Pixel Visions: Creative Expression in the Digital Era

This project is an innovative account of the ability of digital technologies to influence the cinematic image, and aims to enhance our understanding of expressive practice within mainstream cinema. Over the latter half of the 20th century technological advances have enabled a shift in emphasis from macroscopic structures to microscopic ones, a shift profoundly felt in the cultural movements towards genetic and information discourse. My project takes this shift to be the larger context for the impact of digital technologies on contemporary cinema, and I demonstrate how these continue to open the image to ever-greater levels of manipulation, generating new sites for creative expression within mainstream cinema.

My study has three main areas. The first examines the 'micro' discourse circulating amongst viewers and filmmakers, as this reveals an attention to how digital methods give greater access to the image. Comic book adaptations are currently a key site for these debates within mainstream cinema. The DVDs for Sin City, Batman Begins, and Superman Returns, as well as web-based materials including blog sites and on-line versions of trade journals, revel in revealing filmmaking practices. These point toward a network of influences based on aesthetic choices, adaptive strategies and technological innovation, a perspective that I develop to generate insights into the distinctive materiality of digitally manipulated imagery.

The second element of my project uses this extensive popular discussion to extend current debates within cinema studies. Increasingly, the digital intermediate, the conversion of analogue footage into a digital counterpart, opens every element of the text to manipulation. Pixel-level micro-manipulation in Sin City, for instance, includes controlling colour and greyscale to allow the black and white aesthetic of the cinematic version. Informed by aesthetic choices lead by a commitment to the look of the comic strip, contemporary live-action comic book adaptations such as Sin City exploit and expose the possibilities of digital technologies. Digital techniques allow filmmakers to 'ungroup' components of the background, confounding the conventions of cinema.

The third aspect of this project focuses on the cultural and political implications of the impact of digital manipulations on the aesthetics of the image. Drawing on the insights of the first two sections, I examine the effect of digital manipulations on representational and narrational strategies. Technological interventions increasingly allow representational images to be untied from their referent. As images incline away from representation towards expression, a space opens up for thinking about the cultural and political implications of such manipulations.