01.DIGINEMA

I don't think Manovich says anything mindblowing in this piece. He merely rehashes a point several times, and imagines there is a major ongoing change. The steps between animation, to "live cinema" and back to animation are illusionary. It was animation all along or it was live all along, depending how one wishes to define the words usage. He tries to break this point by stating that film can only show what exists, somewhere, but can never "create the 'never was'" that animation creates. He goes on to talk about special effects and their link to his 'animation' but misses the point, which ironically enough, is the same point Vertov missed. The fact that the artist controls the picture means it's existence in reality stops being 'real', it's an interpretation. That interpretation is in turn translated by the audience into something meaningful. The small shots of the world shown in film do not exist in real life, superficially they may 'happen' and be recorded, but the meaning and value are not added until run at those 24 frames per second, until someone views it. A 'behind the scenes' camera of a movie production is hardly as moving, yet it is capturing the same scene.

The idea of 'storytelling' being the over reaching 'repression' of cinema, but it's difficult to find anything in art which doesn't speak some sort of story, whether it be one word, or many. Even abstract pieces are weaved into stories by its audiences. The 'meta-genre' isn't one of story telling, it's one of being a human who remembers, fits things into logical sequences, and moves through time.