Zoltán Dragon. Film in the digital age - introduction
The introductory essay calls attention to the phenomena that are the result of the pervasive digitization and softwarization of culture and that have become unavoidable in our everyday lives. The film as medium is also part of this cultural shift, as it is in the very process of digitization on many levels: first technologically, as the base of film production has changed leaving behind the analogue techniques; second, medially, as the outcome of the technological shift is the loss or refashioning of some medium specifities together with the arrival of new characteristics; and third, aesthetically, as for instance the visual domain of films is enhanced by computer animation or crowd scenes generated by software algorithms to an extent never seen before. Full text in Hungarian →

New media vs. old media

Miklós Sághy: Database logic and films). Reflections on the works of Lev Manovich and Zoltán Dragon
The paper focuses on the question how contemporary medial environment, which is basically defined by computers, influences the language and narrative techniques of films - if it does so at all. The main emphasis of the analysis is on database logic, which has become a dominant principle in sorting and storing information, as well as the main organization structure of human experience in the digital age, according to Lev Manovich. The theoretician contrasts narratives (as traditional organization forms) with databases, and argues that the former organizing methods do not have the same status in computer culture, since databases occupy an important, if not the largest, territory of the new media landscape. Accepting this opinion, we should face an inevitable question whether the database logic can influence (or, what is more, overwhelm) the classic narrative logic in movies. A Hungarian film theorist, Zoltán Dragon - supporting his point with examples - claims that it may happen in the foreseeable future, since database logic has already shown up in feature films. The aim of this paper is to examine this question by means of a few instances of likely roles of database logic in future films. Full text in Hungarian→

Zsolt Kelemen: Arcade Fire 2.0 and Database Logic
In collaboration with Google, the Canadian indie-rock band Arcade Fire made an interactive video for the tone of the band's song entitled "We Used To Wait". This creative project makes great use of new media and database logic as defined by Lev Manovich. It also suggests a new way of subject formation. Full text in Hungarian →

Gábor Zoltán Kiss: Iteration and design in video game theory
The paper argues that traditional media are not always the ideal backdrop against which video games should be interpreted, while games may prove useful in re-interpreting traditional media. Video games are described as synthetic-aesthetic systems, and the term iteration is stressed as a unique characteristic of this representational form. The author suggests that, following the logic of videogame-theory, games have to work in an iterative way. The second part of the paper stresses three points of views, namely procedural logic, design and use, since these may serve as starting points in the process of interpreting games. Full text in Hungarian →

Diána Gollowitzer: Series-orgy, or the impact of new media on contemporary American fiction TV-series
Television series made in the US can be considered as representative products of contemporary popular culture. Serial narrative, however, is not a new phenomenon: its rules developed with the appearance of books and later with the mass production of newspapers. In line with this history, series were defined by researchers as narratives that have a characteristic pace of consumption, defined by the carrier media. Still, although the above definition was not tenable earlier, its inappropriateness has become clear by the appearance of new media. The essay, thus, introduces a new approach towards the definition of series. Full text in Hungarian →

Digitalisation

Jay David Bolter - Richard Grusin: Networks of remediation
The present study is the third chapter of the paradigmatic book, Remediation. Understanding New Media, written by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin. The authors define the central notion of remediation by several examples and from several perspectives in order to demonstrate a process in which new representational technologies do not deny their relations with older media technologies but rather take their functions and exceed them in a way that has both cultural and social impacts. Full text in Hungarian →

Lev Manovich: The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life
Cultural production and consumption induced by Web 2.0 applications serve as central topics of Manovich's argument. The title of the essay refers to Michel de Certeau's book from 1980, entitled The Practice of Everyday Life. The "strategy" discussed in that work (the frameworks defining interpretational and everyday practices provided by institutional and power structures) and the" tactics" (individual choices of modern subjects, that help them navigate among strategy frames) are notions that have been rearranged in the context of 21^st century culture industry, and this rearrangement constitutes the central element of writing. Contemporary society, according to Manovich, is increasingly characterized by the consumption of modifiable, customized products, and this practice influences cultural production. By concentrating primarily on contents produced by users, Manovich shows the shift in producing symbolic representations, and the way this change relates to the traditional logic of electronic media, its logic, structures, and patterns; he also discusses the way mass cultural production turns into the mass production of culture, in which the lives of individuals, or sub-cultural groups (not documented previously) become media products. Full text in Hungarian →

László Tarnay: The ideal of the original and new media
The paper starts out from an idea taken from the film Copie conforme (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010), according to which a certified copy is better than an original. The author and examines the way that the relationship between original and copy is transformed by two of the most important characteristics of the latest digital media, namely interactivity and immersion. These two features are the most tangible in forms that simulate human perception (visual and auditory), and conjure the future prosthetic experience of the cyborg body. The paper presents the process that started with illusionist pictures of the antiquity and follows it up to the birth of film, and goes beyond that, culminating in digital simulation. This process is used as the backdrop for interpreting the relation between original and copy.  Full text in Hungarian →

Student's workshop

Miklós Gerdelics: Virtual map of generic elements - Applicability of the IMDb in film theory
The present paper attempts to introduce a new method to the analysis of a question regarding film theory, while relying upon modern computer technologies, the database logic of new media, as well as the unused potential of the internet. The author considers that the history of filmic genres is a theme that can be discussed in a particularly productive way in this technological context, since the theory of contemporary genre films have already created the possibility of isolating the stable and variable elements of genres. This type of analysis and its logic of rearrangement may be compared to the logic of computer databases, of remics culture, as well as of new media. At the same time, there is a specific filmic database, which have already realized such an analysis of films, namely the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com). IMDb has an enormous potential from the point of view of research on films, this potential, however, has not been used so far. The paper offers a possible use of database-analysis on the example of genre problematics. It first deals with some relevant aspects of contemporary culture's "softwerization", and in a next step uses these aspects for an analysis of genre history, drawing on parallels in genre theory. Full text in Hungarian →

Balázs Sipos: Origins of the 21st century action movie? Integrity of narrative and action in Christopher Nolan's Inception
Inception is a film at the border between a contemporary action movie and a spectacular auteur film - this is the starting point of the interpretation, which claims that Nolan relies on classical tools that have been used since ancient Greek theatre, resulting in a tragedy of destiny, relying on 20^th century, primarily existential drama. The argument attempts to describe the uniqueness of the film in reaching this goal by relying on the tradition of action movies, and their accessible language. The main question of the analysis is the extent to which Nolan is successful in integrating the underlying engine of the film, namely existential drama, into spectacle. The relationship between spectacle and existential drama is mapped out. The analysis also examines the relationship between film and dream, and interprets the prologue and the epilogue, finally addressing the problem of irony regarding generic clichés as well as directorial tricks. Full text in Hungarian →