Digital Formalism - The Conference Log

Not to be forgotten and to be given props to on this blog are John MacKay and Aleksandr Derjabin, who presented on the first day already, whilst we were still at the Filmmuseum (i.e. without internet connection). To some of us, Karl Bücher was not a name we were already familiar with, and John MacKay's reading of Vertov against the backdrop of Bücher's "Arbeit und Rhythmus" (work and rhythm) was indeed enlightening, even if there is no final proof that Vertov did indeed know this book. Btw, the book has been digitized by Google and can be read online or downloaded on the website of the American Archive.  Aleksandr Derjabin - the Russian editor of Vertov's oeuvre - and John MacKay also worked together for Aklesandr's talk, which was simultaneously translated by John, which made it even more spirited. Aleksadnr looked at Three Songs for Lenin to exemplify his strategy of micro- and telescopic readings and to find arguments for and against commented-on DVD editions.

John MacKay is Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Film Studies, and Chair of the Film Studies Program at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. He is the author of the upcoming Dziga Vertov: Life and Work and has published a number of articles on Vertov's films.

Aleksandr Derjabin (Moskau) ist Filmwissenschaftler und -historiker, ehemaliger Mitarbeiter des RGAKFD und des russischen Fernsehens sowie Herausgeber der Schriften von Dziga Vertov in Russland.

The conference (almost) concluded with a panel discussion, led by Andrea B. Braidt (also the project leader), Thomas Tode (filmmaker, film curator and researcher with a focus on Soviet Cinema and Avantgarde film) and Wolfgang Beilenhoff (professor of media studies, and currently a fellow at the International research institute for culture technologies and media philosophy, Weimar), as well as Lev Manvoich (professor at the Visual Arts Dept., University of California, San Diego) and John MacKay (Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Film Studies at Yale University) chiming in.

At the center - with contributions and questions from audience and project researchers - stood the ever bedazzling question of the status of the digital. Can we assume that the digital is the sphere is indeed what Vertov's aesthetics were aiming at? What is with the changing social status of digital machinery now and the machines of the 1920s - aren't we confounding something if we draw comparisons? Where can we position Vertov and his interest in rhythm, his dream of the Kino-Eye, and the possibilities of the Info-Eye?

Ute Holl gave a talk entitled "Between Art and Laboratory: Dziga Vertov’s Work within the tradition of Russian Neurology and Reflexology", taking her point of departure from an argument she made in Kino, Trance & Kybernetik (a review by Burkhardt Wolf, in German, can be found here)

Stavris Alifragkis from Cambridge University built an ontology for the analysis of Vertov's Man with the movie camera, which he then annotated accordingly. The second picture shows a visualization of metadata expressing the presence of women and men in the shot, in relation to time of the day. An interesting statement about the Soviet Union's view on gender equality: At midday (i.e. not necessarily 12 o'clock, but neither morning nor evening or night), i.e. at work time,  men and women are nearly equally represented in the shot (222:218).

Notes on Lev Manovich's talk on the "Info-Eye" can be found at Jana Herwig's digiom blog.

Stipulating the three-day-programme and institutional affiliations. A mere 140 KB to download.

Click here to download:

Digital_Formalism_Folder_all.pdf (137 KB)

Barbara Wurm's research focus

• Russian and Soviet film history
• Film, literary and media theory (avant-garde movements, Russian Formalism)
• Early cinema, esp. non-fiction film (scientific, educational, industrial and documentary film)
• History of perception in relation to political philosophy

Short Bio

Born 1973 (Vienna). Studied Slavic Studies (Russian), German Studies and Comparative Literature at Vienna University, Innsbruck University, Moscow State University of Humanities (RGGU) and Munich University.
Graduated with a thesis on Jurij N. Tynjanov's Conception of "Literary Evolution" (A Case Study in Media Theory: Interval, Integral, Index) at Vienna University (2003).
Visiting Fellow at GWZO, Leipzig (2003).
Archival Research in Moscow (RGALI, RGAKFD) and St. Peterburg (DocFond) (MOEL-Grant, ÖFG, 2004).
Has been teaching film and literary studies at the Universities of Vienna and Berlin (FU and Humboldt).
Project Manager of "Russian Film-Revolution in Vienna" and "Dziga Vertov", Vienna (BKA Kunst, 2005-2006).
Member of the Graduiertenkolleg "Codierung von Gewalt im medialen Wandel" at Humboldt-University, Berlin, with a dissertation project on "Biopolitics of Seeing in Early Soviet Non-Fiction Film (1920s)" (2004-2007).
Barbara Wurm is currently based in Basel and Vienna.

Dr. Julia Kursell studied music, Slavic philology and comparative literature in Munich and completed her PhD in 2000. 1998-2001 and 2002-2004s she was a research fellow at the Institute for Slavic Philology in Munich, from 2001-2002 she held a research fellowship in the project “Russische Erinnerungsliteratur und die Zivilisationsbrüche des 20. Jahrhunderts” at the Zentrum für Literaturforschung in Berlin. In April 2004, she took up a position as a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Since November 2006, Julia Kursell has been Dilthey Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science with the project ” Historical Epistemology of Hearing (1850 - 2000)”.

Contact: http://vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/exp/kursell/index.html

Mehr Informationen zu Conlon Nancarrow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conlon_Nancarrow