|
This television project is created with an eye for failure-- the
failure of the characteristics and conventions of television. For
instance, if a project is designed to be interactive or participatory,
the audience must participate to the point of exhaustion. If a television
project is meant to be enjoyed passively (television with a narrative
arc, for instance--tv for "watching") the audience needs
to be forced outside of the narrative at an awkward moment. This
is not a subversion of expectation– we all have seen broken
televisions. This is a celebration of failure.
A powerful, engaging art piece should have an element of wrongness
and tension. Television as an object and as a medium (such as painting
or sculpture or music) functions at its best when it becomes invisible--
it exists only at the moment of the suspension of disbelief. Once
the viewer becomes aware of being “outside” television,
the seamlessness of the content presented has been lost. Television
is made successful when it flows smoothly, an uninterrupted flow
from narrative tension to resolution and back again, a cycle as
seamless as an egg. The success of television produces stasis and
inertia, resulting in that most horrible of human conditions–
that of boredom.
|
| Traditional characteristics of television:
1) Content (television shows) supplied by an industrial process--
department for writing a script, department for production,
department for talent
2) Content delivered in a linear production cycle-- initial
"broadcast" followed by syndication
3) Audience left out of the creative process
4) National group experience-- television works to localize
experience, universalize difference |
Modern characteristics of television:
1) Content/ narrative supplied by montage, pastiche-- hybridized
creative process-- reality television--
the "pitch aesthetic"
2) Content delivered over multiple platforms (video games,
ringtones, movies) with the intent to be recyclable, reusable
3) Creative process flows both ways ("Push" as well
as "Pull")
4) International group experience -- flattening of difference |
|
|
- Textual analysis of television– a critique of characteristic
narratives, symbols, language, and typical dramatic conventions.
Mix these characteristics of television in a manner that is nonsensical,
that will defeat language.
- Sociological critique of television– who makes it? who
does it inform (if anyone)? who benefits? Address issues of “ownership;
national and international regulation of media production and distribution;
professional ideologies; public opinion; [and] media audiences”.
Pros: dry critique– possibly fun paranoid/ conspiracy theory.
Cons: Debates on such a large scale tend to be ill informed, and
usually take two extremes-- "moral panics" about the dangers
of media and technology, or fetishistic retro-modernism ("convergence
theory" ).
- Usability critique of television– how does the viewer come
to terms with the little glass box? How does passive viewing vs.
interactive engagement affect the absorption of the content?
This approach lends itself to an art project really well–
involves the presence of the object of television, which is always
immediately engaging. Also, can reference the other two critical
approaches without having to fully commit to a full discussion.
Texts:
Spigel, Lynn and Olsson, Jan. Television after TV. Duke University
Press, 2004
Kaplan, E. Ann. Regarding Television. Los Angeles: American Film
Institute, 1983.
Allen, Robert C. and Annette Hill, eds., The Television Studies
Reader (New York: Routledge, 2004)
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture. New York University Press,
2006 |