Database economy and transnational cinema
Database economy and transnational cinema
Digital or electronic cinemas are dependent on a global regime of standards covering such features as aspect ratios, colour gamuts, screen resolution, and compression-decompression algorithms. These standards are worked out by a variety of intersecting organisations representing a variety of interests. This paper argues that such standardisation is isomorphic with the convergence of biopolitical and commodity forms in an emergent political economy that can be described as a database economy. This infrastructure of standards and ordering principles constitutes an actually existing transnational public sphere. The paper discusses the possibilities for developing an alter-globalising pubic sphere in digital cinemas, testing three possible avenues: cinemas of the silent majority, new modes of distribution, and content-driven approaches. It concludes by asking whether vanguard practices of building new forms of cinema apparatus may be essential to the construction of alter-globalising transnational cinemas.
digital, transnational, cinema, technology, alter-globalization, public sphere
155-166
Cubitt, Sean
aad644d3-3b69-4ca8-a999-9b0f809eb729
December 2009
Cubitt, Sean
aad644d3-3b69-4ca8-a999-9b0f809eb729
Cubitt, Sean
(2009)
Database economy and transnational cinema.
Studies In Australasian Cinema, 3 (2), .
(doi:10.1386/sac.3.2.155/1).
Abstract
Digital or electronic cinemas are dependent on a global regime of standards covering such features as aspect ratios, colour gamuts, screen resolution, and compression-decompression algorithms. These standards are worked out by a variety of intersecting organisations representing a variety of interests. This paper argues that such standardisation is isomorphic with the convergence of biopolitical and commodity forms in an emergent political economy that can be described as a database economy. This infrastructure of standards and ordering principles constitutes an actually existing transnational public sphere. The paper discusses the possibilities for developing an alter-globalising pubic sphere in digital cinemas, testing three possible avenues: cinemas of the silent majority, new modes of distribution, and content-driven approaches. It concludes by asking whether vanguard practices of building new forms of cinema apparatus may be essential to the construction of alter-globalising transnational cinemas.
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Published date: December 2009
Keywords:
digital, transnational, cinema, technology, alter-globalization, public sphere
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 179827
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/179827
ISSN: 1750-3175
PURE UUID: 794f41cf-2016-486d-83fb-b0a2231d60c0
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Date deposited: 05 Apr 2011 08:28
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 02:50
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Author:
Sean Cubitt
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