The impact of digital technologies on the production and consumption of moving images 2007-2016
1. Context for research from 1971 onwards
In my work, beginning some 47 years ago when filming my first photo-chemically based work (1971), I became aware that making itself is an essentially interrogative factor of the creation of meaning and significance. For many years before entering academia, I had trodden two continuously intersecting paths:
With regard my role as an artist/researcher, I made my first 16mm film in 1971 and my first analogue video in 1976. Over the years I'd made many pieces of work that were created to investigate the reflexivity of the medium. Early work identified the act of making within the actual work (Talking Heads 1977, Documentary Rape 1980). In the mid 1980’s amongst other projects I had directed a series on European Video Art plus a documentary on Soviet Foreign Policy in the Third World (co-written with Jonathan Steele of the Guardian in 1989).
I'd championed a subtle lighting regime in video when it was still known for garish lighting results at the beginning of the 1980’s (this was due to early television forms requiring a certain voltage encoded within the image that would enable focus to be achieved on broadcast – but this was no longer necessary technically in the 1980’s). I'd also edited video in the analogue period (1976 – 1982) and in a semi-digital environment from 1983 onwards, I shot the world’s third only video to 35mm film funded by Channel 4 and the BFI. This was called “Out of Order”. The world’s first video to 35mm theatrical release was a biopic about Jean Harlow starring Ginger Rogers. “Harlow” was captured in Electronovision (a form of the French 819 line Secam system) in 1965. In 1972 Tony Palmer together with Frank Zappa captured “200 Motels” on Quadruplex 2 inch Pal and I lit and captured “Out of Order” on Analogue to Digital Betacam in 720 x 576 pixels standard definition PAL in 1986.
My first activities with online video begun around 1990 when I managed to encode and display in a web browser video images of 40 x 30 pixels. This 30 second video took a half a day to upload on old-style dial-up modems. Very few servers and connections could stream the video fast enough to play without stuttering.
I had then worked with an early form of Philips 1250 line MAC analogue high definition video (1992) and been asked to test new equipment by manufacturers such as Panasonic and Sony in the late 90’s and shot the first ‘proper’ HD to 35mm project for theatrical exhibition in 2000. Here ‘proper’ refers to the hybrid Analogue/Digital system that George Lucas was next to start capturing Star Wars Episode 2 in “The Attack of the Clones” in 2002 (though this is disputed by specialists as to which part of the system was actually ‘properly’ digital). One element to remember in all of what follows is that though a camera may be ‘digital’, the lens that gathers the light for the chip to turn into electronic signals is an analogue piece of equipment and the chip itself is effectively an analogue to digital converter – which is where the majority of the technical argument takes place between manufacturers, signal processing engineers, professionals and academics.
By 2006 I technically directed an AHRC project lead by Professor Martin White that was to reveal the nature of Jacobean lighting. Called ‘The Chamber of Demonstrations’ this project enabled the building of the Sam Wannamaker Jacobean Playhouse at the Globe (due to drawings found within the AHRC project of a Jacobean Theatre) where later Gavin Finney BSC, the Cinematographer, was taken by Richard Eyre the Director, to get his eye in for the ‘Jacobean Lighting’ on the BBC Production of Wolf Hall. Please use this to access a small part of the project which was captured under the illumination of 30 candles. You’ll note that when the Duchess of Malfi enters she carries her own light as playwrights and directors of the time realised the issues they had with darkness and audience perspective: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/drama/jacobean/flash_uploads/malfi_female.htm
In 2007 I had begun academic research with some intensity and all the works from then until now are in fact research investigations or artefacts – but that in their realisation the initial intent is transcended such that the work itself can be considered as art. Obviously this transmutation is more or less successful in different works.
My work is now held in various international collections and has been shown at over 100 festivals. I am one of the 140 Academicians of the Royal West of England Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts. Examples of my work can be found on s[edition], an electronic platform: https://www.seditionart.com/terry-flaxton. By the end of 2016 my research works had been engaged with by circa 1.6 million people internationally3.
Background in industry
As a television programme maker, I sold my first documentary to Channel 4 in 1984 and from then on wrote, produced, directed, shot and edited various documentary and drama projects for broadcasters. Each required research into the historical and social contexts of the subjects and one two-part documentary on the history of Soviet and American Foreign Policy in the Third World in collaboration with the well respected Guardian columnist Jonathan Steele earned ‘pick of the day’ recommendations to watch in all the main newspapers – plus a recommendation in a House of Lords speech. The point here is that thorough and rigourous research was a skill I’d honed before entering academia.
Also, my experiments in moving image as an artist/researcher then informed my television work. Subjects included female genital mutilation, the British National Health Service, the rights of animals and a 5 part series on the subject of Video Art. In the project on Russian American relations I'd realised that television’s use of Eisenstein’s fictional material in films such as Strike and Battleship Potemkin - as if it were documentary footage - offered me an opportunity. We shot our documentary in colour but then added black and white footage of two negotiators, a Soviet and an American, shot and lit like the Ipcress file, in widescreen aspect ratio. By the end of the documentary I then interviewed specialists in American foreign policy relations in the Kremlin. First I played back the footage in colour, in English in 4:3 television aspect ratio – and then I faded through to the same answer in Russian, in black and white, in widescreen aspect ratio – thus bringing home the issue of how we represent different groups with different ideologies in the West which is of course an ideological choice. At that time in 1989 this was an experimental gesture. That it has been absorbed into mainstream strategies for documentaries pays tribute to the issue of artistic experiment being part of ‘the research and development department’ (so to speak) of mainstream film and television, for which no one is given credit – yet the original work has to be done by somebody.
My television ‘video art’ commissions have been seen in Europe and the USA, some of which then won awards at Festivals such as Locarno, Mill Valley, Tokyo and Montbeliard.
In my work, beginning some 47 years ago when filming my first photo-chemically based work (1971), I became aware that making itself is an essentially interrogative factor of the creation of meaning and significance. For many years before entering academia, I had trodden two continuously intersecting paths:
- being active in the experimental moving image art world
- having a career in the UK’s moving-image industries
With regard my role as an artist/researcher, I made my first 16mm film in 1971 and my first analogue video in 1976. Over the years I'd made many pieces of work that were created to investigate the reflexivity of the medium. Early work identified the act of making within the actual work (Talking Heads 1977, Documentary Rape 1980). In the mid 1980’s amongst other projects I had directed a series on European Video Art plus a documentary on Soviet Foreign Policy in the Third World (co-written with Jonathan Steele of the Guardian in 1989).
I'd championed a subtle lighting regime in video when it was still known for garish lighting results at the beginning of the 1980’s (this was due to early television forms requiring a certain voltage encoded within the image that would enable focus to be achieved on broadcast – but this was no longer necessary technically in the 1980’s). I'd also edited video in the analogue period (1976 – 1982) and in a semi-digital environment from 1983 onwards, I shot the world’s third only video to 35mm film funded by Channel 4 and the BFI. This was called “Out of Order”. The world’s first video to 35mm theatrical release was a biopic about Jean Harlow starring Ginger Rogers. “Harlow” was captured in Electronovision (a form of the French 819 line Secam system) in 1965. In 1972 Tony Palmer together with Frank Zappa captured “200 Motels” on Quadruplex 2 inch Pal and I lit and captured “Out of Order” on Analogue to Digital Betacam in 720 x 576 pixels standard definition PAL in 1986.
My first activities with online video begun around 1990 when I managed to encode and display in a web browser video images of 40 x 30 pixels. This 30 second video took a half a day to upload on old-style dial-up modems. Very few servers and connections could stream the video fast enough to play without stuttering.
I had then worked with an early form of Philips 1250 line MAC analogue high definition video (1992) and been asked to test new equipment by manufacturers such as Panasonic and Sony in the late 90’s and shot the first ‘proper’ HD to 35mm project for theatrical exhibition in 2000. Here ‘proper’ refers to the hybrid Analogue/Digital system that George Lucas was next to start capturing Star Wars Episode 2 in “The Attack of the Clones” in 2002 (though this is disputed by specialists as to which part of the system was actually ‘properly’ digital). One element to remember in all of what follows is that though a camera may be ‘digital’, the lens that gathers the light for the chip to turn into electronic signals is an analogue piece of equipment and the chip itself is effectively an analogue to digital converter – which is where the majority of the technical argument takes place between manufacturers, signal processing engineers, professionals and academics.
By 2006 I technically directed an AHRC project lead by Professor Martin White that was to reveal the nature of Jacobean lighting. Called ‘The Chamber of Demonstrations’ this project enabled the building of the Sam Wannamaker Jacobean Playhouse at the Globe (due to drawings found within the AHRC project of a Jacobean Theatre) where later Gavin Finney BSC, the Cinematographer, was taken by Richard Eyre the Director, to get his eye in for the ‘Jacobean Lighting’ on the BBC Production of Wolf Hall. Please use this to access a small part of the project which was captured under the illumination of 30 candles. You’ll note that when the Duchess of Malfi enters she carries her own light as playwrights and directors of the time realised the issues they had with darkness and audience perspective: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/drama/jacobean/flash_uploads/malfi_female.htm
In 2007 I had begun academic research with some intensity and all the works from then until now are in fact research investigations or artefacts – but that in their realisation the initial intent is transcended such that the work itself can be considered as art. Obviously this transmutation is more or less successful in different works.
My work is now held in various international collections and has been shown at over 100 festivals. I am one of the 140 Academicians of the Royal West of England Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts. Examples of my work can be found on s[edition], an electronic platform: https://www.seditionart.com/terry-flaxton. By the end of 2016 my research works had been engaged with by circa 1.6 million people internationally3.
Background in industry
As a television programme maker, I sold my first documentary to Channel 4 in 1984 and from then on wrote, produced, directed, shot and edited various documentary and drama projects for broadcasters. Each required research into the historical and social contexts of the subjects and one two-part documentary on the history of Soviet and American Foreign Policy in the Third World in collaboration with the well respected Guardian columnist Jonathan Steele earned ‘pick of the day’ recommendations to watch in all the main newspapers – plus a recommendation in a House of Lords speech. The point here is that thorough and rigourous research was a skill I’d honed before entering academia.
Also, my experiments in moving image as an artist/researcher then informed my television work. Subjects included female genital mutilation, the British National Health Service, the rights of animals and a 5 part series on the subject of Video Art. In the project on Russian American relations I'd realised that television’s use of Eisenstein’s fictional material in films such as Strike and Battleship Potemkin - as if it were documentary footage - offered me an opportunity. We shot our documentary in colour but then added black and white footage of two negotiators, a Soviet and an American, shot and lit like the Ipcress file, in widescreen aspect ratio. By the end of the documentary I then interviewed specialists in American foreign policy relations in the Kremlin. First I played back the footage in colour, in English in 4:3 television aspect ratio – and then I faded through to the same answer in Russian, in black and white, in widescreen aspect ratio – thus bringing home the issue of how we represent different groups with different ideologies in the West which is of course an ideological choice. At that time in 1989 this was an experimental gesture. That it has been absorbed into mainstream strategies for documentaries pays tribute to the issue of artistic experiment being part of ‘the research and development department’ (so to speak) of mainstream film and television, for which no one is given credit – yet the original work has to be done by somebody.
My television ‘video art’ commissions have been seen in Europe and the USA, some of which then won awards at Festivals such as Locarno, Mill Valley, Tokyo and Montbeliard.
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In the journal article within the journal picturesI was invited to discuss in a roundtable environment the factors that came together to form the early London Video ARts Commective of which I was a member of around 1977 onwards
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Moving Image Arts Research is concerned with exploring the histories, theories, technologies, cultures and politics of moving image art production, interaction and reception.
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