Remediation and Attractions

This is Georges Méliès' Le voyage dans la lune/A Trip to the Moon with a soundtrack by the French group AIR. Méliès is already moving towards the prerogatives ofnarrative here, innovating a number of specific cinematic narrative devices (dissolves and linear time) however, the elements of the cinema of attractions are still very much present here.

Below a direct quote of the film by The Smashing Pumpkins in the Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris directed video for "Tonight, Tonight" (1996)

The Cinema of Attractions Films: Playlist

Monopolies of Knowledge and Space/Time Bias + Hot and Cold Media Is the Message in the Global Village of the Guttenberg Galaxy

 

Harold Innis, "The Bias of Communication" from The Bias of Communication (University of Toronto Press, 2008; orig. 1951)

Eisenstein Diagram

Here are the 'notes' re: the taxonomy of Hot and Cold media.
+

To get a sense of what a non-deterministic historical account of the changes brought about by the printing press:

Ben Reynolds, "The Printing Press" + "Industrial Production"
from The Coming Revolution (Zero Books, 2018)

You are not responsible for the Reynolds chapters above but they are very useful and helpful.

You are, on the other hand, responsible for this Raymond Williams critique of McLuhan, in order to be done with ol' Marshall. Even though you're never really done with him.

Raymond Williams, "The Technology and the Society" from Television: Technology and Cultural Form

Below is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's 'Conference' program from 1977 where McLuhan discusses and responds to audience questions on his main theoretical ideas.

I Want My MTV!: You'll Have To Wait For It

 

Sunil Manghani, "The Pleasures of (Music) Video"
from Arnold et al (eds), Music/Video: Histories, Aesthetics, Media (Bloomsbury, 2017)

Mathias Korsgaard, "Defining Music Video"
from Korsgaard, Music Video After MTV: Audiovisual Studies, New Media and Popular Music (Routledge, 2017)

Carol Vernallis, "Avant-Gardists and the Lure of Pop Music"
from Rogers & Barham (eds), The Music and Sound of Experimental Film  (Oxford, 2017)

Bonus:

Tom Gunning, "The Cinema of Attractions" 

The Idiot Box, the Electronic Babysitter, the Toaster with Pictures, "Drug of the Nation, Breeding Ignorance and Feeding Radiation"...or just a little city

Raymond Williams, "The Technology and the Society"
originally in Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form

Michele Hilmes, "Cable, Satellite and Digital Technologies"
P. David Marshall, "Rejuvenation: Television"

Bjork explains TV:

Enjoy some tunes about TV below:

Communications: Ritual vs. Transmission? Works vs. Acts? Message vs. Text?

from Kenneth Anger's 'Scorpio Rising'

Plato, The Allegory of the Cave
James Carey, "A Cultural Approach to Communication" from Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989)

Art & Folk & The Popular

 

 

The virtuoso instrumentalist and composer as superstar: Franz Liszt.

Good interview on WNYC's Soundcheck with Tim Blanning author of The Triumph of Music, a 'social history' of musicians in the west and how they went from being considered merely servants to being 'stars'. This is an excellent example of metacontextual musical knowledge. Required listening.

Download entire interview mp3 here.

Popular Music: Music Becomes A Thing

 

Readings Week 1&2:

in Garofalo, Rockin' Out:
-Introduction + Chapter 1: Tin Pan Alley

in Cambridge Companion:
-Introduction + Chronology
-Theberge, "'Plugged In': Technology & Popular Music"
-Frith, "The Popular Music Industry"
-Frith, "Pop Music"

from The Cultural Resistance Reader:

-Stuart Hall, "Notes on Deconstructing 'the Popular'"

from Durham & Kellner (eds), Media & Cultural Studies: Keyworks
-Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

from Frith & Goodwin (eds), On Record
-Adorno, "On Popular Music"
nb. You can find this essay together with "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" co-written with Max Horkheimer --an essay which if you have not read should definitely do so-- here.

from Even Eisenberg, The Recording Angel: Music Records and Culture from Aristotle to Zappa
-Eisenberg, Chapter 2: Music Becomes a Thing

Grimes, "Genesis" Live Session for KEXP

Welcome To Spring 2021