by Debbie Reynolds, became the main supplier of American films. Debbie herself starred in the first American Scopitone video, singing "If I Had a Hammer," the Trini Lopez hit. Later, she covered Gale Garnett's "We'll Sing in the Sunshine." <br />
<br />
In keeping with the strategy of keeping teenagers out of the mix, the artists viewed on the Scopitone tended toward the lounge acts of the day- Vic Damone, Julie London- only occasionally a Bobby Vee or Petula Clark might surface. But in spite of the seemingly static nature of these artists, the resulting videos were visually stunning, if not mystifying with their direction. <br />
<br />
If anything set the Scopitone films apart from anything else, it was their use of eye-popping colors, wild scenery and wilder enthusiastic girls dancing the Twist, usually in bikinis, in the backgrounds as the singers performed in the craziest of places- on trains, in the woods, in cars, on carnival rides.<br />
<br />
In many cases, what was filmed didn't seem to make sense in the context of the song- for example, Dion singing "Ruby Baby" while seated in the cockpit of an obviously stationary airplane on a runway or Dionne Warwick singing "Walk on By" while lying seductively on a white bear rug. <br />
<br />
Some of these films have been described as risque, even by our standards today, not surprising, considering their French lineage and their appeal to cocktail lounges and clubs where "sophisticated" gentlemen could be found. In an age when Playboy magazine was redefining the American male, is it any wonder then that certain Scopitones would gravitate towards a more permissive point of view? <br />
<br />
Jack Stevenson, who wrote a definitive article on Scopitones, stated, "...people were reduced to decoration. They were lip-synchers, gyrating dolls and puppets and mannequins." It was a hypnotic effect and for those three minutes, it was riveting. <br />
<br />
The Scopitone may have gone the way of the dinosaur but many remain safely in collectors' hands. And you can still find one out there, though you may have to travel a bit to find it. The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee has what they've termed "the last public Scopitone in America" in its lobby. <br />
<br />
It has embraced the Scopitone so much that it recently held a Scopitone-themed membership drive, complete with "fashion contests, nonstop Scopitones and '60s-themed food and drink." Just the thing if you're in a groovy mood.[http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm]<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Stanley,John. Scopitones on View--Pre-MTV Era Music Film Loops. San Francisco Chronicle. San Francisco, Calif.: Mar 19, 1992. pg. E.3<br />
* Reveaux, Anthony. New Technologies for the Demystification of Cinema, Film Quarterly, 27(1). 1973.42-51.<br />
* Vincentelli, Elisabeth. Scopitone-a-Go-Go, The village voice;Apr 22,1997; 42,16; Proquest Newsstand. 86.<br />
<br />
== External Links ==<br />
<br />
* Scoptione - The Visual Jukebox[http://http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm] <br />
<br />
* History of Scopitone [http://http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/9.4/scopitone/scopitone-09.4.html]<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Scopitone&diff=9431Scopitone2010-04-26T12:06:24Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Reference */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:color6.jpg|thumb|right|Scopitone]] “Before music videos and MTV there was their great-granddaddy, Scopitone.”<br />
<br />
(San Francisco Chronicle, Mar 19, 1992)<br />
<br />
== Brief Description ==<br />
<br />
[[File:S_1_1963Canada.jpg|thumb|left|Scopitone]] <br />
<br />
<br />
Today we take music videos on MTV and VH1 for granted. But did you know these musical cinematic gems have roots dating back to the start of World War II? And that they developed out of a "visual jukebox" called a Scopitone which was fashionable in the early 1960's?<br />
<br />
Invented in France right after World War Ⅱ, Scopitone were short 16mm films named after the modified jukeboxes they used to be player on. The first Scopitones were made in France in 1960. The ancestors of music videos, they hit their golden age in the early ‘60s, neatly concinciding with the explosion of teen-driven pop music in both France and the United States, the two main purveyors of the genre.<br />
<br />
Judging by this selection of almost 30 short films, there were two basic schools of Scopitones: the one where the singers were surrounded by bikini-clad, buxom vixens frantically twisting on location, and the one where you dropped the same indefatigable dancers into ostentatiously fake-looking sets. They run the gamut, from the Exciters singing “Tell Him” to the Kessler Sisters, blond twins who were regulars on European variety shows and whose Scopitone is a grandiose exercise in Teutonic kitsch.<br />
<br />
== How it works ==<br />
<br />
In 1939, a device called a "Panoram" was invented by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. The Panoram played eight three-minute musical shorts in a wooden jukebox fitted with a 17 x 22.5 inch translucent screen. The image was projected in a rear-screen manner via 16mm black and white film. These shorts became known as "soundies" and starred many of the most well-known jazz acts of the day. When World War II erupted, production halted and by war's end, the craze that had captured the public's attention so much in 1939 and 1940 was totally over. <br />
<br />
After the war ended in Europe, two French technicians saw all the tons of war surplus and military spare parts lying around and decided to use some of it to recreate the soundie experience and, hopefully, improve upon it. Using a 16mm camera that had been used by the French Air Force for reconnaissance flights, they converted it into a 16mm projector.<br />
<br />
[[File:s_2_CarouselOfStars.jpg|thumb|Right|Scopitone]]<br />
<br />
Mastering the problems of providing enough light and devising reliable mechanisms for threading and rewinding the films cost them lots of time and it wasn't until the late '50s that the invention was ready for the public. The resultant machine was the size of a refrigerator and was dubbed "Scopitone." Much improved from the 1939 version, the Scopitone played color films and, like a conventional jukebox, the customer was able to choose which video to watch, instead of whatever was conveniently loaded on the machine.<br />
<br />
== The demystification of audio-visual hegemony ==<br />
<br />
=== Towards an audio-visual hegemony: Remediation and the “obvious” ===<br />
<br />
The recording industry is quite interested in the laser scan system, because of the durability factor and greater possible quality and range of audio information. We can look forward to a unification of TV, hi-fi, and video-disc components in a single system. The audio quality of TV would finally be raised to stereophonic high-fidelity, improving the level and range of broadcast material. If the same unit could play back music and video, and also display printed pages, it is hard to see how there would be many homes without the system.<br />
<br />
There is already talking about the adding of a vision track to future record releases. The first form these visuals take will no doubt resemble concert film footage and what we have seen on the Scopitone Super-8 cartridge juke boxes. If you decide to buy a record of Sonny and Cher’s songs, you will jolly well see the pair doing their things, much as on the TV show.<br />
It is a cross between a jukebox and TV. For $.25 a throw, Scopitone projects any one of 36 musical movies on a 26 inch screen, flooding the premises with delicious color and hi-fi scooby-ooby-doo for three whole minutes. It makes a sobering combination." <br />
<br />
But more exciting and profound possibilities are opened up by this additional audio-visual flood gate. Media-technological differentiations opened up the possibility for media links. After the storage capacities for optics, acoustics, and writing had been separated, mechanized, and extensively utilized, their distinct data flows could also be reunited. Sound film combined the storage of acoustics and optics; shortly thereafter, television combined their transmission. (Kittler, 170)<br />
<br />
[[File:s_3color1.jpg|thumb|left]]<br />
<br />
The innovative rock groups will no doubt take the lead with dazzling optical trips. The widened opportunity for creative filmmakers for work will find a legion of compatible collaborations, just as many independent films have long used existing music tracks.<br />
<br />
The art of abstract vision will be furthered by the work of light-show artists, videographic experimenters, and computer graphics. A more limited, but no less interesting probability, is the availability of optical-effects generator components to be added to your color TV. With random sequencing, chroma-keving and phasing, etc., it would translate audio signals into visual patterns much as a cybernetic color organ. The more you and I can shape and form our own developing imagery on the screen, the more valuable the new technology will be. At the least, it can remain but mindless electric wallpaper. (Reveaux, 1973;49)<br />
<br />
== Where do media go die ==<br />
<br />
By 1969, Scopitone had closed its doors for good. What had seemed like a sure thing only five years before, faded away in a sea of accusations and murky accounting practices. So what was the appeal of the Scopitone videos? In 1964, with the big introduction to the clubs and restaurants, new American films needed to come faster than ever. The previous dependence on French videos and storytelling simply could not last to maintain interest here. <br />
<br />
Harmon-ee Productions, a subsidiary of a company owned by Debbie Reynolds, became the main supplier of American films. Debbie herself starred in the first American Scopitone video, singing "If I Had a Hammer," the Trini Lopez hit. Later, she covered Gale Garnett's "We'll Sing in the Sunshine." <br />
<br />
In keeping with the strategy of keeping teenagers out of the mix, the artists viewed on the Scopitone tended toward the lounge acts of the day- Vic Damone, Julie London- only occasionally a Bobby Vee or Petula Clark might surface. But in spite of the seemingly static nature of these artists, the resulting videos were visually stunning, if not mystifying with their direction. <br />
<br />
If anything set the Scopitone films apart from anything else, it was their use of eye-popping colors, wild scenery and wilder enthusiastic girls dancing the Twist, usually in bikinis, in the backgrounds as the singers performed in the craziest of places- on trains, in the woods, in cars, on carnival rides.<br />
<br />
In many cases, what was filmed didn't seem to make sense in the context of the song- for example, Dion singing "Ruby Baby" while seated in the cockpit of an obviously stationary airplane on a runway or Dionne Warwick singing "Walk on By" while lying seductively on a white bear rug. <br />
<br />
Some of these films have been described as risque, even by our standards today, not surprising, considering their French lineage and their appeal to cocktail lounges and clubs where "sophisticated" gentlemen could be found. In an age when Playboy magazine was redefining the American male, is it any wonder then that certain Scopitones would gravitate towards a more permissive point of view? <br />
<br />
Jack Stevenson, who wrote a definitive article on Scopitones, stated, "...people were reduced to decoration. They were lip-synchers, gyrating dolls and puppets and mannequins." It was a hypnotic effect and for those three minutes, it was riveting. <br />
<br />
The Scopitone may have gone the way of the dinosaur but many remain safely in collectors' hands. And you can still find one out there, though you may have to travel a bit to find it. The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee has what they've termed "the last public Scopitone in America" in its lobby. <br />
<br />
It has embraced the Scopitone so much that it recently held a Scopitone-themed membership drive, complete with "fashion contests, nonstop Scopitones and '60s-themed food and drink." Just the thing if you're in a groovy mood.[http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm]<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Stanley,John. San Francisco Chronicle. San Francisco, Calif.: Mar 19, 1992. pg. E.3<br />
* Reveaux, Anthony. New Technologies for the Demystification of Cinema, Film Quarterly, 27(1). 1973.42-51.<br />
* Vincentelli, Elisabeth. Scopitone-a-Go-Go, The village voice;Apr 22,1997; 42,16; Proquest Newsstand. 86.<br />
<br />
== External Links ==<br />
<br />
* Scoptione - The Visual Jukebox[http://http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm] <br />
<br />
* History of Scopitone [http://http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/9.4/scopitone/scopitone-09.4.html]<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Scopitone&diff=9429Scopitone2010-04-26T12:04:49Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Reference */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:color6.jpg|thumb|right|Scopitone]] “Before music videos and MTV there was their great-granddaddy, Scopitone.”<br />
<br />
(San Francisco Chronicle, Mar 19, 1992)<br />
<br />
== Brief Description ==<br />
<br />
[[File:S_1_1963Canada.jpg|thumb|left|Scopitone]] <br />
<br />
<br />
Today we take music videos on MTV and VH1 for granted. But did you know these musical cinematic gems have roots dating back to the start of World War II? And that they developed out of a "visual jukebox" called a Scopitone which was fashionable in the early 1960's?<br />
<br />
Invented in France right after World War Ⅱ, Scopitone were short 16mm films named after the modified jukeboxes they used to be player on. The first Scopitones were made in France in 1960. The ancestors of music videos, they hit their golden age in the early ‘60s, neatly concinciding with the explosion of teen-driven pop music in both France and the United States, the two main purveyors of the genre.<br />
<br />
Judging by this selection of almost 30 short films, there were two basic schools of Scopitones: the one where the singers were surrounded by bikini-clad, buxom vixens frantically twisting on location, and the one where you dropped the same indefatigable dancers into ostentatiously fake-looking sets. They run the gamut, from the Exciters singing “Tell Him” to the Kessler Sisters, blond twins who were regulars on European variety shows and whose Scopitone is a grandiose exercise in Teutonic kitsch.<br />
<br />
== How it works ==<br />
<br />
In 1939, a device called a "Panoram" was invented by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. The Panoram played eight three-minute musical shorts in a wooden jukebox fitted with a 17 x 22.5 inch translucent screen. The image was projected in a rear-screen manner via 16mm black and white film. These shorts became known as "soundies" and starred many of the most well-known jazz acts of the day. When World War II erupted, production halted and by war's end, the craze that had captured the public's attention so much in 1939 and 1940 was totally over. <br />
<br />
After the war ended in Europe, two French technicians saw all the tons of war surplus and military spare parts lying around and decided to use some of it to recreate the soundie experience and, hopefully, improve upon it. Using a 16mm camera that had been used by the French Air Force for reconnaissance flights, they converted it into a 16mm projector.<br />
<br />
[[File:s_2_CarouselOfStars.jpg|thumb|Right|Scopitone]]<br />
<br />
Mastering the problems of providing enough light and devising reliable mechanisms for threading and rewinding the films cost them lots of time and it wasn't until the late '50s that the invention was ready for the public. The resultant machine was the size of a refrigerator and was dubbed "Scopitone." Much improved from the 1939 version, the Scopitone played color films and, like a conventional jukebox, the customer was able to choose which video to watch, instead of whatever was conveniently loaded on the machine.<br />
<br />
== The demystification of audio-visual hegemony ==<br />
<br />
=== Towards an audio-visual hegemony: Remediation and the “obvious” ===<br />
<br />
The recording industry is quite interested in the laser scan system, because of the durability factor and greater possible quality and range of audio information. We can look forward to a unification of TV, hi-fi, and video-disc components in a single system. The audio quality of TV would finally be raised to stereophonic high-fidelity, improving the level and range of broadcast material. If the same unit could play back music and video, and also display printed pages, it is hard to see how there would be many homes without the system.<br />
<br />
There is already talking about the adding of a vision track to future record releases. The first form these visuals take will no doubt resemble concert film footage and what we have seen on the Scopitone Super-8 cartridge juke boxes. If you decide to buy a record of Sonny and Cher’s songs, you will jolly well see the pair doing their things, much as on the TV show.<br />
It is a cross between a jukebox and TV. For $.25 a throw, Scopitone projects any one of 36 musical movies on a 26 inch screen, flooding the premises with delicious color and hi-fi scooby-ooby-doo for three whole minutes. It makes a sobering combination." <br />
<br />
But more exciting and profound possibilities are opened up by this additional audio-visual flood gate. Media-technological differentiations opened up the possibility for media links. After the storage capacities for optics, acoustics, and writing had been separated, mechanized, and extensively utilized, their distinct data flows could also be reunited. Sound film combined the storage of acoustics and optics; shortly thereafter, television combined their transmission. (Kittler, 170)<br />
<br />
[[File:s_3color1.jpg|thumb|left]]<br />
<br />
The innovative rock groups will no doubt take the lead with dazzling optical trips. The widened opportunity for creative filmmakers for work will find a legion of compatible collaborations, just as many independent films have long used existing music tracks.<br />
<br />
The art of abstract vision will be furthered by the work of light-show artists, videographic experimenters, and computer graphics. A more limited, but no less interesting probability, is the availability of optical-effects generator components to be added to your color TV. With random sequencing, chroma-keving and phasing, etc., it would translate audio signals into visual patterns much as a cybernetic color organ. The more you and I can shape and form our own developing imagery on the screen, the more valuable the new technology will be. At the least, it can remain but mindless electric wallpaper. (Reveaux, 1973;49)<br />
<br />
== Where do media go die ==<br />
<br />
By 1969, Scopitone had closed its doors for good. What had seemed like a sure thing only five years before, faded away in a sea of accusations and murky accounting practices. So what was the appeal of the Scopitone videos? In 1964, with the big introduction to the clubs and restaurants, new American films needed to come faster than ever. The previous dependence on French videos and storytelling simply could not last to maintain interest here. <br />
<br />
Harmon-ee Productions, a subsidiary of a company owned by Debbie Reynolds, became the main supplier of American films. Debbie herself starred in the first American Scopitone video, singing "If I Had a Hammer," the Trini Lopez hit. Later, she covered Gale Garnett's "We'll Sing in the Sunshine." <br />
<br />
In keeping with the strategy of keeping teenagers out of the mix, the artists viewed on the Scopitone tended toward the lounge acts of the day- Vic Damone, Julie London- only occasionally a Bobby Vee or Petula Clark might surface. But in spite of the seemingly static nature of these artists, the resulting videos were visually stunning, if not mystifying with their direction. <br />
<br />
If anything set the Scopitone films apart from anything else, it was their use of eye-popping colors, wild scenery and wilder enthusiastic girls dancing the Twist, usually in bikinis, in the backgrounds as the singers performed in the craziest of places- on trains, in the woods, in cars, on carnival rides.<br />
<br />
In many cases, what was filmed didn't seem to make sense in the context of the song- for example, Dion singing "Ruby Baby" while seated in the cockpit of an obviously stationary airplane on a runway or Dionne Warwick singing "Walk on By" while lying seductively on a white bear rug. <br />
<br />
Some of these films have been described as risque, even by our standards today, not surprising, considering their French lineage and their appeal to cocktail lounges and clubs where "sophisticated" gentlemen could be found. In an age when Playboy magazine was redefining the American male, is it any wonder then that certain Scopitones would gravitate towards a more permissive point of view? <br />
<br />
Jack Stevenson, who wrote a definitive article on Scopitones, stated, "...people were reduced to decoration. They were lip-synchers, gyrating dolls and puppets and mannequins." It was a hypnotic effect and for those three minutes, it was riveting. <br />
<br />
The Scopitone may have gone the way of the dinosaur but many remain safely in collectors' hands. And you can still find one out there, though you may have to travel a bit to find it. The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee has what they've termed "the last public Scopitone in America" in its lobby. <br />
<br />
It has embraced the Scopitone so much that it recently held a Scopitone-themed membership drive, complete with "fashion contests, nonstop Scopitones and '60s-themed food and drink." Just the thing if you're in a groovy mood.[http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm]<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Reveaux, Anthony. New Technologies for the Demystification of Cinema, Film Quarterly, 27(1). 1973.42-51.<br />
* Vincentelli, Elisabeth. Scopitone-a-Go-Go, The village voice;Apr 22,1997; 42,16; Proquest Newsstand. 86.<br />
<br />
== External Links ==<br />
<br />
* Scoptione - The Visual Jukebox[http://http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm] <br />
<br />
* History of Scopitone [http://http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/9.4/scopitone/scopitone-09.4.html]<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Scopitone&diff=9427Scopitone2010-04-26T12:03:00Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Reference */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:color6.jpg|thumb|right|Scopitone]] “Before music videos and MTV there was their great-granddaddy, Scopitone.”<br />
<br />
(San Francisco Chronicle, Mar 19, 1992)<br />
<br />
== Brief Description ==<br />
<br />
[[File:S_1_1963Canada.jpg|thumb|left|Scopitone]] <br />
<br />
<br />
Today we take music videos on MTV and VH1 for granted. But did you know these musical cinematic gems have roots dating back to the start of World War II? And that they developed out of a "visual jukebox" called a Scopitone which was fashionable in the early 1960's?<br />
<br />
Invented in France right after World War Ⅱ, Scopitone were short 16mm films named after the modified jukeboxes they used to be player on. The first Scopitones were made in France in 1960. The ancestors of music videos, they hit their golden age in the early ‘60s, neatly concinciding with the explosion of teen-driven pop music in both France and the United States, the two main purveyors of the genre.<br />
<br />
Judging by this selection of almost 30 short films, there were two basic schools of Scopitones: the one where the singers were surrounded by bikini-clad, buxom vixens frantically twisting on location, and the one where you dropped the same indefatigable dancers into ostentatiously fake-looking sets. They run the gamut, from the Exciters singing “Tell Him” to the Kessler Sisters, blond twins who were regulars on European variety shows and whose Scopitone is a grandiose exercise in Teutonic kitsch.<br />
<br />
== How it works ==<br />
<br />
In 1939, a device called a "Panoram" was invented by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. The Panoram played eight three-minute musical shorts in a wooden jukebox fitted with a 17 x 22.5 inch translucent screen. The image was projected in a rear-screen manner via 16mm black and white film. These shorts became known as "soundies" and starred many of the most well-known jazz acts of the day. When World War II erupted, production halted and by war's end, the craze that had captured the public's attention so much in 1939 and 1940 was totally over. <br />
<br />
After the war ended in Europe, two French technicians saw all the tons of war surplus and military spare parts lying around and decided to use some of it to recreate the soundie experience and, hopefully, improve upon it. Using a 16mm camera that had been used by the French Air Force for reconnaissance flights, they converted it into a 16mm projector.<br />
<br />
[[File:s_2_CarouselOfStars.jpg|thumb|Right|Scopitone]]<br />
<br />
Mastering the problems of providing enough light and devising reliable mechanisms for threading and rewinding the films cost them lots of time and it wasn't until the late '50s that the invention was ready for the public. The resultant machine was the size of a refrigerator and was dubbed "Scopitone." Much improved from the 1939 version, the Scopitone played color films and, like a conventional jukebox, the customer was able to choose which video to watch, instead of whatever was conveniently loaded on the machine.<br />
<br />
== The demystification of audio-visual hegemony ==<br />
<br />
=== Towards an audio-visual hegemony: Remediation and the “obvious” ===<br />
<br />
The recording industry is quite interested in the laser scan system, because of the durability factor and greater possible quality and range of audio information. We can look forward to a unification of TV, hi-fi, and video-disc components in a single system. The audio quality of TV would finally be raised to stereophonic high-fidelity, improving the level and range of broadcast material. If the same unit could play back music and video, and also display printed pages, it is hard to see how there would be many homes without the system.<br />
<br />
There is already talking about the adding of a vision track to future record releases. The first form these visuals take will no doubt resemble concert film footage and what we have seen on the Scopitone Super-8 cartridge juke boxes. If you decide to buy a record of Sonny and Cher’s songs, you will jolly well see the pair doing their things, much as on the TV show.<br />
It is a cross between a jukebox and TV. For $.25 a throw, Scopitone projects any one of 36 musical movies on a 26 inch screen, flooding the premises with delicious color and hi-fi scooby-ooby-doo for three whole minutes. It makes a sobering combination." <br />
<br />
But more exciting and profound possibilities are opened up by this additional audio-visual flood gate. Media-technological differentiations opened up the possibility for media links. After the storage capacities for optics, acoustics, and writing had been separated, mechanized, and extensively utilized, their distinct data flows could also be reunited. Sound film combined the storage of acoustics and optics; shortly thereafter, television combined their transmission. (Kittler, 170)<br />
<br />
[[File:s_3color1.jpg|thumb|left]]<br />
<br />
The innovative rock groups will no doubt take the lead with dazzling optical trips. The widened opportunity for creative filmmakers for work will find a legion of compatible collaborations, just as many independent films have long used existing music tracks.<br />
<br />
The art of abstract vision will be furthered by the work of light-show artists, videographic experimenters, and computer graphics. A more limited, but no less interesting probability, is the availability of optical-effects generator components to be added to your color TV. With random sequencing, chroma-keving and phasing, etc., it would translate audio signals into visual patterns much as a cybernetic color organ. The more you and I can shape and form our own developing imagery on the screen, the more valuable the new technology will be. At the least, it can remain but mindless electric wallpaper. (Reveaux, 1973;49)<br />
<br />
== Where do media go die ==<br />
<br />
By 1969, Scopitone had closed its doors for good. What had seemed like a sure thing only five years before, faded away in a sea of accusations and murky accounting practices. So what was the appeal of the Scopitone videos? In 1964, with the big introduction to the clubs and restaurants, new American films needed to come faster than ever. The previous dependence on French videos and storytelling simply could not last to maintain interest here. <br />
<br />
Harmon-ee Productions, a subsidiary of a company owned by Debbie Reynolds, became the main supplier of American films. Debbie herself starred in the first American Scopitone video, singing "If I Had a Hammer," the Trini Lopez hit. Later, she covered Gale Garnett's "We'll Sing in the Sunshine." <br />
<br />
In keeping with the strategy of keeping teenagers out of the mix, the artists viewed on the Scopitone tended toward the lounge acts of the day- Vic Damone, Julie London- only occasionally a Bobby Vee or Petula Clark might surface. But in spite of the seemingly static nature of these artists, the resulting videos were visually stunning, if not mystifying with their direction. <br />
<br />
If anything set the Scopitone films apart from anything else, it was their use of eye-popping colors, wild scenery and wilder enthusiastic girls dancing the Twist, usually in bikinis, in the backgrounds as the singers performed in the craziest of places- on trains, in the woods, in cars, on carnival rides.<br />
<br />
In many cases, what was filmed didn't seem to make sense in the context of the song- for example, Dion singing "Ruby Baby" while seated in the cockpit of an obviously stationary airplane on a runway or Dionne Warwick singing "Walk on By" while lying seductively on a white bear rug. <br />
<br />
Some of these films have been described as risque, even by our standards today, not surprising, considering their French lineage and their appeal to cocktail lounges and clubs where "sophisticated" gentlemen could be found. In an age when Playboy magazine was redefining the American male, is it any wonder then that certain Scopitones would gravitate towards a more permissive point of view? <br />
<br />
Jack Stevenson, who wrote a definitive article on Scopitones, stated, "...people were reduced to decoration. They were lip-synchers, gyrating dolls and puppets and mannequins." It was a hypnotic effect and for those three minutes, it was riveting. <br />
<br />
The Scopitone may have gone the way of the dinosaur but many remain safely in collectors' hands. And you can still find one out there, though you may have to travel a bit to find it. The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee has what they've termed "the last public Scopitone in America" in its lobby. <br />
<br />
It has embraced the Scopitone so much that it recently held a Scopitone-themed membership drive, complete with "fashion contests, nonstop Scopitones and '60s-themed food and drink." Just the thing if you're in a groovy mood.[http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm]<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Reveaux, Anthony. New Technologies for the Demystification of Cinema, Film Quarterly, 27(1). 1973.42-51.<br />
<br />
== External Links ==<br />
<br />
* Scoptione - The Visual Jukebox[http://http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm] <br />
<br />
* History of Scopitone [http://http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/9.4/scopitone/scopitone-09.4.html]<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Scopitone&diff=9426Scopitone2010-04-26T12:01:42Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* External Links */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:color6.jpg|thumb|right|Scopitone]] “Before music videos and MTV there was their great-granddaddy, Scopitone.”<br />
<br />
(San Francisco Chronicle, Mar 19, 1992)<br />
<br />
== Brief Description ==<br />
<br />
[[File:S_1_1963Canada.jpg|thumb|left|Scopitone]] <br />
<br />
<br />
Today we take music videos on MTV and VH1 for granted. But did you know these musical cinematic gems have roots dating back to the start of World War II? And that they developed out of a "visual jukebox" called a Scopitone which was fashionable in the early 1960's?<br />
<br />
Invented in France right after World War Ⅱ, Scopitone were short 16mm films named after the modified jukeboxes they used to be player on. The first Scopitones were made in France in 1960. The ancestors of music videos, they hit their golden age in the early ‘60s, neatly concinciding with the explosion of teen-driven pop music in both France and the United States, the two main purveyors of the genre.<br />
<br />
Judging by this selection of almost 30 short films, there were two basic schools of Scopitones: the one where the singers were surrounded by bikini-clad, buxom vixens frantically twisting on location, and the one where you dropped the same indefatigable dancers into ostentatiously fake-looking sets. They run the gamut, from the Exciters singing “Tell Him” to the Kessler Sisters, blond twins who were regulars on European variety shows and whose Scopitone is a grandiose exercise in Teutonic kitsch.<br />
<br />
== How it works ==<br />
<br />
In 1939, a device called a "Panoram" was invented by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. The Panoram played eight three-minute musical shorts in a wooden jukebox fitted with a 17 x 22.5 inch translucent screen. The image was projected in a rear-screen manner via 16mm black and white film. These shorts became known as "soundies" and starred many of the most well-known jazz acts of the day. When World War II erupted, production halted and by war's end, the craze that had captured the public's attention so much in 1939 and 1940 was totally over. <br />
<br />
After the war ended in Europe, two French technicians saw all the tons of war surplus and military spare parts lying around and decided to use some of it to recreate the soundie experience and, hopefully, improve upon it. Using a 16mm camera that had been used by the French Air Force for reconnaissance flights, they converted it into a 16mm projector.<br />
<br />
[[File:s_2_CarouselOfStars.jpg|thumb|Right|Scopitone]]<br />
<br />
Mastering the problems of providing enough light and devising reliable mechanisms for threading and rewinding the films cost them lots of time and it wasn't until the late '50s that the invention was ready for the public. The resultant machine was the size of a refrigerator and was dubbed "Scopitone." Much improved from the 1939 version, the Scopitone played color films and, like a conventional jukebox, the customer was able to choose which video to watch, instead of whatever was conveniently loaded on the machine.<br />
<br />
== The demystification of audio-visual hegemony ==<br />
<br />
=== Towards an audio-visual hegemony: Remediation and the “obvious” ===<br />
<br />
The recording industry is quite interested in the laser scan system, because of the durability factor and greater possible quality and range of audio information. We can look forward to a unification of TV, hi-fi, and video-disc components in a single system. The audio quality of TV would finally be raised to stereophonic high-fidelity, improving the level and range of broadcast material. If the same unit could play back music and video, and also display printed pages, it is hard to see how there would be many homes without the system.<br />
<br />
There is already talking about the adding of a vision track to future record releases. The first form these visuals take will no doubt resemble concert film footage and what we have seen on the Scopitone Super-8 cartridge juke boxes. If you decide to buy a record of Sonny and Cher’s songs, you will jolly well see the pair doing their things, much as on the TV show.<br />
It is a cross between a jukebox and TV. For $.25 a throw, Scopitone projects any one of 36 musical movies on a 26 inch screen, flooding the premises with delicious color and hi-fi scooby-ooby-doo for three whole minutes. It makes a sobering combination." <br />
<br />
But more exciting and profound possibilities are opened up by this additional audio-visual flood gate. Media-technological differentiations opened up the possibility for media links. After the storage capacities for optics, acoustics, and writing had been separated, mechanized, and extensively utilized, their distinct data flows could also be reunited. Sound film combined the storage of acoustics and optics; shortly thereafter, television combined their transmission. (Kittler, 170)<br />
<br />
[[File:s_3color1.jpg|thumb|left]]<br />
<br />
The innovative rock groups will no doubt take the lead with dazzling optical trips. The widened opportunity for creative filmmakers for work will find a legion of compatible collaborations, just as many independent films have long used existing music tracks.<br />
<br />
The art of abstract vision will be furthered by the work of light-show artists, videographic experimenters, and computer graphics. A more limited, but no less interesting probability, is the availability of optical-effects generator components to be added to your color TV. With random sequencing, chroma-keving and phasing, etc., it would translate audio signals into visual patterns much as a cybernetic color organ. The more you and I can shape and form our own developing imagery on the screen, the more valuable the new technology will be. At the least, it can remain but mindless electric wallpaper. (Reveaux, 1973;49)<br />
<br />
== Where do media go die ==<br />
<br />
By 1969, Scopitone had closed its doors for good. What had seemed like a sure thing only five years before, faded away in a sea of accusations and murky accounting practices. So what was the appeal of the Scopitone videos? In 1964, with the big introduction to the clubs and restaurants, new American films needed to come faster than ever. The previous dependence on French videos and storytelling simply could not last to maintain interest here. <br />
<br />
Harmon-ee Productions, a subsidiary of a company owned by Debbie Reynolds, became the main supplier of American films. Debbie herself starred in the first American Scopitone video, singing "If I Had a Hammer," the Trini Lopez hit. Later, she covered Gale Garnett's "We'll Sing in the Sunshine." <br />
<br />
In keeping with the strategy of keeping teenagers out of the mix, the artists viewed on the Scopitone tended toward the lounge acts of the day- Vic Damone, Julie London- only occasionally a Bobby Vee or Petula Clark might surface. But in spite of the seemingly static nature of these artists, the resulting videos were visually stunning, if not mystifying with their direction. <br />
<br />
If anything set the Scopitone films apart from anything else, it was their use of eye-popping colors, wild scenery and wilder enthusiastic girls dancing the Twist, usually in bikinis, in the backgrounds as the singers performed in the craziest of places- on trains, in the woods, in cars, on carnival rides.<br />
<br />
In many cases, what was filmed didn't seem to make sense in the context of the song- for example, Dion singing "Ruby Baby" while seated in the cockpit of an obviously stationary airplane on a runway or Dionne Warwick singing "Walk on By" while lying seductively on a white bear rug. <br />
<br />
Some of these films have been described as risque, even by our standards today, not surprising, considering their French lineage and their appeal to cocktail lounges and clubs where "sophisticated" gentlemen could be found. In an age when Playboy magazine was redefining the American male, is it any wonder then that certain Scopitones would gravitate towards a more permissive point of view? <br />
<br />
Jack Stevenson, who wrote a definitive article on Scopitones, stated, "...people were reduced to decoration. They were lip-synchers, gyrating dolls and puppets and mannequins." It was a hypnotic effect and for those three minutes, it was riveting. <br />
<br />
The Scopitone may have gone the way of the dinosaur but many remain safely in collectors' hands. And you can still find one out there, though you may have to travel a bit to find it. The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee has what they've termed "the last public Scopitone in America" in its lobby. <br />
<br />
It has embraced the Scopitone so much that it recently held a Scopitone-themed membership drive, complete with "fashion contests, nonstop Scopitones and '60s-themed food and drink." Just the thing if you're in a groovy mood.[http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm]<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. <br />
<br />
<br />
== External Links ==<br />
<br />
* Scoptione - The Visual Jukebox[http://http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm] <br />
<br />
* History of Scopitone [http://http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/9.4/scopitone/scopitone-09.4.html]<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Scopitone&diff=9425Scopitone2010-04-26T12:00:59Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* External Links */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:color6.jpg|thumb|right|Scopitone]] “Before music videos and MTV there was their great-granddaddy, Scopitone.”<br />
<br />
(San Francisco Chronicle, Mar 19, 1992)<br />
<br />
== Brief Description ==<br />
<br />
[[File:S_1_1963Canada.jpg|thumb|left|Scopitone]] <br />
<br />
<br />
Today we take music videos on MTV and VH1 for granted. But did you know these musical cinematic gems have roots dating back to the start of World War II? And that they developed out of a "visual jukebox" called a Scopitone which was fashionable in the early 1960's?<br />
<br />
Invented in France right after World War Ⅱ, Scopitone were short 16mm films named after the modified jukeboxes they used to be player on. The first Scopitones were made in France in 1960. The ancestors of music videos, they hit their golden age in the early ‘60s, neatly concinciding with the explosion of teen-driven pop music in both France and the United States, the two main purveyors of the genre.<br />
<br />
Judging by this selection of almost 30 short films, there were two basic schools of Scopitones: the one where the singers were surrounded by bikini-clad, buxom vixens frantically twisting on location, and the one where you dropped the same indefatigable dancers into ostentatiously fake-looking sets. They run the gamut, from the Exciters singing “Tell Him” to the Kessler Sisters, blond twins who were regulars on European variety shows and whose Scopitone is a grandiose exercise in Teutonic kitsch.<br />
<br />
== How it works ==<br />
<br />
In 1939, a device called a "Panoram" was invented by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. The Panoram played eight three-minute musical shorts in a wooden jukebox fitted with a 17 x 22.5 inch translucent screen. The image was projected in a rear-screen manner via 16mm black and white film. These shorts became known as "soundies" and starred many of the most well-known jazz acts of the day. When World War II erupted, production halted and by war's end, the craze that had captured the public's attention so much in 1939 and 1940 was totally over. <br />
<br />
After the war ended in Europe, two French technicians saw all the tons of war surplus and military spare parts lying around and decided to use some of it to recreate the soundie experience and, hopefully, improve upon it. Using a 16mm camera that had been used by the French Air Force for reconnaissance flights, they converted it into a 16mm projector.<br />
<br />
[[File:s_2_CarouselOfStars.jpg|thumb|Right|Scopitone]]<br />
<br />
Mastering the problems of providing enough light and devising reliable mechanisms for threading and rewinding the films cost them lots of time and it wasn't until the late '50s that the invention was ready for the public. The resultant machine was the size of a refrigerator and was dubbed "Scopitone." Much improved from the 1939 version, the Scopitone played color films and, like a conventional jukebox, the customer was able to choose which video to watch, instead of whatever was conveniently loaded on the machine.<br />
<br />
== The demystification of audio-visual hegemony ==<br />
<br />
=== Towards an audio-visual hegemony: Remediation and the “obvious” ===<br />
<br />
The recording industry is quite interested in the laser scan system, because of the durability factor and greater possible quality and range of audio information. We can look forward to a unification of TV, hi-fi, and video-disc components in a single system. The audio quality of TV would finally be raised to stereophonic high-fidelity, improving the level and range of broadcast material. If the same unit could play back music and video, and also display printed pages, it is hard to see how there would be many homes without the system.<br />
<br />
There is already talking about the adding of a vision track to future record releases. The first form these visuals take will no doubt resemble concert film footage and what we have seen on the Scopitone Super-8 cartridge juke boxes. If you decide to buy a record of Sonny and Cher’s songs, you will jolly well see the pair doing their things, much as on the TV show.<br />
It is a cross between a jukebox and TV. For $.25 a throw, Scopitone projects any one of 36 musical movies on a 26 inch screen, flooding the premises with delicious color and hi-fi scooby-ooby-doo for three whole minutes. It makes a sobering combination." <br />
<br />
But more exciting and profound possibilities are opened up by this additional audio-visual flood gate. Media-technological differentiations opened up the possibility for media links. After the storage capacities for optics, acoustics, and writing had been separated, mechanized, and extensively utilized, their distinct data flows could also be reunited. Sound film combined the storage of acoustics and optics; shortly thereafter, television combined their transmission. (Kittler, 170)<br />
<br />
[[File:s_3color1.jpg|thumb|left]]<br />
<br />
The innovative rock groups will no doubt take the lead with dazzling optical trips. The widened opportunity for creative filmmakers for work will find a legion of compatible collaborations, just as many independent films have long used existing music tracks.<br />
<br />
The art of abstract vision will be furthered by the work of light-show artists, videographic experimenters, and computer graphics. A more limited, but no less interesting probability, is the availability of optical-effects generator components to be added to your color TV. With random sequencing, chroma-keving and phasing, etc., it would translate audio signals into visual patterns much as a cybernetic color organ. The more you and I can shape and form our own developing imagery on the screen, the more valuable the new technology will be. At the least, it can remain but mindless electric wallpaper. (Reveaux, 1973;49)<br />
<br />
== Where do media go die ==<br />
<br />
By 1969, Scopitone had closed its doors for good. What had seemed like a sure thing only five years before, faded away in a sea of accusations and murky accounting practices. So what was the appeal of the Scopitone videos? In 1964, with the big introduction to the clubs and restaurants, new American films needed to come faster than ever. The previous dependence on French videos and storytelling simply could not last to maintain interest here. <br />
<br />
Harmon-ee Productions, a subsidiary of a company owned by Debbie Reynolds, became the main supplier of American films. Debbie herself starred in the first American Scopitone video, singing "If I Had a Hammer," the Trini Lopez hit. Later, she covered Gale Garnett's "We'll Sing in the Sunshine." <br />
<br />
In keeping with the strategy of keeping teenagers out of the mix, the artists viewed on the Scopitone tended toward the lounge acts of the day- Vic Damone, Julie London- only occasionally a Bobby Vee or Petula Clark might surface. But in spite of the seemingly static nature of these artists, the resulting videos were visually stunning, if not mystifying with their direction. <br />
<br />
If anything set the Scopitone films apart from anything else, it was their use of eye-popping colors, wild scenery and wilder enthusiastic girls dancing the Twist, usually in bikinis, in the backgrounds as the singers performed in the craziest of places- on trains, in the woods, in cars, on carnival rides.<br />
<br />
In many cases, what was filmed didn't seem to make sense in the context of the song- for example, Dion singing "Ruby Baby" while seated in the cockpit of an obviously stationary airplane on a runway or Dionne Warwick singing "Walk on By" while lying seductively on a white bear rug. <br />
<br />
Some of these films have been described as risque, even by our standards today, not surprising, considering their French lineage and their appeal to cocktail lounges and clubs where "sophisticated" gentlemen could be found. In an age when Playboy magazine was redefining the American male, is it any wonder then that certain Scopitones would gravitate towards a more permissive point of view? <br />
<br />
Jack Stevenson, who wrote a definitive article on Scopitones, stated, "...people were reduced to decoration. They were lip-synchers, gyrating dolls and puppets and mannequins." It was a hypnotic effect and for those three minutes, it was riveting. <br />
<br />
The Scopitone may have gone the way of the dinosaur but many remain safely in collectors' hands. And you can still find one out there, though you may have to travel a bit to find it. The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee has what they've termed "the last public Scopitone in America" in its lobby. <br />
<br />
It has embraced the Scopitone so much that it recently held a Scopitone-themed membership drive, complete with "fashion contests, nonstop Scopitones and '60s-themed food and drink." Just the thing if you're in a groovy mood.[http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm]<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. <br />
<br />
<br />
== External Links ==<br />
<br />
* Scoptione - The Visual Jukebox[http://http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm] <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Scopitone&diff=9424Scopitone2010-04-26T12:00:19Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:color6.jpg|thumb|right|Scopitone]] “Before music videos and MTV there was their great-granddaddy, Scopitone.”<br />
<br />
(San Francisco Chronicle, Mar 19, 1992)<br />
<br />
== Brief Description ==<br />
<br />
[[File:S_1_1963Canada.jpg|thumb|left|Scopitone]] <br />
<br />
<br />
Today we take music videos on MTV and VH1 for granted. But did you know these musical cinematic gems have roots dating back to the start of World War II? And that they developed out of a "visual jukebox" called a Scopitone which was fashionable in the early 1960's?<br />
<br />
Invented in France right after World War Ⅱ, Scopitone were short 16mm films named after the modified jukeboxes they used to be player on. The first Scopitones were made in France in 1960. The ancestors of music videos, they hit their golden age in the early ‘60s, neatly concinciding with the explosion of teen-driven pop music in both France and the United States, the two main purveyors of the genre.<br />
<br />
Judging by this selection of almost 30 short films, there were two basic schools of Scopitones: the one where the singers were surrounded by bikini-clad, buxom vixens frantically twisting on location, and the one where you dropped the same indefatigable dancers into ostentatiously fake-looking sets. They run the gamut, from the Exciters singing “Tell Him” to the Kessler Sisters, blond twins who were regulars on European variety shows and whose Scopitone is a grandiose exercise in Teutonic kitsch.<br />
<br />
== How it works ==<br />
<br />
In 1939, a device called a "Panoram" was invented by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. The Panoram played eight three-minute musical shorts in a wooden jukebox fitted with a 17 x 22.5 inch translucent screen. The image was projected in a rear-screen manner via 16mm black and white film. These shorts became known as "soundies" and starred many of the most well-known jazz acts of the day. When World War II erupted, production halted and by war's end, the craze that had captured the public's attention so much in 1939 and 1940 was totally over. <br />
<br />
After the war ended in Europe, two French technicians saw all the tons of war surplus and military spare parts lying around and decided to use some of it to recreate the soundie experience and, hopefully, improve upon it. Using a 16mm camera that had been used by the French Air Force for reconnaissance flights, they converted it into a 16mm projector.<br />
<br />
[[File:s_2_CarouselOfStars.jpg|thumb|Right|Scopitone]]<br />
<br />
Mastering the problems of providing enough light and devising reliable mechanisms for threading and rewinding the films cost them lots of time and it wasn't until the late '50s that the invention was ready for the public. The resultant machine was the size of a refrigerator and was dubbed "Scopitone." Much improved from the 1939 version, the Scopitone played color films and, like a conventional jukebox, the customer was able to choose which video to watch, instead of whatever was conveniently loaded on the machine.<br />
<br />
== The demystification of audio-visual hegemony ==<br />
<br />
=== Towards an audio-visual hegemony: Remediation and the “obvious” ===<br />
<br />
The recording industry is quite interested in the laser scan system, because of the durability factor and greater possible quality and range of audio information. We can look forward to a unification of TV, hi-fi, and video-disc components in a single system. The audio quality of TV would finally be raised to stereophonic high-fidelity, improving the level and range of broadcast material. If the same unit could play back music and video, and also display printed pages, it is hard to see how there would be many homes without the system.<br />
<br />
There is already talking about the adding of a vision track to future record releases. The first form these visuals take will no doubt resemble concert film footage and what we have seen on the Scopitone Super-8 cartridge juke boxes. If you decide to buy a record of Sonny and Cher’s songs, you will jolly well see the pair doing their things, much as on the TV show.<br />
It is a cross between a jukebox and TV. For $.25 a throw, Scopitone projects any one of 36 musical movies on a 26 inch screen, flooding the premises with delicious color and hi-fi scooby-ooby-doo for three whole minutes. It makes a sobering combination." <br />
<br />
But more exciting and profound possibilities are opened up by this additional audio-visual flood gate. Media-technological differentiations opened up the possibility for media links. After the storage capacities for optics, acoustics, and writing had been separated, mechanized, and extensively utilized, their distinct data flows could also be reunited. Sound film combined the storage of acoustics and optics; shortly thereafter, television combined their transmission. (Kittler, 170)<br />
<br />
[[File:s_3color1.jpg|thumb|left]]<br />
<br />
The innovative rock groups will no doubt take the lead with dazzling optical trips. The widened opportunity for creative filmmakers for work will find a legion of compatible collaborations, just as many independent films have long used existing music tracks.<br />
<br />
The art of abstract vision will be furthered by the work of light-show artists, videographic experimenters, and computer graphics. A more limited, but no less interesting probability, is the availability of optical-effects generator components to be added to your color TV. With random sequencing, chroma-keving and phasing, etc., it would translate audio signals into visual patterns much as a cybernetic color organ. The more you and I can shape and form our own developing imagery on the screen, the more valuable the new technology will be. At the least, it can remain but mindless electric wallpaper. (Reveaux, 1973;49)<br />
<br />
== Where do media go die ==<br />
<br />
By 1969, Scopitone had closed its doors for good. What had seemed like a sure thing only five years before, faded away in a sea of accusations and murky accounting practices. So what was the appeal of the Scopitone videos? In 1964, with the big introduction to the clubs and restaurants, new American films needed to come faster than ever. The previous dependence on French videos and storytelling simply could not last to maintain interest here. <br />
<br />
Harmon-ee Productions, a subsidiary of a company owned by Debbie Reynolds, became the main supplier of American films. Debbie herself starred in the first American Scopitone video, singing "If I Had a Hammer," the Trini Lopez hit. Later, she covered Gale Garnett's "We'll Sing in the Sunshine." <br />
<br />
In keeping with the strategy of keeping teenagers out of the mix, the artists viewed on the Scopitone tended toward the lounge acts of the day- Vic Damone, Julie London- only occasionally a Bobby Vee or Petula Clark might surface. But in spite of the seemingly static nature of these artists, the resulting videos were visually stunning, if not mystifying with their direction. <br />
<br />
If anything set the Scopitone films apart from anything else, it was their use of eye-popping colors, wild scenery and wilder enthusiastic girls dancing the Twist, usually in bikinis, in the backgrounds as the singers performed in the craziest of places- on trains, in the woods, in cars, on carnival rides.<br />
<br />
In many cases, what was filmed didn't seem to make sense in the context of the song- for example, Dion singing "Ruby Baby" while seated in the cockpit of an obviously stationary airplane on a runway or Dionne Warwick singing "Walk on By" while lying seductively on a white bear rug. <br />
<br />
Some of these films have been described as risque, even by our standards today, not surprising, considering their French lineage and their appeal to cocktail lounges and clubs where "sophisticated" gentlemen could be found. In an age when Playboy magazine was redefining the American male, is it any wonder then that certain Scopitones would gravitate towards a more permissive point of view? <br />
<br />
Jack Stevenson, who wrote a definitive article on Scopitones, stated, "...people were reduced to decoration. They were lip-synchers, gyrating dolls and puppets and mannequins." It was a hypnotic effect and for those three minutes, it was riveting. <br />
<br />
The Scopitone may have gone the way of the dinosaur but many remain safely in collectors' hands. And you can still find one out there, though you may have to travel a bit to find it. The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee has what they've termed "the last public Scopitone in America" in its lobby. <br />
<br />
It has embraced the Scopitone so much that it recently held a Scopitone-themed membership drive, complete with "fashion contests, nonstop Scopitones and '60s-themed food and drink." Just the thing if you're in a groovy mood.[http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm]<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. <br />
<br />
<br />
== External Links ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Scopitone&diff=9423Scopitone2010-04-26T11:59:09Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:color6.jpg|thumb|right|Scopitone]] “Before music videos and MTV there was their great-granddaddy, Scopitone.”<br />
<br />
(San Francisco Chronicle, Mar 19, 1992)<br />
<br />
== Brief Description ==<br />
<br />
[[File:S_1_1963Canada.jpg|thumb|left|Scopitone]] <br />
<br />
<br />
Today we take music videos on MTV and VH1 for granted. But did you know these musical cinematic gems have roots dating back to the start of World War II? And that they developed out of a "visual jukebox" called a Scopitone which was fashionable in the early 1960's?<br />
<br />
Invented in France right after World War Ⅱ, Scopitone were short 16mm films named after the modified jukeboxes they used to be player on. The first Scopitones were made in France in 1960. The ancestors of music videos, they hit their golden age in the early ‘60s, neatly concinciding with the explosion of teen-driven pop music in both France and the United States, the two main purveyors of the genre.<br />
<br />
Judging by this selection of almost 30 short films, there were two basic schools of Scopitones: the one where the singers were surrounded by bikini-clad, buxom vixens frantically twisting on location, and the one where you dropped the same indefatigable dancers into ostentatiously fake-looking sets. They run the gamut, from the Exciters singing “Tell Him” to the Kessler Sisters, blond twins who were regulars on European variety shows and whose Scopitone is a grandiose exercise in Teutonic kitsch.<br />
<br />
== How it works ==<br />
<br />
In 1939, a device called a "Panoram" was invented by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. The Panoram played eight three-minute musical shorts in a wooden jukebox fitted with a 17 x 22.5 inch translucent screen. The image was projected in a rear-screen manner via 16mm black and white film. These shorts became known as "soundies" and starred many of the most well-known jazz acts of the day. When World War II erupted, production halted and by war's end, the craze that had captured the public's attention so much in 1939 and 1940 was totally over. <br />
<br />
After the war ended in Europe, two French technicians saw all the tons of war surplus and military spare parts lying around and decided to use some of it to recreate the soundie experience and, hopefully, improve upon it. Using a 16mm camera that had been used by the French Air Force for reconnaissance flights, they converted it into a 16mm projector.<br />
<br />
[[File:s_2_CarouselOfStars.jpg|thumb|Right|Scopitone]]<br />
<br />
Mastering the problems of providing enough light and devising reliable mechanisms for threading and rewinding the films cost them lots of time and it wasn't until the late '50s that the invention was ready for the public. The resultant machine was the size of a refrigerator and was dubbed "Scopitone." Much improved from the 1939 version, the Scopitone played color films and, like a conventional jukebox, the customer was able to choose which video to watch, instead of whatever was conveniently loaded on the machine.<br />
<br />
== The demystification of audio-visual hegemony ==<br />
<br />
=== Towards an audio-visual hegemony: Remediation and the “obvious” ===<br />
<br />
The recording industry is quite interested in the laser scan system, because of the durability factor and greater possible quality and range of audio information. We can look forward to a unification of TV, hi-fi, and video-disc components in a single system. The audio quality of TV would finally be raised to stereophonic high-fidelity, improving the level and range of broadcast material. If the same unit could play back music and video, and also display printed pages, it is hard to see how there would be many homes without the system.<br />
<br />
There is already talking about the adding of a vision track to future record releases. The first form these visuals take will no doubt resemble concert film footage and what we have seen on the Scopitone Super-8 cartridge juke boxes. If you decide to buy a record of Sonny and Cher’s songs, you will jolly well see the pair doing their things, much as on the TV show.<br />
It is a cross between a jukebox and TV. For $.25 a throw, Scopitone projects any one of 36 musical movies on a 26 inch screen, flooding the premises with delicious color and hi-fi scooby-ooby-doo for three whole minutes. It makes a sobering combination." <br />
<br />
But more exciting and profound possibilities are opened up by this additional audio-visual flood gate. Media-technological differentiations opened up the possibility for media links. After the storage capacities for optics, acoustics, and writing had been separated, mechanized, and extensively utilized, their distinct data flows could also be reunited. Sound film combined the storage of acoustics and optics; shortly thereafter, television combined their transmission. (Kittler, 170)<br />
<br />
[[File:s_3color1.jpg|thumb|left]]<br />
<br />
The innovative rock groups will no doubt take the lead with dazzling optical trips. The widened opportunity for creative filmmakers for work will find a legion of compatible collaborations, just as many independent films have long used existing music tracks.<br />
<br />
The art of abstract vision will be furthered by the work of light-show artists, videographic experimenters, and computer graphics. A more limited, but no less interesting probability, is the availability of optical-effects generator components to be added to your color TV. With random sequencing, chroma-keving and phasing, etc., it would translate audio signals into visual patterns much as a cybernetic color organ. The more you and I can shape and form our own developing imagery on the screen, the more valuable the new technology will be. At the least, it can remain but mindless electric wallpaper. (Reveaux, 1973;49)<br />
<br />
== Where do media go die ==<br />
<br />
By 1969, Scopitone had closed its doors for good. What had seemed like a sure thing only five years before, faded away in a sea of accusations and murky accounting practices. So what was the appeal of the Scopitone videos? In 1964, with the big introduction to the clubs and restaurants, new American films needed to come faster than ever. The previous dependence on French videos and storytelling simply could not last to maintain interest here. <br />
<br />
Harmon-ee Productions, a subsidiary of a company owned by Debbie Reynolds, became the main supplier of American films. Debbie herself starred in the first American Scopitone video, singing "If I Had a Hammer," the Trini Lopez hit. Later, she covered Gale Garnett's "We'll Sing in the Sunshine." <br />
<br />
In keeping with the strategy of keeping teenagers out of the mix, the artists viewed on the Scopitone tended toward the lounge acts of the day- Vic Damone, Julie London- only occasionally a Bobby Vee or Petula Clark might surface. But in spite of the seemingly static nature of these artists, the resulting videos were visually stunning, if not mystifying with their direction. <br />
<br />
If anything set the Scopitone films apart from anything else, it was their use of eye-popping colors, wild scenery and wilder enthusiastic girls dancing the Twist, usually in bikinis, in the backgrounds as the singers performed in the craziest of places- on trains, in the woods, in cars, on carnival rides.<br />
<br />
In many cases, what was filmed didn't seem to make sense in the context of the song- for example, Dion singing "Ruby Baby" while seated in the cockpit of an obviously stationary airplane on a runway or Dionne Warwick singing "Walk on By" while lying seductively on a white bear rug. <br />
<br />
Some of these films have been described as risque, even by our standards today, not surprising, considering their French lineage and their appeal to cocktail lounges and clubs where "sophisticated" gentlemen could be found. In an age when Playboy magazine was redefining the American male, is it any wonder then that certain Scopitones would gravitate towards a more permissive point of view? <br />
<br />
Jack Stevenson, who wrote a definitive article on Scopitones, stated, "...people were reduced to decoration. They were lip-synchers, gyrating dolls and puppets and mannequins." It was a hypnotic effect and for those three minutes, it was riveting. <br />
<br />
The Scopitone may have gone the way of the dinosaur but many remain safely in collectors' hands. And you can still find one out there, though you may have to travel a bit to find it. The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee has what they've termed "the last public Scopitone in America" in its lobby. <br />
<br />
It has embraced the Scopitone so much that it recently held a Scopitone-themed membership drive, complete with "fashion contests, nonstop Scopitones and '60s-themed food and drink." Just the thing if you're in a groovy mood.[http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm]<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Scopitone&diff=9422Scopitone2010-04-26T11:58:30Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Reference */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:color6.jpg|thumb|right|Scopitone]] “Before music videos and MTV there was their great-granddaddy, Scopitone.”<br />
<br />
(San Francisco Chronicle, Mar 19, 1992)<br />
<br />
== Brief Description ==<br />
<br />
[[File:S_1_1963Canada.jpg|thumb|left|Scopitone]] <br />
<br />
<br />
Today we take music videos on MTV and VH1 for granted. But did you know these musical cinematic gems have roots dating back to the start of World War II? And that they developed out of a "visual jukebox" called a Scopitone which was fashionable in the early 1960's?<br />
<br />
Invented in France right after World War Ⅱ, Scopitone were short 16mm films named after the modified jukeboxes they used to be player on. The first Scopitones were made in France in 1960. The ancestors of music videos, they hit their golden age in the early ‘60s, neatly concinciding with the explosion of teen-driven pop music in both France and the United States, the two main purveyors of the genre.<br />
<br />
Judging by this selection of almost 30 short films, there were two basic schools of Scopitones: the one where the singers were surrounded by bikini-clad, buxom vixens frantically twisting on location, and the one where you dropped the same indefatigable dancers into ostentatiously fake-looking sets. They run the gamut, from the Exciters singing “Tell Him” to the Kessler Sisters, blond twins who were regulars on European variety shows and whose Scopitone is a grandiose exercise in Teutonic kitsch.<br />
<br />
== How it works ==<br />
<br />
In 1939, a device called a "Panoram" was invented by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. The Panoram played eight three-minute musical shorts in a wooden jukebox fitted with a 17 x 22.5 inch translucent screen. The image was projected in a rear-screen manner via 16mm black and white film. These shorts became known as "soundies" and starred many of the most well-known jazz acts of the day. When World War II erupted, production halted and by war's end, the craze that had captured the public's attention so much in 1939 and 1940 was totally over. <br />
<br />
After the war ended in Europe, two French technicians saw all the tons of war surplus and military spare parts lying around and decided to use some of it to recreate the soundie experience and, hopefully, improve upon it. Using a 16mm camera that had been used by the French Air Force for reconnaissance flights, they converted it into a 16mm projector.<br />
<br />
[[File:s_2_CarouselOfStars.jpg|thumb|Right]]<br />
<br />
Mastering the problems of providing enough light and devising reliable mechanisms for threading and rewinding the films cost them lots of time and it wasn't until the late '50s that the invention was ready for the public. The resultant machine was the size of a refrigerator and was dubbed "Scopitone." Much improved from the 1939 version, the Scopitone played color films and, like a conventional jukebox, the customer was able to choose which video to watch, instead of whatever was conveniently loaded on the machine.<br />
<br />
== The demystification of audio-visual hegemony ==<br />
<br />
=== Towards an audio-visual hegemony: Remediation and the “obvious” ===<br />
<br />
The recording industry is quite interested in the laser scan system, because of the durability factor and greater possible quality and range of audio information. We can look forward to a unification of TV, hi-fi, and video-disc components in a single system. The audio quality of TV would finally be raised to stereophonic high-fidelity, improving the level and range of broadcast material. If the same unit could play back music and video, and also display printed pages, it is hard to see how there would be many homes without the system.<br />
<br />
There is already talking about the adding of a vision track to future record releases. The first form these visuals take will no doubt resemble concert film footage and what we have seen on the Scopitone Super-8 cartridge juke boxes. If you decide to buy a record of Sonny and Cher’s songs, you will jolly well see the pair doing their things, much as on the TV show.<br />
It is a cross between a jukebox and TV. For $.25 a throw, Scopitone projects any one of 36 musical movies on a 26 inch screen, flooding the premises with delicious color and hi-fi scooby-ooby-doo for three whole minutes. It makes a sobering combination." <br />
<br />
But more exciting and profound possibilities are opened up by this additional audio-visual flood gate. Media-technological differentiations opened up the possibility for media links. After the storage capacities for optics, acoustics, and writing had been separated, mechanized, and extensively utilized, their distinct data flows could also be reunited. Sound film combined the storage of acoustics and optics; shortly thereafter, television combined their transmission. (Kittler, 170)<br />
<br />
[[File:s_3color1.jpg|thumb|left]]<br />
<br />
The innovative rock groups will no doubt take the lead with dazzling optical trips. The widened opportunity for creative filmmakers for work will find a legion of compatible collaborations, just as many independent films have long used existing music tracks.<br />
<br />
The art of abstract vision will be furthered by the work of light-show artists, videographic experimenters, and computer graphics. A more limited, but no less interesting probability, is the availability of optical-effects generator components to be added to your color TV. With random sequencing, chroma-keving and phasing, etc., it would translate audio signals into visual patterns much as a cybernetic color organ. The more you and I can shape and form our own developing imagery on the screen, the more valuable the new technology will be. At the least, it can remain but mindless electric wallpaper. (Reveaux, 1973;49)<br />
<br />
== Where do media go die ==<br />
<br />
By 1969, Scopitone had closed its doors for good. What had seemed like a sure thing only five years before, faded away in a sea of accusations and murky accounting practices. So what was the appeal of the Scopitone videos? In 1964, with the big introduction to the clubs and restaurants, new American films needed to come faster than ever. The previous dependence on French videos and storytelling simply could not last to maintain interest here. <br />
<br />
Harmon-ee Productions, a subsidiary of a company owned by Debbie Reynolds, became the main supplier of American films. Debbie herself starred in the first American Scopitone video, singing "If I Had a Hammer," the Trini Lopez hit. Later, she covered Gale Garnett's "We'll Sing in the Sunshine." <br />
<br />
In keeping with the strategy of keeping teenagers out of the mix, the artists viewed on the Scopitone tended toward the lounge acts of the day- Vic Damone, Julie London- only occasionally a Bobby Vee or Petula Clark might surface. But in spite of the seemingly static nature of these artists, the resulting videos were visually stunning, if not mystifying with their direction. <br />
<br />
If anything set the Scopitone films apart from anything else, it was their use of eye-popping colors, wild scenery and wilder enthusiastic girls dancing the Twist, usually in bikinis, in the backgrounds as the singers performed in the craziest of places- on trains, in the woods, in cars, on carnival rides.<br />
<br />
In many cases, what was filmed didn't seem to make sense in the context of the song- for example, Dion singing "Ruby Baby" while seated in the cockpit of an obviously stationary airplane on a runway or Dionne Warwick singing "Walk on By" while lying seductively on a white bear rug. <br />
<br />
Some of these films have been described as risque, even by our standards today, not surprising, considering their French lineage and their appeal to cocktail lounges and clubs where "sophisticated" gentlemen could be found. In an age when Playboy magazine was redefining the American male, is it any wonder then that certain Scopitones would gravitate towards a more permissive point of view? <br />
<br />
Jack Stevenson, who wrote a definitive article on Scopitones, stated, "...people were reduced to decoration. They were lip-synchers, gyrating dolls and puppets and mannequins." It was a hypnotic effect and for those three minutes, it was riveting. <br />
<br />
The Scopitone may have gone the way of the dinosaur but many remain safely in collectors' hands. And you can still find one out there, though you may have to travel a bit to find it. The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee has what they've termed "the last public Scopitone in America" in its lobby. <br />
<br />
It has embraced the Scopitone so much that it recently held a Scopitone-themed membership drive, complete with "fashion contests, nonstop Scopitones and '60s-themed food and drink." Just the thing if you're in a groovy mood.[http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm]<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Scopitone&diff=9421Scopitone2010-04-26T11:55:59Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:color6.jpg|thumb|right|Scopitone]] “Before music videos and MTV there was their great-granddaddy, Scopitone.”<br />
<br />
(San Francisco Chronicle, Mar 19, 1992)<br />
<br />
== Brief Description ==<br />
<br />
[[File:S_1_1963Canada.jpg|thumb|left|Scopitone]] <br />
<br />
<br />
Today we take music videos on MTV and VH1 for granted. But did you know these musical cinematic gems have roots dating back to the start of World War II? And that they developed out of a "visual jukebox" called a Scopitone which was fashionable in the early 1960's?<br />
<br />
Invented in France right after World War Ⅱ, Scopitone were short 16mm films named after the modified jukeboxes they used to be player on. The first Scopitones were made in France in 1960. The ancestors of music videos, they hit their golden age in the early ‘60s, neatly concinciding with the explosion of teen-driven pop music in both France and the United States, the two main purveyors of the genre.<br />
<br />
Judging by this selection of almost 30 short films, there were two basic schools of Scopitones: the one where the singers were surrounded by bikini-clad, buxom vixens frantically twisting on location, and the one where you dropped the same indefatigable dancers into ostentatiously fake-looking sets. They run the gamut, from the Exciters singing “Tell Him” to the Kessler Sisters, blond twins who were regulars on European variety shows and whose Scopitone is a grandiose exercise in Teutonic kitsch.<br />
<br />
== How it works ==<br />
<br />
In 1939, a device called a "Panoram" was invented by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. The Panoram played eight three-minute musical shorts in a wooden jukebox fitted with a 17 x 22.5 inch translucent screen. The image was projected in a rear-screen manner via 16mm black and white film. These shorts became known as "soundies" and starred many of the most well-known jazz acts of the day. When World War II erupted, production halted and by war's end, the craze that had captured the public's attention so much in 1939 and 1940 was totally over. <br />
<br />
After the war ended in Europe, two French technicians saw all the tons of war surplus and military spare parts lying around and decided to use some of it to recreate the soundie experience and, hopefully, improve upon it. Using a 16mm camera that had been used by the French Air Force for reconnaissance flights, they converted it into a 16mm projector.<br />
<br />
[[File:s_2_CarouselOfStars.jpg|thumb|Right]]<br />
<br />
Mastering the problems of providing enough light and devising reliable mechanisms for threading and rewinding the films cost them lots of time and it wasn't until the late '50s that the invention was ready for the public. The resultant machine was the size of a refrigerator and was dubbed "Scopitone." Much improved from the 1939 version, the Scopitone played color films and, like a conventional jukebox, the customer was able to choose which video to watch, instead of whatever was conveniently loaded on the machine.<br />
<br />
== The demystification of audio-visual hegemony ==<br />
<br />
=== Towards an audio-visual hegemony: Remediation and the “obvious” ===<br />
<br />
The recording industry is quite interested in the laser scan system, because of the durability factor and greater possible quality and range of audio information. We can look forward to a unification of TV, hi-fi, and video-disc components in a single system. The audio quality of TV would finally be raised to stereophonic high-fidelity, improving the level and range of broadcast material. If the same unit could play back music and video, and also display printed pages, it is hard to see how there would be many homes without the system.<br />
<br />
There is already talking about the adding of a vision track to future record releases. The first form these visuals take will no doubt resemble concert film footage and what we have seen on the Scopitone Super-8 cartridge juke boxes. If you decide to buy a record of Sonny and Cher’s songs, you will jolly well see the pair doing their things, much as on the TV show.<br />
It is a cross between a jukebox and TV. For $.25 a throw, Scopitone projects any one of 36 musical movies on a 26 inch screen, flooding the premises with delicious color and hi-fi scooby-ooby-doo for three whole minutes. It makes a sobering combination." <br />
<br />
But more exciting and profound possibilities are opened up by this additional audio-visual flood gate. Media-technological differentiations opened up the possibility for media links. After the storage capacities for optics, acoustics, and writing had been separated, mechanized, and extensively utilized, their distinct data flows could also be reunited. Sound film combined the storage of acoustics and optics; shortly thereafter, television combined their transmission. (Kittler, 170)<br />
<br />
[[File:s_3color1.jpg|thumb|left]]<br />
<br />
The innovative rock groups will no doubt take the lead with dazzling optical trips. The widened opportunity for creative filmmakers for work will find a legion of compatible collaborations, just as many independent films have long used existing music tracks.<br />
<br />
The art of abstract vision will be furthered by the work of light-show artists, videographic experimenters, and computer graphics. A more limited, but no less interesting probability, is the availability of optical-effects generator components to be added to your color TV. With random sequencing, chroma-keving and phasing, etc., it would translate audio signals into visual patterns much as a cybernetic color organ. The more you and I can shape and form our own developing imagery on the screen, the more valuable the new technology will be. At the least, it can remain but mindless electric wallpaper. (Reveaux, 1973;49)<br />
<br />
== Where do media go die ==<br />
<br />
By 1969, Scopitone had closed its doors for good. What had seemed like a sure thing only five years before, faded away in a sea of accusations and murky accounting practices. So what was the appeal of the Scopitone videos? In 1964, with the big introduction to the clubs and restaurants, new American films needed to come faster than ever. The previous dependence on French videos and storytelling simply could not last to maintain interest here. <br />
<br />
Harmon-ee Productions, a subsidiary of a company owned by Debbie Reynolds, became the main supplier of American films. Debbie herself starred in the first American Scopitone video, singing "If I Had a Hammer," the Trini Lopez hit. Later, she covered Gale Garnett's "We'll Sing in the Sunshine." <br />
<br />
In keeping with the strategy of keeping teenagers out of the mix, the artists viewed on the Scopitone tended toward the lounge acts of the day- Vic Damone, Julie London- only occasionally a Bobby Vee or Petula Clark might surface. But in spite of the seemingly static nature of these artists, the resulting videos were visually stunning, if not mystifying with their direction. <br />
<br />
If anything set the Scopitone films apart from anything else, it was their use of eye-popping colors, wild scenery and wilder enthusiastic girls dancing the Twist, usually in bikinis, in the backgrounds as the singers performed in the craziest of places- on trains, in the woods, in cars, on carnival rides.<br />
<br />
In many cases, what was filmed didn't seem to make sense in the context of the song- for example, Dion singing "Ruby Baby" while seated in the cockpit of an obviously stationary airplane on a runway or Dionne Warwick singing "Walk on By" while lying seductively on a white bear rug. <br />
<br />
Some of these films have been described as risque, even by our standards today, not surprising, considering their French lineage and their appeal to cocktail lounges and clubs where "sophisticated" gentlemen could be found. In an age when Playboy magazine was redefining the American male, is it any wonder then that certain Scopitones would gravitate towards a more permissive point of view? <br />
<br />
Jack Stevenson, who wrote a definitive article on Scopitones, stated, "...people were reduced to decoration. They were lip-synchers, gyrating dolls and puppets and mannequins." It was a hypnotic effect and for those three minutes, it was riveting. <br />
<br />
The Scopitone may have gone the way of the dinosaur but many remain safely in collectors' hands. And you can still find one out there, though you may have to travel a bit to find it. The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee has what they've termed "the last public Scopitone in America" in its lobby. <br />
<br />
It has embraced the Scopitone so much that it recently held a Scopitone-themed membership drive, complete with "fashion contests, nonstop Scopitones and '60s-themed food and drink." Just the thing if you're in a groovy mood.[http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm]<br />
<br />
== Reference ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Scopitone&diff=9419Scopitone2010-04-26T11:54:31Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Where do media go die */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:color6.jpg|thumb|right|Scopitone]] “Before music videos and MTV there was their great-granddaddy, Scopitone.”<br />
<br />
(San Francisco Chronicle, Mar 19, 1992)<br />
<br />
== Brief Description ==<br />
<br />
[[File:S_1_1963Canada.jpg|thumb|left|Scopitone]] <br />
<br />
<br />
Today we take music videos on MTV and VH1 for granted. But did you know these musical cinematic gems have roots dating back to the start of World War II? And that they developed out of a "visual jukebox" called a Scopitone which was fashionable in the early 1960's?<br />
<br />
Invented in France right after World War Ⅱ, Scopitone were short 16mm films named after the modified jukeboxes they used to be player on. The first Scopitones were made in France in 1960. The ancestors of music videos, they hit their golden age in the early ‘60s, neatly concinciding with the explosion of teen-driven pop music in both France and the United States, the two main purveyors of the genre.<br />
<br />
Judging by this selection of almost 30 short films, there were two basic schools of Scopitones: the one where the singers were surrounded by bikini-clad, buxom vixens frantically twisting on location, and the one where you dropped the same indefatigable dancers into ostentatiously fake-looking sets. They run the gamut, from the Exciters singing “Tell Him” to the Kessler Sisters, blond twins who were regulars on European variety shows and whose Scopitone is a grandiose exercise in Teutonic kitsch.<br />
<br />
== How it works ==<br />
<br />
In 1939, a device called a "Panoram" was invented by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. The Panoram played eight three-minute musical shorts in a wooden jukebox fitted with a 17 x 22.5 inch translucent screen. The image was projected in a rear-screen manner via 16mm black and white film. These shorts became known as "soundies" and starred many of the most well-known jazz acts of the day. When World War II erupted, production halted and by war's end, the craze that had captured the public's attention so much in 1939 and 1940 was totally over. <br />
<br />
After the war ended in Europe, two French technicians saw all the tons of war surplus and military spare parts lying around and decided to use some of it to recreate the soundie experience and, hopefully, improve upon it. Using a 16mm camera that had been used by the French Air Force for reconnaissance flights, they converted it into a 16mm projector.<br />
<br />
[[File:s_2_CarouselOfStars.jpg|thumb|Right]]<br />
<br />
Mastering the problems of providing enough light and devising reliable mechanisms for threading and rewinding the films cost them lots of time and it wasn't until the late '50s that the invention was ready for the public. The resultant machine was the size of a refrigerator and was dubbed "Scopitone." Much improved from the 1939 version, the Scopitone played color films and, like a conventional jukebox, the customer was able to choose which video to watch, instead of whatever was conveniently loaded on the machine.<br />
<br />
== The demystification of audio-visual hegemony ==<br />
<br />
=== Towards an audio-visual hegemony: Remediation and the “obvious” ===<br />
<br />
The recording industry is quite interested in the laser scan system, because of the durability factor and greater possible quality and range of audio information. We can look forward to a unification of TV, hi-fi, and video-disc components in a single system. The audio quality of TV would finally be raised to stereophonic high-fidelity, improving the level and range of broadcast material. If the same unit could play back music and video, and also display printed pages, it is hard to see how there would be many homes without the system.<br />
<br />
There is already talking about the adding of a vision track to future record releases. The first form these visuals take will no doubt resemble concert film footage and what we have seen on the Scopitone Super-8 cartridge juke boxes. If you decide to buy a record of Sonny and Cher’s songs, you will jolly well see the pair doing their things, much as on the TV show.<br />
It is a cross between a jukebox and TV. For $.25 a throw, Scopitone projects any one of 36 musical movies on a 26 inch screen, flooding the premises with delicious color and hi-fi scooby-ooby-doo for three whole minutes. It makes a sobering combination." <br />
<br />
But more exciting and profound possibilities are opened up by this additional audio-visual flood gate. Media-technological differentiations opened up the possibility for media links. After the storage capacities for optics, acoustics, and writing had been separated, mechanized, and extensively utilized, their distinct data flows could also be reunited. Sound film combined the storage of acoustics and optics; shortly thereafter, television combined their transmission. (Kittler, 170)<br />
<br />
[[File:s_3color1.jpg|thumb|left]]<br />
<br />
The innovative rock groups will no doubt take the lead with dazzling optical trips. The widened opportunity for creative filmmakers for work will find a legion of compatible collaborations, just as many independent films have long used existing music tracks.<br />
<br />
The art of abstract vision will be furthered by the work of light-show artists, videographic experimenters, and computer graphics. A more limited, but no less interesting probability, is the availability of optical-effects generator components to be added to your color TV. With random sequencing, chroma-keving and phasing, etc., it would translate audio signals into visual patterns much as a cybernetic color organ. The more you and I can shape and form our own developing imagery on the screen, the more valuable the new technology will be. At the least, it can remain but mindless electric wallpaper. (Reveaux, 1973;49)<br />
<br />
== Where do media go die ==<br />
<br />
By 1969, Scopitone had closed its doors for good. What had seemed like a sure thing only five years before, faded away in a sea of accusations and murky accounting practices. So what was the appeal of the Scopitone videos? In 1964, with the big introduction to the clubs and restaurants, new American films needed to come faster than ever. The previous dependence on French videos and storytelling simply could not last to maintain interest here. <br />
<br />
Harmon-ee Productions, a subsidiary of a company owned by Debbie Reynolds, became the main supplier of American films. Debbie herself starred in the first American Scopitone video, singing "If I Had a Hammer," the Trini Lopez hit. Later, she covered Gale Garnett's "We'll Sing in the Sunshine." <br />
<br />
In keeping with the strategy of keeping teenagers out of the mix, the artists viewed on the Scopitone tended toward the lounge acts of the day- Vic Damone, Julie London- only occasionally a Bobby Vee or Petula Clark might surface. But in spite of the seemingly static nature of these artists, the resulting videos were visually stunning, if not mystifying with their direction. <br />
<br />
If anything set the Scopitone films apart from anything else, it was their use of eye-popping colors, wild scenery and wilder enthusiastic girls dancing the Twist, usually in bikinis, in the backgrounds as the singers performed in the craziest of places- on trains, in the woods, in cars, on carnival rides.<br />
<br />
In many cases, what was filmed didn't seem to make sense in the context of the song- for example, Dion singing "Ruby Baby" while seated in the cockpit of an obviously stationary airplane on a runway or Dionne Warwick singing "Walk on By" while lying seductively on a white bear rug. <br />
<br />
Some of these films have been described as risque, even by our standards today, not surprising, considering their French lineage and their appeal to cocktail lounges and clubs where "sophisticated" gentlemen could be found. In an age when Playboy magazine was redefining the American male, is it any wonder then that certain Scopitones would gravitate towards a more permissive point of view? <br />
<br />
Jack Stevenson, who wrote a definitive article on Scopitones, stated, "...people were reduced to decoration. They were lip-synchers, gyrating dolls and puppets and mannequins." It was a hypnotic effect and for those three minutes, it was riveting. <br />
<br />
The Scopitone may have gone the way of the dinosaur but many remain safely in collectors' hands. And you can still find one out there, though you may have to travel a bit to find it. The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee has what they've termed "the last public Scopitone in America" in its lobby. <br />
<br />
It has embraced the Scopitone so much that it recently held a Scopitone-themed membership drive, complete with "fashion contests, nonstop Scopitones and '60s-themed food and drink." Just the thing if you're in a groovy mood.[http://www.loti.com/fifties_jukebox/Scoptione_The_Visual_Jukebox.htm]<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Scopitone&diff=9417Scopitone2010-04-26T11:53:29Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:color6.jpg|thumb|right|Scopitone]] “Before music videos and MTV there was their great-granddaddy, Scopitone.”<br />
<br />
(San Francisco Chronicle, Mar 19, 1992)<br />
<br />
== Brief Description ==<br />
<br />
[[File:S_1_1963Canada.jpg|thumb|left|Scopitone]] <br />
<br />
<br />
Today we take music videos on MTV and VH1 for granted. But did you know these musical cinematic gems have roots dating back to the start of World War II? And that they developed out of a "visual jukebox" called a Scopitone which was fashionable in the early 1960's?<br />
<br />
Invented in France right after World War Ⅱ, Scopitone were short 16mm films named after the modified jukeboxes they used to be player on. The first Scopitones were made in France in 1960. The ancestors of music videos, they hit their golden age in the early ‘60s, neatly concinciding with the explosion of teen-driven pop music in both France and the United States, the two main purveyors of the genre.<br />
<br />
Judging by this selection of almost 30 short films, there were two basic schools of Scopitones: the one where the singers were surrounded by bikini-clad, buxom vixens frantically twisting on location, and the one where you dropped the same indefatigable dancers into ostentatiously fake-looking sets. They run the gamut, from the Exciters singing “Tell Him” to the Kessler Sisters, blond twins who were regulars on European variety shows and whose Scopitone is a grandiose exercise in Teutonic kitsch.<br />
<br />
== How it works ==<br />
<br />
In 1939, a device called a "Panoram" was invented by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. The Panoram played eight three-minute musical shorts in a wooden jukebox fitted with a 17 x 22.5 inch translucent screen. The image was projected in a rear-screen manner via 16mm black and white film. These shorts became known as "soundies" and starred many of the most well-known jazz acts of the day. When World War II erupted, production halted and by war's end, the craze that had captured the public's attention so much in 1939 and 1940 was totally over. <br />
<br />
After the war ended in Europe, two French technicians saw all the tons of war surplus and military spare parts lying around and decided to use some of it to recreate the soundie experience and, hopefully, improve upon it. Using a 16mm camera that had been used by the French Air Force for reconnaissance flights, they converted it into a 16mm projector.<br />
<br />
[[File:s_2_CarouselOfStars.jpg|thumb|Right]]<br />
<br />
Mastering the problems of providing enough light and devising reliable mechanisms for threading and rewinding the films cost them lots of time and it wasn't until the late '50s that the invention was ready for the public. The resultant machine was the size of a refrigerator and was dubbed "Scopitone." Much improved from the 1939 version, the Scopitone played color films and, like a conventional jukebox, the customer was able to choose which video to watch, instead of whatever was conveniently loaded on the machine.<br />
<br />
== The demystification of audio-visual hegemony ==<br />
<br />
=== Towards an audio-visual hegemony: Remediation and the “obvious” ===<br />
<br />
The recording industry is quite interested in the laser scan system, because of the durability factor and greater possible quality and range of audio information. We can look forward to a unification of TV, hi-fi, and video-disc components in a single system. The audio quality of TV would finally be raised to stereophonic high-fidelity, improving the level and range of broadcast material. If the same unit could play back music and video, and also display printed pages, it is hard to see how there would be many homes without the system.<br />
<br />
There is already talking about the adding of a vision track to future record releases. The first form these visuals take will no doubt resemble concert film footage and what we have seen on the Scopitone Super-8 cartridge juke boxes. If you decide to buy a record of Sonny and Cher’s songs, you will jolly well see the pair doing their things, much as on the TV show.<br />
It is a cross between a jukebox and TV. For $.25 a throw, Scopitone projects any one of 36 musical movies on a 26 inch screen, flooding the premises with delicious color and hi-fi scooby-ooby-doo for three whole minutes. It makes a sobering combination." <br />
<br />
But more exciting and profound possibilities are opened up by this additional audio-visual flood gate. Media-technological differentiations opened up the possibility for media links. After the storage capacities for optics, acoustics, and writing had been separated, mechanized, and extensively utilized, their distinct data flows could also be reunited. Sound film combined the storage of acoustics and optics; shortly thereafter, television combined their transmission. (Kittler, 170)<br />
<br />
[[File:s_3color1.jpg|thumb|left]]<br />
<br />
The innovative rock groups will no doubt take the lead with dazzling optical trips. The widened opportunity for creative filmmakers for work will find a legion of compatible collaborations, just as many independent films have long used existing music tracks.<br />
<br />
The art of abstract vision will be furthered by the work of light-show artists, videographic experimenters, and computer graphics. A more limited, but no less interesting probability, is the availability of optical-effects generator components to be added to your color TV. With random sequencing, chroma-keving and phasing, etc., it would translate audio signals into visual patterns much as a cybernetic color organ. The more you and I can shape and form our own developing imagery on the screen, the more valuable the new technology will be. At the least, it can remain but mindless electric wallpaper. (Reveaux, 1973;49)<br />
<br />
== Where do media go die ==<br />
<br />
By 1969, Scopitone had closed its doors for good. What had seemed like a sure thing only five years before, faded away in a sea of accusations and murky accounting practices. So what was the appeal of the Scopitone videos? In 1964, with the big introduction to the clubs and restaurants, new American films needed to come faster than ever. The previous dependence on French videos and storytelling simply could not last to maintain interest here. <br />
<br />
Harmon-ee Productions, a subsidiary of a company owned by Debbie Reynolds, became the main supplier of American films. Debbie herself starred in the first American Scopitone video, singing "If I Had a Hammer," the Trini Lopez hit. Later, she covered Gale Garnett's "We'll Sing in the Sunshine." <br />
<br />
In keeping with the strategy of keeping teenagers out of the mix, the artists viewed on the Scopitone tended toward the lounge acts of the day- Vic Damone, Julie London- only occasionally a Bobby Vee or Petula Clark might surface. But in spite of the seemingly static nature of these artists, the resulting videos were visually stunning, if not mystifying with their direction. <br />
<br />
If anything set the Scopitone films apart from anything else, it was their use of eye-popping colors, wild scenery and wilder enthusiastic girls dancing the Twist, usually in bikinis, in the backgrounds as the singers performed in the craziest of places- on trains, in the woods, in cars, on carnival rides.<br />
<br />
In many cases, what was filmed didn't seem to make sense in the context of the song- for example, Dion singing "Ruby Baby" while seated in the cockpit of an obviously stationary airplane on a runway or Dionne Warwick singing "Walk on By" while lying seductively on a white bear rug. <br />
<br />
Some of these films have been described as risque, even by our standards today, not surprising, considering their French lineage and their appeal to cocktail lounges and clubs where "sophisticated" gentlemen could be found. In an age when Playboy magazine was redefining the American male, is it any wonder then that certain Scopitones would gravitate towards a more permissive point of view? <br />
<br />
Jack Stevenson, who wrote a definitive article on Scopitones, stated, "...people were reduced to decoration. They were lip-synchers, gyrating dolls and puppets and mannequins." It was a hypnotic effect and for those three minutes, it was riveting. <br />
<br />
The Scopitone may have gone the way of the dinosaur but many remain safely in collectors' hands. And you can still find one out there, though you may have to travel a bit to find it. The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee has what they've termed "the last public Scopitone in America" in its lobby. <br />
<br />
It has embraced the Scopitone so much that it recently held a Scopitone-themed membership drive, complete with "fashion contests, nonstop Scopitones and '60s-themed food and drink." Just the thing if you're in a groovy mood.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=File:S_3color1.jpg&diff=9415File:S 3color1.jpg2010-04-26T11:52:06Z<p>Jessiehyojin: </p>
<hr />
<div></div>Jessiehyojinhttp://www.cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Scopitone&diff=9413Scopitone2010-04-26T11:51:52Z<p>Jessiehyojin: /* Towards an audio-visual hegemony: Remediation and the “obvious” */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:color6.jpg|thumb|right|Scopitone]] “Before music videos and MTV there was their great-granddaddy, Scopitone.”<br />
<br />
(San Francisco Chronicle, Mar 19, 1992)<br />
<br />
== Brief Description ==<br />
<br />
[[File:S_1_1963Canada.jpg|thumb|left|Scopitone]] <br />
<br />
<br />
Today we take music videos on MTV and VH1 for granted. But did you know these musical cinematic gems have roots dating back to the start of World War II? And that they developed out of a "visual jukebox" called a Scopitone which was fashionable in the early 1960's?<br />
<br />
Invented in France right after World War Ⅱ, Scopitone were short 16mm films named after the modified jukeboxes they used to be player on. The first Scopitones were made in France in 1960. The ancestors of music videos, they hit their golden age in the early ‘60s, neatly concinciding with the explosion of teen-driven pop music in both France and the United States, the two main purveyors of the genre.<br />
<br />
Judging by this selection of almost 30 short films, there were two basic schools of Scopitones: the one where the singers were surrounded by bikini-clad, buxom vixens frantically twisting on location, and the one where you dropped the same indefatigable dancers into ostentatiously fake-looking sets. They run the gamut, from the Exciters singing “Tell Him” to the Kessler Sisters, blond twins who were regulars on European variety shows and whose Scopitone is a grandiose exercise in Teutonic kitsch.<br />
<br />
== How it works ==<br />
<br />
In 1939, a device called a "Panoram" was invented by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. The Panoram played eight three-minute musical shorts in a wooden jukebox fitted with a 17 x 22.5 inch translucent screen. The image was projected in a rear-screen manner via 16mm black and white film. These shorts became known as "soundies" and starred many of the most well-known jazz acts of the day. When World War II erupted, production halted and by war's end, the craze that had captured the public's attention so much in 1939 and 1940 was totally over. <br />
<br />
After the war ended in Europe, two French technicians saw all the tons of war surplus and military spare parts lying around and decided to use some of it to recreate the soundie experience and, hopefully, improve upon it. Using a 16mm camera that had been used by the French Air Force for reconnaissance flights, they converted it into a 16mm projector.<br />
<br />
[[File:s_2_CarouselOfStars.jpg|thumb|Right]]<br />
<br />
Mastering the problems of providing enough light and devising reliable mechanisms for threading and rewinding the films cost them lots of time and it wasn't until the late '50s that the invention was ready for the public. The resultant machine was the size of a refrigerator and was dubbed "Scopitone." Much improved from the 1939 version, the Scopitone played color films and, like a conventional jukebox, the customer was able to choose which video to watch, instead of whatever was conveniently loaded on the machine.<br />
<br />
== The demystification of audio-visual hegemony ==<br />
<br />
=== Towards an audio-visual hegemony: Remediation and the “obvious” ===<br />
<br />
The recording industry is quite interested in the laser scan system, because of the durability factor and greater possible quality and range of audio information. We can look forward to a unification of TV, hi-fi, and video-disc components in a single system. The audio quality of TV would finally be raised to stereophonic high-fidelity, improving the level and range of broadcast material. If the same unit could play back music and video, and also display printed pages, it is hard to see how there would be many homes without the system.<br />
<br />
There is already talking about the adding of a vision track to future record releases. The first form these visuals take will no doubt resemble concert film footage and what we have seen on the Scopitone Super-8 cartridge juke boxes. If you decide to buy a record of Sonny and Cher’s songs, you will jolly well see the pair doing their things, much as on the TV show.<br />
It is a cross between a jukebox and TV. For $.25 a throw, Scopitone projects any one of 36 musical movies on a 26 inch screen, flooding the premises with delicious color and hi-fi scooby-ooby-doo for three whole minutes. It makes a sobering combination." <br />
<br />
But more exciting and profound possibilities are opened up by this additional audio-visual flood gate. Media-technological differentiations opened up the possibility for media links. After the storage capacities for optics, acoustics, and writing had been separated, mechanized, and extensively utilized, their distinct data flows could also be reunited. Sound film combined the storage of acoustics and optics; shortly thereafter, television combined their transmission. (Kittler, 170)<br />
<br />
[[File:s_3color1.jpg|thumb|left]]<br />
<br />
The innovative rock groups will no doubt take the lead with dazzling optical trips. The widened opportunity for creative filmmakers for work will find a legion of compatible collaborations, just as many independent films have long used existing music tracks.<br />
<br />
The art of abstract vision will be furthered by the work of light-show artists, videographic experimenters, and computer graphics. A more limited, but no less interesting probability, is the availability of optical-effects generator components to be added to your color TV. With random sequencing, chroma-keving and phasing, etc., it would translate audio signals into visual patterns much as a cybernetic color organ. The more you and I can shape and form our own developing imagery on the screen, the more valuable the new technology will be. At the least, it can remain but mindless electric wallpaper. (Reveaux, 1973;49)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Jessiehyojin