Course info

The 2024-25 version of this module, we will be thinking particularly about the relationship between changing technologies and aesthetics as they pertain to the representation and expression of the natural world. The module is divided into two parts. In the first part, we consider the primary aesthetic properties and affordances of the basic cinematographic apparatus (camera, projector, screen), looking at key philosophical and critical theoretical texts that examine cinematic movement, time, ‘natural’ beauty, scale and sound. In the second part of the module, we will examine experiments with the cinematic apparatus: the ways in which artists and filmmakers have expanded “cinema” through different technologies and aesthetic approaches to film. We will consider giant screen cinemas, handmade 16mm film, interactive, computer-based cinemas, and virtual reality. We will probe how these technologies create new aesthetic experiences that extend and bend the basic apparatus and its key affordances. By highlighting the screening of the natural world, we will explore the ways in which filmmakers, technicians, and artists have employed and appropriated the cinema technologies to respond to various socio-cultural issues on the environment and ask, how have moving image technologies and the aesthetic experiences they offer been integral to how we understand and come to know the natural world?