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Shard Cinema
Shard Cinema tells an expansive story of how moving images have changed in the last three decades, and how they have changed us along with them, rewiring the ways we watch, fight, and navigate an unsteady world.
In a set of interrelated essays that range from the writings of early factory workers to the distributed sight of contemporary surveillance, Williams argues for deep links between the images we see and the hidden labors frozen into them, exploring how even the apparently trivial or spectacular carries unique opportunities to detect the processes and social frictions of their making. Spanning film, video games, radical history, architecture, visual effects, and war, the book crosses the twentieth century into our present to confront a new order of seeing and making that slowly took the composite image, where no clean distinction can be made between production and post-production, filmed and animated, material and digital. Giving equal ground to costly blockbusters, shaky riot footage, disaster photography, and early cinema, Williams leads us from the computer-generated “shards” of particles and debris to the broken phones screen on which we watch these digital storms, looking for the unexpected histories lived in the interval between.
In a set of interrelated essays that range from the writings of early factory workers to the distributed sight of contemporary surveillance, Williams argues for deep links between the images we see and the hidden labors frozen into them, exploring how even the apparently trivial or spectacular carries unique opportunities to detect the processes and social frictions of their making. Spanning film, video games, radical history, architecture, visual effects, and war, the book crosses the twentieth century into our present to confront a new order of seeing and making that slowly took the composite image, where no clean distinction can be made between production and post-production, filmed and animated, material and digital. Giving equal ground to costly blockbusters, shaky riot footage, disaster photography, and early cinema, Williams leads us from the computer-generated “shards” of particles and debris to the broken phones screen on which we watch these digital storms, looking for the unexpected histories lived in the interval between.
- GenresNonfictionFilm
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 7, 2021
I'm gonna start this review by mentioning that I'm not a particularly smart person. I only know what I know about things like film theory as the result of years of cultural osmosis and hearing smarter people than me talk about film while I just hover in the background like a little sicko. I normally wouldn't want to start a review like this, but I think it's important for what I feel is the most important aspect of SHARD CINEMA: that though it's sprawling, wide-ranging in how it discusses worker rights, the ties in to cinema and special effects, the ways we've been rewired through the constant proliferation of cameras into every part of our life, and the histories that intertwine all of these things together, I found this book incredibly accessible and enjoyable, even with a brain that isn't necessarily wired for theory.
The first probably 60% of the book especially had me enthralled, really forcing me to sit down and rethink not only what I know of the history of cinema, but the lives of the people involved in it as well. The chapter on the first special effect we know of, the staged execution, was a particular moment that made me feel like the book was hitting on all cylinders for me. Here was a statement of intent and an exploration of an idea - that there is nothing truly without precedent, and that even something "first of its kind" like this still has a history that ties through centuries before - so well executed in its descriptions, musings, and research that it made my brain feel beautiful. So, too the concept of screens and viewing something untouchable, a plane of glass keeping us from truly experiencing what lies on the other side. Williams succeeds incredibly at pulling various threads of history to show how they relate to each other and prepped us for what came next, at the same time dispelling our concepts of what the commonly known history of these things are.
For example: dispelling the notion that had never particularly sat well with me that the first time people saw the Lumiere Brothers' train video, they ran and hid. Obviously he isn't the first to do this, and he cites his sources well to make sure we know that, but it's a myth that has taken so much hold that even over a century ago they were making films poking fun at the yokels who might have done it even just a few years before. But that's the power of myth, especially when put on film. A quote from, of all goddamn things, the Borderlands Pre-Sequel kinda sums it up: stories don't have to be true to be believed, they just have to be told. And this one's been told a lot.
The first 60% or so of the book is really trying to set us up for the monstrous eponymous essay in the middle of the book, "Shard Cinema," which brings it all to a head to talk about the current moment in CG in films, and how these moments represent the apex of a certain kind of destructive, effects heavy film into which so many years of server processing power and underpaid hours of work are poured. Again, maybe not unprecedented, but so familiar to us all and so impossible to escape in modern film that it deserves some amount of thought and consideration, which he kindly gives room for. Williams seems (thankfully) unwilling to provide answers or say "here's what you should think of this!" and more seems focused on giving us things to ponder when we go to analyze these movies and the place they occupy in modern society.
This is ultimately the apex of the book to me, and the rest never quite manages to reach that level again. The essays aren't necessarily bad, but after the highs I found all over in these first parts, the later ones never quite get back there. Is is probably because they're less concrete ideas that it's trying to think about, and it feels like I'm more reading someone's general ponderings towards another concept. Maybe something that could make up a new book? While there is a lot to consider on the topics here - cameras, us as subject, how we view the camera, and how the camera views us - the lynchpin feels like it's missing. Perhaps if I had a greater familiarity with some of the film and galleries he's talking about, I might find it more rewarding in the same way, but it just didn't really all wrap around for me, despite how much I AM interested in it as a subject.
Yet they're still full of so much to think about. Consider a final section, about disaster and the way we frame it, or one before that discussing the concept of "apocalyptic" and what we mean we use it. At this point it feels like we're hardly even discussing film, sure, but he always comes back to how these moments are seen through the lens of a camera. But what does the camera tell us about social upheaval, about natural disasters? Perhaps I'm to draw my own conclusion, but I came away feeling far less confident about my understanding of this. But this is also a moment we are still living through, and the image we're left on, of following a bloodied path through a single tracking shot of a real even in Cairo, seems to try to leave us with that idea. The path of what it means to be so surveilled, in so many ways, is something we're still trying to follow and understand for how it changes us.
I have nothing but the highest of recommendations for this book, especially as one attempting to think through the Now of cinema and the ways it ties into so many other things around what, to most of us, ends when we sit down in a darkened room and let 24 images per second build out one of the most expensive stories ever told in front of us. Yet we are all always surrounded by movie making, and ways to view these films whether pre-recorded or live. It's a pretty spectacular book, and sure it took me 7 months to read it, but it's honestly super breezy and enjoyable. I just need to read more! Damn it Rom! Read your damn books!!!
Side note: I found the fragments in this fascinating, both seeming like a discussion on specific fragments of films, but also fragments of the author's mind as he attempts to navigate what he's seeing. It took me a while to learn how to read them, but when I did they were immensely rewarding and it felt like I was truly following along a real train of thought in a way that set up the themes and analysis that was to follow, and honestly made me hungry for it. It's a real feat! I can see myself revisiting those from time to time, just because I find they leave me in a place that's hungry to learn more. I don't know if I've ever seen a book do something quite like this. But then as I said at the beginning, I am not a particularly smart man.
The first probably 60% of the book especially had me enthralled, really forcing me to sit down and rethink not only what I know of the history of cinema, but the lives of the people involved in it as well. The chapter on the first special effect we know of, the staged execution, was a particular moment that made me feel like the book was hitting on all cylinders for me. Here was a statement of intent and an exploration of an idea - that there is nothing truly without precedent, and that even something "first of its kind" like this still has a history that ties through centuries before - so well executed in its descriptions, musings, and research that it made my brain feel beautiful. So, too the concept of screens and viewing something untouchable, a plane of glass keeping us from truly experiencing what lies on the other side. Williams succeeds incredibly at pulling various threads of history to show how they relate to each other and prepped us for what came next, at the same time dispelling our concepts of what the commonly known history of these things are.
For example: dispelling the notion that had never particularly sat well with me that the first time people saw the Lumiere Brothers' train video, they ran and hid. Obviously he isn't the first to do this, and he cites his sources well to make sure we know that, but it's a myth that has taken so much hold that even over a century ago they were making films poking fun at the yokels who might have done it even just a few years before. But that's the power of myth, especially when put on film. A quote from, of all goddamn things, the Borderlands Pre-Sequel kinda sums it up: stories don't have to be true to be believed, they just have to be told. And this one's been told a lot.
The first 60% or so of the book is really trying to set us up for the monstrous eponymous essay in the middle of the book, "Shard Cinema," which brings it all to a head to talk about the current moment in CG in films, and how these moments represent the apex of a certain kind of destructive, effects heavy film into which so many years of server processing power and underpaid hours of work are poured. Again, maybe not unprecedented, but so familiar to us all and so impossible to escape in modern film that it deserves some amount of thought and consideration, which he kindly gives room for. Williams seems (thankfully) unwilling to provide answers or say "here's what you should think of this!" and more seems focused on giving us things to ponder when we go to analyze these movies and the place they occupy in modern society.
This is ultimately the apex of the book to me, and the rest never quite manages to reach that level again. The essays aren't necessarily bad, but after the highs I found all over in these first parts, the later ones never quite get back there. Is is probably because they're less concrete ideas that it's trying to think about, and it feels like I'm more reading someone's general ponderings towards another concept. Maybe something that could make up a new book? While there is a lot to consider on the topics here - cameras, us as subject, how we view the camera, and how the camera views us - the lynchpin feels like it's missing. Perhaps if I had a greater familiarity with some of the film and galleries he's talking about, I might find it more rewarding in the same way, but it just didn't really all wrap around for me, despite how much I AM interested in it as a subject.
Yet they're still full of so much to think about. Consider a final section, about disaster and the way we frame it, or one before that discussing the concept of "apocalyptic" and what we mean we use it. At this point it feels like we're hardly even discussing film, sure, but he always comes back to how these moments are seen through the lens of a camera. But what does the camera tell us about social upheaval, about natural disasters? Perhaps I'm to draw my own conclusion, but I came away feeling far less confident about my understanding of this. But this is also a moment we are still living through, and the image we're left on, of following a bloodied path through a single tracking shot of a real even in Cairo, seems to try to leave us with that idea. The path of what it means to be so surveilled, in so many ways, is something we're still trying to follow and understand for how it changes us.
I have nothing but the highest of recommendations for this book, especially as one attempting to think through the Now of cinema and the ways it ties into so many other things around what, to most of us, ends when we sit down in a darkened room and let 24 images per second build out one of the most expensive stories ever told in front of us. Yet we are all always surrounded by movie making, and ways to view these films whether pre-recorded or live. It's a pretty spectacular book, and sure it took me 7 months to read it, but it's honestly super breezy and enjoyable. I just need to read more! Damn it Rom! Read your damn books!!!
Side note: I found the fragments in this fascinating, both seeming like a discussion on specific fragments of films, but also fragments of the author's mind as he attempts to navigate what he's seeing. It took me a while to learn how to read them, but when I did they were immensely rewarding and it felt like I was truly following along a real train of thought in a way that set up the themes and analysis that was to follow, and honestly made me hungry for it. It's a real feat! I can see myself revisiting those from time to time, just because I find they leave me in a place that's hungry to learn more. I don't know if I've ever seen a book do something quite like this. But then as I said at the beginning, I am not a particularly smart man.
April 27, 2019
A story of how moving images have changed in the last three decades--and how they have changed us along with them.
I won a copy of this book during a Goodreads giveaway. I am under no obligation to leave a review or rating and do so voluntarily. So that others may also enjoy this book, I am paying it forward by donating it to my local library.
I won a copy of this book during a Goodreads giveaway. I am under no obligation to leave a review or rating and do so voluntarily. So that others may also enjoy this book, I am paying it forward by donating it to my local library.
January 13, 2021
I don't know how well Shard Cinema (2017) will age compared to Williams' previous two books (Roman Letters and Combined and Uneven Apocalypse). However, I do think the theory he provides his readers concerning the contemporary cinematic experience is vital to new interpretations of a world that has become increasingly difficult to conceive of visually. In essence, he writes of a purely visual representation of a kind of momentary halting of time that allows for the movement of abstractions rather than the movement of actual objects; a coming into view of that which has been broken, fractured, severed, and ultimately, shattered.
Most of the films he cites are blockbusters that had/have the monetary heft to show their audiences a kind of shattered imaging (it takes a whole lot of money to digitally produce the effect). Interestingly, it seems Williams understands these moments of gradual breakdown - the shift of perspective from "landscape" (or cityscape, etc.) to a sharpening of a busted abstraction within it that falls in many tiny pieces - as a placement of time completely at a remove from dialogue (if any, and if there is a narrator, s/he seems to be muted).
How does this work reflect on his oeuvre? It comes back down to the apocalyptic. The imaging of the shattered (whether organic or technological) can be seen (at least in my interpretation) as a mode of looking that comments on that which has been neglected by the domineering camera's lens since time immemorial. The pause in time that signifies a moment of pure presence... perhaps...
I'd reccomend Shard Cinema to anyone who enjoys watching movies. The trajectory of the text is wide in scope and covers the technical development of the camera's perspective. Particularly interesting are Williams' thoughts on the moment cinema began to manipulate the visual narrative by being able to splice time, as a magician would, to create "scenes" on either side of the camera; that of the management and operation of an execution and that of the staged and filmed execution itself. Not surprisingly, Williams' is gracious enough to share his musings (in his own way, and he does this throughout the book) on how these two sides are at a juxtaposition - i.e. the awkward jesting of the film crew vs. the grave omniscience of the scene they're producing. Honestly, that is one of the reasons why I love reading Williams' work, that is, to find the message beyond the subject, to delve into the idiosyncratic themes (such as the evolution of the camera's perspective, noting when the lens is interested or uninterested, policing or just observing, violent or unbelievably tender) so to be able to better view this place as one we can inhabit rather than one we can only perceive.
Most of the films he cites are blockbusters that had/have the monetary heft to show their audiences a kind of shattered imaging (it takes a whole lot of money to digitally produce the effect). Interestingly, it seems Williams understands these moments of gradual breakdown - the shift of perspective from "landscape" (or cityscape, etc.) to a sharpening of a busted abstraction within it that falls in many tiny pieces - as a placement of time completely at a remove from dialogue (if any, and if there is a narrator, s/he seems to be muted).
How does this work reflect on his oeuvre? It comes back down to the apocalyptic. The imaging of the shattered (whether organic or technological) can be seen (at least in my interpretation) as a mode of looking that comments on that which has been neglected by the domineering camera's lens since time immemorial. The pause in time that signifies a moment of pure presence... perhaps...
I'd reccomend Shard Cinema to anyone who enjoys watching movies. The trajectory of the text is wide in scope and covers the technical development of the camera's perspective. Particularly interesting are Williams' thoughts on the moment cinema began to manipulate the visual narrative by being able to splice time, as a magician would, to create "scenes" on either side of the camera; that of the management and operation of an execution and that of the staged and filmed execution itself. Not surprisingly, Williams' is gracious enough to share his musings (in his own way, and he does this throughout the book) on how these two sides are at a juxtaposition - i.e. the awkward jesting of the film crew vs. the grave omniscience of the scene they're producing. Honestly, that is one of the reasons why I love reading Williams' work, that is, to find the message beyond the subject, to delve into the idiosyncratic themes (such as the evolution of the camera's perspective, noting when the lens is interested or uninterested, policing or just observing, violent or unbelievably tender) so to be able to better view this place as one we can inhabit rather than one we can only perceive.
August 18, 2023
Be forewarned, this book I heavy on the theory and heavier on the philosophy. If you are able to connect with these elements, William's deep dive into the relationship between cinema and an obsession with chaos and disaster actually proves to be quite interesting as a thesis. What's especially impressive is his knowledge of the technical side of filmmaking, emphasizing the way the camera is used to frame and capture these images of chaos by way of these shards.
Williams narrows his focus to blockbusters to offer us examples of how cinema has evolved, reaching back into cinematic history to locate the very first use of special effects, a moment in time when filmmakers began to make use of both practical and digital illusions to manufacture and edit these images into specific visual impressions designed to satisfy our need to give this chaos a tangible representation as image. As Williams writes, "The marvel isn't and wasn't because the technology feels alien or provides a magical reconstruction of halted life or offers an unthinkable shock of the new. It's the inverse of that. It's because it is made from the circuits and cranks and paths that constitute not just everyday life but many of its most crushing and oppressive forms. In this sense, I think it was and is right to speak of the magic of cinema..." It is in this sense that cinema us able to transcendend the static image, molding the chaos and destruction into a living experience. "If cinema steps into a world shaped by invisible forces, it isn't because those forces are immaterial or purely conceptual. It is because they confound any such possibility of critical distance, demanding that thought confront abstractions and alienation produced physically and tangibly in the repetition of gestures "
The book employs an interesting structure, integrating fragments that narrow is in on the theory fleshed out in evidential forms. It takes a bit getting used to, but it adds a unique flavor to the already demanding content. Likely will mean this will have a very particular target audience. Overall I liked the quirky, academic style. though.
Williams narrows his focus to blockbusters to offer us examples of how cinema has evolved, reaching back into cinematic history to locate the very first use of special effects, a moment in time when filmmakers began to make use of both practical and digital illusions to manufacture and edit these images into specific visual impressions designed to satisfy our need to give this chaos a tangible representation as image. As Williams writes, "The marvel isn't and wasn't because the technology feels alien or provides a magical reconstruction of halted life or offers an unthinkable shock of the new. It's the inverse of that. It's because it is made from the circuits and cranks and paths that constitute not just everyday life but many of its most crushing and oppressive forms. In this sense, I think it was and is right to speak of the magic of cinema..." It is in this sense that cinema us able to transcendend the static image, molding the chaos and destruction into a living experience. "If cinema steps into a world shaped by invisible forces, it isn't because those forces are immaterial or purely conceptual. It is because they confound any such possibility of critical distance, demanding that thought confront abstractions and alienation produced physically and tangibly in the repetition of gestures "
The book employs an interesting structure, integrating fragments that narrow is in on the theory fleshed out in evidential forms. It takes a bit getting used to, but it adds a unique flavor to the already demanding content. Likely will mean this will have a very particular target audience. Overall I liked the quirky, academic style. though.
January 6, 2018
A fucking masterpiece. Evan Calder Williams blends a supple literary voice with a probing academic force like no other book of theory I've read. Cautious and kaleidoscopic, every chapter left me breathless. Occasionally I'd have to put it down and look around the cafe I was reading in, as if I had just finished a film or a roller coaster ride. No other book I've read explains recent cinema trends and technological innovations in both cultural and economic as masterfully as this. Incredible.
January 26, 2022
37 - 2022
March 8, 2021
Yllättävänkin kiehtova hahmotelma siitä, mitä liikkuvalle kuvalle on on tapahtunut viimeisen kolmenkymmenen vuoden aikana. Osin fragmentaarinen, osin lähimain ”poeettinen”; tekstuaaliselta dynamiikaltaan lähempänä sitä kevyt-deleuzelaista paisuttelua ja yli-innostusta, joka määrittää tiettyä akateemista diskurssia galleriapuhemaisuudellaan ja mannermaisella fabulaatiollaan 80-luvusta eteenpäin. Pahimmillaanhan tuollainen kieli on hirvittävää ja aivan sietämätöntä, mutta parhaimmillaan pystyy ylittämään lähtökohtansa tai selviytyy kuivin jaloin niistä huolimatta. Minun kirjoissani Shard Cinema iskostuu jälkimmäiseen, harvalukuiseen lajiin, joskin olen lukenut tällaista kamaa aika paljon (ja myös ihan sitä ehtaa Deleuzea), joten kapasiteettini suodattaa ylenpalttisesta mäskistä käyttökelpoisia hainmunahippusia on suolavedessä ja merituulessa karaistunut.
Mutta muotokieli sikseen: Williamsin kirjassa on paljon kiinnostavaa. Ehkä keskeisin (myös jokseenkin teoksen nimessä olennoituva) on Williamsin hahmotelma composite imagesta, komposiittikuvasta, siitä kompleksisesta ja rajaviivattomasta olennosta, joka muodostuu kuvauksen ja tuotannon, jälkituotannon, digitaalisten tehosteiden, animaation ja ”aineellisen” välitilassa, mutta jonka nykyelokuvia ja visuaalisia sisältöjä katsova ottaa annettuna perusmuotokielenä blockbustereista draamojen ja dokumenttien kautta YouTube-videoihin.
Sosioekonomisesti ajatus on tavallaan marxilais-brechtiläinen: liikkuvasta kuvasta on perattu alkuperäisyys minimiin, missä alkuperäisyys tarkoittaa sitä työtä ja niitä tuotannollisia suhteita, joiden myötä kuvat ovat syntyneet. Kärjistetysti: ”realistinkaan” dokumentti ei tee näitä suhteita näkyväksi, sillä tietty teknologia, tietty tuotantoketju (kameran ja tietokoneiden osien hankinnasta aina niiden valmistukseen tarvittavien mineraalien louhimiseen Afrikan kaivoksista) on aina jo painettu näkymättömiin.
Komposiittikuvan esteettisestä puolesta Williams sanoo paljonkin, mutta mieleeni on silti parhaiten jäänyt hahmotelma eräänlaisesta kipinöiden estetiikasta. CGI-vallankumouksen ja 3D-mallinnettujen videopelien mukanaan tuoma tarve pulskistaa digitaalinen, tyhjästä luotu maailma elämällä tai jollain ”täyteydellä” on johtanut siihen huvittavaankin meemiin, jonka ottaa jo niin annettuna, ettei siihen osaa kiinnittää huomiota; nimittäin ilmassa leijuviin hiukkasiin, kipinöihin, usvaan, liekkien luomaan väristysefektiin, lehtiin, savuun yms., joilla yritetään luoda digitaaliseen, tyhjään tilaan ”elämän” tuntua. Lienee mahdotonta löytää esimerkiksi yhtäkään roolipelitraileria, jossa ei olisi niitä iänikuisia kipinöitä… Tietenkin klassisten kompositiomääritelmien mukaisesti hyvässä kuvassa on aina monensuuntaista liikettä monessa eri tasossa, mutta siitä ei varsinaisesti ole kysymys. Digitaalista hyperrealismia: luotu, digitaalinen maailma pitää täyttää kärjistäen ja ylitseampuvasti, että se ei tuntuisi niin kolkolta. Kuin esiintyjien lavameikit.
Kiinnittäkäähän huviksenne asiaan huomiota seuraavan kerran, kun pelaatte jotain videopeliä tai katsotte suuren budjetin toimintaseikkailutuotantoa.
Oma lukunsa on vielä se avantgardistisen kuvaestetiikan manifesti, jonka Williams tulee ohivuotona kirjoittaneeksi: mikä on tämä helvetillinen mimesiksen ja väsyttävän, tarinallisen realismin vaatimus, joka määrittää aivan kaikkea nykykuvaa, mikäli kaikkein huuruisin ja kokeilevin videotaide unohdetaan? Miksi lähdimme juuri tähän suuntaan?
Tämä saattaa olla huono ja ohiampuva analogia, mutta sanoisin silti, että mikäli Steven Shaviron loistavat (joskin myös osin aikansa lapsuksista kärsivät) Doom Patrols: A Theretical Fiction about Postmodernism tai uudempi, hivenen hillitympi Post-Cinematic Affect kolisevat, kannattanee vilkaista myös Shard Cinemaa.
Mutta muotokieli sikseen: Williamsin kirjassa on paljon kiinnostavaa. Ehkä keskeisin (myös jokseenkin teoksen nimessä olennoituva) on Williamsin hahmotelma composite imagesta, komposiittikuvasta, siitä kompleksisesta ja rajaviivattomasta olennosta, joka muodostuu kuvauksen ja tuotannon, jälkituotannon, digitaalisten tehosteiden, animaation ja ”aineellisen” välitilassa, mutta jonka nykyelokuvia ja visuaalisia sisältöjä katsova ottaa annettuna perusmuotokielenä blockbustereista draamojen ja dokumenttien kautta YouTube-videoihin.
Sosioekonomisesti ajatus on tavallaan marxilais-brechtiläinen: liikkuvasta kuvasta on perattu alkuperäisyys minimiin, missä alkuperäisyys tarkoittaa sitä työtä ja niitä tuotannollisia suhteita, joiden myötä kuvat ovat syntyneet. Kärjistetysti: ”realistinkaan” dokumentti ei tee näitä suhteita näkyväksi, sillä tietty teknologia, tietty tuotantoketju (kameran ja tietokoneiden osien hankinnasta aina niiden valmistukseen tarvittavien mineraalien louhimiseen Afrikan kaivoksista) on aina jo painettu näkymättömiin.
Komposiittikuvan esteettisestä puolesta Williams sanoo paljonkin, mutta mieleeni on silti parhaiten jäänyt hahmotelma eräänlaisesta kipinöiden estetiikasta. CGI-vallankumouksen ja 3D-mallinnettujen videopelien mukanaan tuoma tarve pulskistaa digitaalinen, tyhjästä luotu maailma elämällä tai jollain ”täyteydellä” on johtanut siihen huvittavaankin meemiin, jonka ottaa jo niin annettuna, ettei siihen osaa kiinnittää huomiota; nimittäin ilmassa leijuviin hiukkasiin, kipinöihin, usvaan, liekkien luomaan väristysefektiin, lehtiin, savuun yms., joilla yritetään luoda digitaaliseen, tyhjään tilaan ”elämän” tuntua. Lienee mahdotonta löytää esimerkiksi yhtäkään roolipelitraileria, jossa ei olisi niitä iänikuisia kipinöitä… Tietenkin klassisten kompositiomääritelmien mukaisesti hyvässä kuvassa on aina monensuuntaista liikettä monessa eri tasossa, mutta siitä ei varsinaisesti ole kysymys. Digitaalista hyperrealismia: luotu, digitaalinen maailma pitää täyttää kärjistäen ja ylitseampuvasti, että se ei tuntuisi niin kolkolta. Kuin esiintyjien lavameikit.
Kiinnittäkäähän huviksenne asiaan huomiota seuraavan kerran, kun pelaatte jotain videopeliä tai katsotte suuren budjetin toimintaseikkailutuotantoa.
Oma lukunsa on vielä se avantgardistisen kuvaestetiikan manifesti, jonka Williams tulee ohivuotona kirjoittaneeksi: mikä on tämä helvetillinen mimesiksen ja väsyttävän, tarinallisen realismin vaatimus, joka määrittää aivan kaikkea nykykuvaa, mikäli kaikkein huuruisin ja kokeilevin videotaide unohdetaan? Miksi lähdimme juuri tähän suuntaan?
Tämä saattaa olla huono ja ohiampuva analogia, mutta sanoisin silti, että mikäli Steven Shaviron loistavat (joskin myös osin aikansa lapsuksista kärsivät) Doom Patrols: A Theretical Fiction about Postmodernism tai uudempi, hivenen hillitympi Post-Cinematic Affect kolisevat, kannattanee vilkaista myös Shard Cinemaa.
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