Expanded Cinema - Part Four: Cybernetic Cinema and Computer Films

Part Four: Cybernetic Cinema and Computer Films

Youngblood defines the technosphere as a symbiosis between man and machine. The computer liberates man from specialisation and amplifies intelligence (pp180–182). He draws comparisons between computer processing and human neural processing (pp183–184). Logic and intelligence is the brain's software. He predicts that computer software will become more important than hardware and that in the future super-computers will design ever more advanced computers (pp185–188). His vision of the future is the Aesthetic Machine: "Aesthetic application of technology is the only means of achieving new consciousness to match our environment" (p189). Creativity will be shared between man and machine. He points to the links between computer art and Conceptualism, and the growing theoretical basis of art. In his exploration of Cybernetic Cinema he gives an account of early experiments using computers to draw and make films. He bemoans the fact that at the time of writing no computer has the power to generate real-time images and that computer art has to be made off-line. He does, though, foresee a future in which location shooting will become obsolete as all locations will be able to be simulated with computers. (pp194–2006). Examples of film-makers using computers, referred to by Youngblood, include: John Whitney, James Whitney, Michael Whitney, John Stehura, Stan VanDerBeek and Peter Kamnitzer (pp207–256).