Blog Assignment 5/6: Experimental Films and The Spectator Experience

"Site Specific: Las Vegas 05" (Olivo Barbieri, 2006)

In our textbook, Scott MacDonald is quoted as saying that avant-garde films may evoke frustration because, “these films confront us with the necessity of redefining an experience we were sure we understood” (Pramaggiore, 293). Referring to the spectator experience, MacDonald suggests that viewers encounter avant-garde and experimental films differently than traditional commercial films. The difference can be attributed to two factors: (1) the viewing space and (2) the visual/auditory material.

For the majority of this semester, we have re-created the traditional viewing experience: sitting in a darkened room, watching images projected on a large screen, listening and watching intently as a narrative unfolds before our eyes. But, as we discussed at the beginning of the semester, film viewing did not start out this way…spectators originally confronted short films in tents on fairgrounds or in storefront shops. Today, avant-garde and experimental films are most commonly encountered in museums, smaller theaters at film festivals, and on the Internet.

The way such films are seen, however, is not the only thing that challenges established notions of what watching film entails. Avant-garde film style asks us to re-think what film art encompasses through modifications of sound and image collision, non-narrative structure, philosophical and political subject matter, and visual expression.

For this Blog Assignment you will write two paragraphs: one discussing an avant-garde film screened in class and another thinking through contemporary notions of the spectator experience.

First, write a paragraph analyzing one of the short avant-garde films we screened in class (see handout for a complete list and links to each short). Answer this question:

How did this film make me re-think film art and/or the spectator experience?

In your second paragraph, respond to one of the following questions:

1. Today many spectators view films on computers or television sets, which is inherently different from viewing a movie on a big screen in a darkened room or theater. Have new movie-viewing practices changed the way we think about the cinema?

2. YouTube has made both avant-garde films and home-made video experiments available to a large viewing public. Does the YouTube Generation think about experimental videos differently than previous generations (who could only see such films in “art” environments)?

3. When YouTube videos and experimental shorts “go viral,” they receive public attention that rivals that of cult film publicity. Discuss one experience you have had in which you encountered a viral short video online. Do you think of such videos as “film” or categorize them as something else? Explain your answer.

REQUIREMENTS: 300 words minimum. Post must be live by 5:00 pm on Friday, April 8, 2011.