School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications
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ItemRealising Middle-earth: production design and film technology(Manchester University Press, 2008)Miniatures, bigatures, digital mattes, 3D animation, costume, set and prop design, forced perspective, location and studio shoots all contributed to the creation of Middle-earth. The panoply of visual effects LOTR uses to build Middle-earth’s image has become familiar, not just from the films but also from television specials, websites, DVD appendices and commentaries, and the remarkable travelling Exhibition. Armour, prosthetics, stunt and miniature doubles, animal wranglers, blue screen, and the Massive intelligent agents are part of our language now. Weta Workshop and Weta Digital, with their army of collaborators did more than visualise the most-read – and most-imagined – book of the twentieth century. They realised the script, made real the fictional world where the narrative would take place. The challenge of realisation is in some sense the challenge of cinema itself – the French even use the word réalisation to describe filmmaking. Realising Middle-earth is both a technical challenge and a special kind of problem in realism, the aesthetic field dealing with depictions of reality (as in documentary) and the illusion of reality (as in dramatic fiction). Most complicated of all is the realisation of a world whose highest technology, the explosive device in the culvert of the Deeping Wall, is portrayed as the work of Saruman’s dark arts. Tolkien’s hatred of industrialisation comes through in the firepits of Isengard. Yet the films depend on the use of and innovation in new media technologies, and much of our viewing pleasure comes from appreciating the craft that has gone into them. We watch entranced by a double magic: the fascination of illusion, and the fascination of how it has been achieved.
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ItemSoftware industry, religious nationalism, and social movements in India: aspects of globalization?(Garamond Press, 2002)Most theories of globalization have as their point of reference experiences in the developed world, thereby confining the debates to time-space compression or distanciation for example, or to quarrels about whether the world is becoming homogenous or heterogeneous. Such theoretical efforts are indicative of both the reoccupations of metropolitan academia, and also the lack of a cohesive theoretical thrust from the leftist intellectuals which takes into account developments in contemporary forms of global capitalism. The sometimes contradictory ways in which the diverse effects globalization are experienced or utilized in different parts of the developed world have come to academic and theoretical attention only very recently. Considering that the majority of the established canon of literature on the subject has been written by academics in the West, this is perhaps not surprising. However as indicated in the assumption that globalization is merely an extension of Western norms of modernity to the developing world, the almost total absence of any attempt to tackle the longstanding relationship between the West and the rest is worth noting, as is the similar neglect of social movements in several parts of the contemporary world which question the values underpinning aspects of globalization, and by doing so challenge the legitimacy of Western dominance.
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ItemDream cities: the uncanny powers of electric light( 2004)In his famous 1919 essay, Freud (1955: 219-252) defines the uncanny to include experiences in which inanimate objects seem to come to life. In early modernity, this sense of the uncanny accompanied the spread of electric light, itself a manifestation of the near-miraculous powers of electricity. From the moment of its initial recognition as an independent phenomenon, electricity has been a source of profound wonder. Romantics rapidly identified it with a universal life force, dramatised in the archetypal modern creation scene of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel and distilled by Goethe into ‘the soul of the world’. A century later, the prospect of widespread electrification literally dazzled the world, inspiring entrepreneurs, artists and revolutionaries alike with visions of an irresistible electrical future. At the same time, electricity has always led a double life. Beneath the Promethean narrative of limitless possibilities lies a more utilitarian tale of practical development. Counterpointing the arcane myth of electricity’s magical properties — force without muscle or steam, light without flame — is the profane physical reality of its often cumbersome technical infrastructure. Supporting the spark of the incandescent lamp which shines brighter than any jewel are unsightly poles and criss-crossing wires, not to mention ferocious patent wars and internecine struggles to form some of industrial capitalism’s most powerful corporations.
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ItemTime and knowledge in the information ecology( 2002)This article considers the affects of neoliberal globalisation and the information technology revolution upon the production and dissemination of knowledge within the university. More broadly, it argues that the nexus between globalisation and computerisation is creating an ‘information ecology’, a growing environment of interconnectivity that has speed and commercialism as its principal dynamics. The paper argues that such an environment is creating a new ‘knowledge epoch’, one that valorises, more than ever before, instrumentalised knowledge over critical forms, and is producing a society that is increasingly unable to think reflexively about the issues and challenges that confront an increasingly complex world.
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ItemLiquid space and time( 2006)This article theorises the effects of the mobile phone phenomenon upon the spatial and temporal dynamics of everyday life. It contends that more than any other connectable networkable device, the mobile phone transforms the experience of space and time for individuals and collectivities. Moreover, its importance seems set to become even more central as it rapidly transforms from simple voice-carrier to powerful communicating device that will allow the transmission and reception of increasingly rich data that includes video, Internet and data-processing uses. This transformation, I argue, serves to liquify time and space. The mobile phone, as a part of an array of networkable devices and applications that make up the ‘network society’, brings what David Harvey calls ‘space-time’ compression to new levels of intensity. In so doing it is shaping a new form of subjectivity – a ‘virtual self’ – that has the potential to either trap or liberate.