Intellect Books IQ Magazine

IQ
Intellect Quarterly no. 5 / thinking in colour / spring 2007
In this issue:
media & democracy
COMPUTERS AND THE HISTORY OF ART
VIDEOGAME ART
jos mara rodrguez mndez
POST-SOVIET FILM
PLUS BOOK REVIEWS AND AUTHOR INTERVIEWS

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IQ
contents spring 2007
06 Videogame Art
Challenging and Provocative
10 Jos Mara Rodrguez Mndez

Troubling Postcards from the Past
12 The Visual in Communication

Some Hidden Dimensions
16 Televisions New Engine

The Principle of the TV Format
21 Indexed Lights
Computers and the History of Art
25 Media and Democracy

A Strange Paradox
25 Pride and Panic

Russian Imagination of the West in Post-Soviet Film
Q&A 04 May Yao | 19 Graeme Harper | 26 Robert W. Lawler | 28 Book Reviews
Publisher/Editor
Masoud Yazdani
Associate Editor
May Yao
Sub Editor
Samantha King
Art Director
Gabriel Solomons
Intellect Ltd.
PO Box 862
Bristol BS99 1DE
Tel: 0117 9589910
IQ / intellect quarterly
ISSN 1478-7350
2007 Intellect Ltd. No
part of this publication
may be reproduced,
copied, transmitted in
any form or by any means
without permission of the
publisher. Intellect accept
no responsibility for views
expressed by contributors
to IQ; or for unsolicted
manuscripts, photographs or
illustrations; or for errors in
articles or advertisements.
Intellect publishes books
and journals by authors and
editors with original thinking
they strongly believe in. Our
intention is to produce books
and journals that have presence,
create impact and are affordable
for readers. We commission
regardless of whether there
is an established readership
for the ideas: we support our
authors comprehensively in
articulating their thoughts and
then bring them to as wide
a readership as possible. We
choose authors and editors
who in backing their ideas,
are willing to be part of our
publishing process by investing
their energy and resources as
needed in co-operation with us.
Intellect Quarterly | 3
Q&A
iQuote Sometimes Ive believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Lewis Carroll
May Yao
An interview with Intellects book publisher
Photo Gabriel Solomons
How did you come to choose

publishing as a career?
Ive always been interested in the
process of communicating and
disseminating ideas. The publishing industry has a considerable
responsibility both to inform
and entertain, and I was drawn
to the idea of having a career that
might be able to combine culture
with commerce. Publishing is
a constantly evolving industry
especially in the current climate
of increasingly rapid technological
innovation, and there are always
exciting opportunities and new
developments which make it a
great challenge! I love the variety
of work that publishing offers, as
well as the satisfaction of seeing a
nished book.
4 | Intellect Quarterly
What attracted you specically

to join Intellect?
I liked the idea of publishing on
the merit of ideas rather than sales,
and being able to publish books
that other publishers might not be
willing to take on due to the nancial risk involved. I felt that Intellect was trying to do something
very different from other publishers campaigning for the author
rather than producing a book or
journal to ll a gap in the market.
The tension between Intellects
mission and commercial pressures
creates a great dichotomy which is
Intellects greatest challenge, but
also its greatest strength!
What kind of books do you
publish at Intellect?
We aim to publish books which
exemplify our mission as publishers of original thinking. We like to

work with authors who can clearly
identify with their book and are
motivated to support it through
all its stages of development. We
have found that there is a real
demand from authors and editors to get their original material
published and to get their ideas
heard. The focus of our publishing
programme covers topics related
to creative media: art, lm, television, design and international
culture. Books that are multidisciplinary within our range of topics
are preferred.
Who are your intended authors
and their readership?
We publish for university and
college academics and postgrads.
However, an Intellect book goes
beyond the specialist in a given
eld to appeal to others who have
a multi-disciplinary interest in the
topic. Intellect does not publish
textbooks aimed at undergraduates. Such books contain very little
original thinking and are mostly
tutorial and survey material.
Intellect books are not aimed at
the educated reader at large. One
of our biggest editorial mistakes
in the past has been to attempt
to publish books simultaneously
aimed at the specialist academic,
the undergraduate and the general
reader. However, such books rarely
succeed to satisfy any of these
communities, as their needs are
very different.
How do you differ in your editorial policy from other publishers?
Our strategy is to publish authors
who have new ideas, new ways of
expressing their ideas, or cover
new topics not established within
academia. These ideas may not be
appreciated by mainstream academic publishers whose focus is
on established topics along university departmental boundaries and

textbooks for specic courses.
Although we may give an author
editorial guidance, we dont commission authors to write books for
us. Overall, we have very little editorial intervention in comparison
to other publishers. We represent
the author rather than the reader
in the editorial process, which
means that the authors message is
authentically articulated. However,
because our books are not catered
to the reader, they probably will
not be as widely read. Our role is to
support the author by making each
book as strong and as professional
as possible, while staying true to
the authors voice.
What stages does a book go
through before it reaches the
readers?
The main production stages are
peer review, copyediting and typesetting. The cover design, images
and index must also be negotiated
during the production process.
As we are an academic publisher,
all our books are peer-reviewed.
This process is intended to ensure
a level of academic quality as
well as providing feedback to the
author on how the book might be
improved. We try to involve the
author in every stage of the production process, from copyediting
through to cover design.
How do you market your books?
Intellects primary strategy is
relationship marketing, which is
focused and cost-effective. Leaets
and catalogues are sent directly
to targeted potential readers who
have an interest in our subject
areas. In addition to direct mail,
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attending or getting involved in
May Yao
An artists career always begins tomorrow. J. Whistler
The tension between Intellects

mission and commercial pressures
creates a great dichotomy which is
Intellects greatest challenge, but also
its greatest strength!
relevant conferences and events.
We also regularly participate
in advertising campaigns in an
attempt to widen our customer
base. In addition, we have found
that by introducing an authors
ideas to potential readers through
the publication of related articles
in IQ magazine, our authors gain
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which in turn helps to increase
book sales.
Who are your partners and what
do they do for you?
Our aim is always to support our
authors by bringing their ideas to
as wide a readership as possible,
and we continuously strive to nd
new and innovative ways of achieving this. From 2007, we are pleased
that our titles will be marketed and
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Chicago Press in all regions of the
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distribution methods, as well as
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Search and Amazon.
How should authors prepare their
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The best way to submit a proposal
to us is by completing our author
questionnaire as thoroughly as possible. The questionnaire requests
information about the content and
structure of the proposed book,
as well as marketing information and biographic information
about the author. Potential authors
should bear in mind that we do
not publish Ph.D. theses, although
such research can, of course, be an
excellent starting point for a book.
We publish original material, so
surveys or collections of previously published material are not
for us. In essence, we are looking
for authors presenting new ideas
that dont yet have an established
market or readership and are keen
to get their ideas heard! {
books/journals/ideas...
Art & Design

iQuote The holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it. Banksy
intellect Book Focus
Videogame Art
Challenging and Provocative
By Grethe Mitchell and Andy Clarke
lthough a comparatively new

medium, videogames have
rapidly emerged to become
an established cultural form, taking
their place alongside television and
lm. Yet while television and lm
are now, for the most part, acceptable to all, videogames retain an air
of danger and degeneracy and are
frequently vilied in public debates
about the state of society.
Given this mix of popularity and
controversy, it is inevitable that
artists have looked to videogames
as both their inspiration and their
source material. Using the iconography of videogames in artworks is as
old as videogames themselves, but a
growing number of artists are using
the videogames themselves as their
artistic medium.
Some do this through writing art
videogames from scratch (such as
Thompson and Craigheads Trigger
Happy); others hack videogame
hardware such as Game Boy consoles
(for example, Paul Cataneses Super
Ichthyologist Advance); yet others take
existing games usually FPS (rstperson shooter) games such as
Quake, Unreal or Half Life and modify
these. This latter type of work, created by modifying existing games, is
usually referred to as mod art and is
the most visible form of videogame
art. The reasons for this are easy to
understand: FPS games provide the
artist with a formidable set of features including a real-time 3-D ren6 | Intellect Quarterly
dering engine with equally realistic

3-D surround sound and a powerful
scripting language, and the applications used to modify the games are
relatively easy to master.
Mod art has sometimes been
described, derogatively, as parasitical as it relies on commercial
videogames, but this description
ignores both the practicalities and
aesthetics of digital art in general.
It, too, is reliant upon proprietary
applications (such as Flash or Photoshop) and likewise has elements
of appropriation (with or without
manipulation) which although they
have been around since Duchamp
if not earlier have come into their
own with digital technologies. Digital art presents inherent problems
if judged by traditional aesthetic
criteria (particularly those which
emphasize originality, uniqueness
and the hand of the artist). This
does not mean, however, that digital
art is invalid; instead, it means that
the criteria of assessment need to be
re-thought when applied to digital
works (including videogame art).
So rather than regard mod art as
parasitical, we feel it is more correct
to describe it as a virus that produces
mutations in its host. Mod artists
have found ways to subvert and modify every aspect of the game. They
have placed themselves in the game
(as in Feng Mengbos Q4U); they
have turned games into abstract patterns (Jodis Untitled Game series) or
musical instruments (Julian Olivers

QTO); they have created virtual galleries (Fuchs and Eckermanns Virtual
Knowledge Space) and recreated real
galleries (Bernstrup and Torssons
Museum Meltdown series).
But it is not just the diversity of
the works produced that makes
videogame art so interesting. Every
example of videogame art is a liminal
work as it lies by denition at the
border between the commercial videogame and the artistic world. This
introduces a creative and intellectual
tension within the works which is often lacking in other forms of digital
art production.
Videogame artists routinely use
their work to critique the games
that they use both as medium and
raw material and to provocatively
Below
Escape from Woomera
by Julian Oliver and others
Museum Meltdown
by Tobias Bernstrup and Palle Torsson
Bottom
Marios Furniture (2003)
by Hillary Mushkin and S. E. Barnet
Videogame Art
iQuote Whoever is able to write a book and does not, it is as if they had lost a child. Rabbi Nachman
Videogame art is becoming more

widely exhibited including in major
public galleries with many of the artists
now having gallery representation
and being collected both by major
institutions and by private collectors.
question our relationship to these
games. Often they will play with
the viewer of the artwork inviting them to interact, but then
frustrating their play or actively
critiquing their reasons for playing
or enjoying videogames in general.
Other strategies include producing
video installations which highlight
the repetitiveness or vacuity of
videogames (such as Brody Condons Suicide Solution or Stephen
Honeggers Three Hour Donut).
But videogame art is not only
introspective and self-referential:
a substantial number of artists
have used games to comment on
political and social issues, or on
real-life events. Examples of this
include Escape from Woomera (by
Julian Oliver and others), Dead in
Iraq by Joseph Delappe and Waco

Resurrection (by Eddo Stern, Brody
Condon and others).
Just as videogames have
entered the cultural mainstream,
so videogame art is becoming a
recognized part of the art world.
Videogame art is becoming more
widely exhibited including in major public galleries such as the
Whitney, the Stedelijk and the SF
MOMA and many of the artists
involved now have gallery representation and are being collected
both by major institutions and by
private collectors. We anticipate
that this interest will grow and
that videogame art will continue
to evolve whilst remaining a challenging and provocative alternative to commercial games. {
FURTHER READING
Videogames and Art

Edited by Andy Clarke & Grethe Mitchell
29.95 / $55 / ISBN 978-1-84150-142-0
Videogame art is a rapidly emerging genre of digital art and a

ourishing area of both critical
attention and academic study.
A growing number of artists are
appropriating the technology
and iconography of videogames
and their work is being shown
in and collected by major
art institutions worldwide.
This book features interviews
with many leading videogame
artists, as well as with emerging
gures in the eld. Others provide
essays on areas such as gamesconsole hacking and politicallyoriented videogame art which
draw on the insights and experience gained from their own artistic practice. There are in-depth
analyses of specialist areas such
as machinima and contextualizing
essays which trace the history of
videogame art or draw parallels
between the aesthetics of videogames and other forms of art.
Overall, this book provides a
thorough, yet accessible, introduction to videogame art and will be
of interest to all of those interested in the eld of videogames.
FURTHER READING
The Future of Art

in a Digital Age
By Mel Alexenberg
29.95 / $60 / ISBN 978-1-84150-136-9
This book develops the thesis that

the transition from premodernism
to postmodernism in art of the
digital age represents a paradigm
shift from the Hellenistic to the
Hebraic roots of Western culture.
Semiotic and morphological
analysis of art and visual culture
demonstrate the contemporary
conuence between the deep
structure of Hebraic consciousness and new directions in art that
arise along the interface between
scientic inquiry, digital technologies, and multicultural expressions. Complementing these two
analytic methodologies, alternative methodologies of kabbalah
and halakhah provide postmodern
methods for extending into digital
age art forms. Exemplary artworks
are described in the text and will
be illustrated with photographs.
Like the Torah itself that Alexenberg refers to regularly, the book
is complex. He writes in a lively,
engaging style... I found it informative, optimistic, and spiritually
refreshing. ROB HARLE, LEONARDO
ORDER THESE BOOK ON-LINE WWW.INTELLECTBOOKS.COM

Above acmipark by Julian Oliver and others
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The Journal of Writing in
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GOODBYE
LENIN!
PUBLIC (RE)VISIONS:
CRITICAL PICTURES OF THE
FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL
Article from issue 25
DIALOGUE FEATURES AROUND REVIEWS THE INTERVIEWS MOVING NEWS IMAGE
MOTION
PICTURES
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Published as a bi-monthly, full colour journal, Film International covers all

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Film International is a considerable contribution to lm culture.
Mark Cousins, author of The Story of Film
ISSUE 25 NOW AVAILABLE. 8 WWW.FILMINT.NU
Theatre & Performance

iQuote I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect. Vaclav Havel
Troubling Postcards from the Past

The past may be a foreign country, as L. P. Hartley suggested in The Go-Between,
but it is never far from home. By Michael Thompson
paniards have been travelling to the past obsessively and uncomfortably in recent years in search of justice, reparation, reconciliation and, above all, their own collective identity. The civil
war of 1936 to 1939 resulted in a bloody annexation of national history
and identity by the right-wing forces led by Francisco Franco, whose regime occupied the territory and strictly controlled access to it for almost
40 years. The transition to democracy after 1975 was founded upon a
series of difcult compromises made possible by a pacto del olvido an
agreement to forget not only the pain and the blame but also the fact
that there were precedents for the new values of liberty and democracy
in that region of the past which was the Spanish Republic. It is only
recently that demands for the recuperation of historical memory have
come to the forefront of political debate, public opinion and media attention, fed by the identication of large numbers of collective graves
of the victims of Francoist repression, legal claims for reparations and
a stream of previously untold testimonies of suffering, injustice and
heroism. A bill presented by the Government in 2006 incorporating
various measures intended to provide
recognition and reparation to victims
and redress the commemorative imbalance left over from Francoism has been
ercely resisted by conservatives reluctant to cast light on the skeletons littering the landscape of the past, as well as
by those who feel that the proposed legislation does not go far enough.
Historians, creative writers and lmmakers, however, have for some time
been rediscovering and re-mapping
Spains past, including the dark corners
of the civil war and the dictatorship.
Jos Mara Rodrguez Mndez (born in
1925) is a playwright, journalist, essayist
and novelist who has insistently made
Spanishness in the past and the present
the core of his work. My book Performing
Spanishness: History, Cultural Identity and
Censorship in the Theatre of Jos Mara Ro-
drguez Mndez is a comprehensive study of his theatre from the 1950s

to the present, focusing particularly on his history plays and on his
representations of cultural identity. He was one of the rst dramatists
to challenge the Franco regimes dogmatic, chauvinistic denitions
of national history and identity, proposing instead a dynamic view of
collective identities emerging from the everyday social performances
of popular culture in resistance to ofcial ideologies. In an essay on
traditional popular culture published in 1971, Rodrguez Mndez uses
the term machismo espaol to sum up this process of identity construction in a surprising but ultimately productive way that acknowledges
the negative gender implications of the conventional meaning of machismo but absorbs them into a broader and more positive concept of
collective creativity and rebellion. His plays show communities and individuals (men and women, straight and gay, inuential and marginalized) at various moments in Spanish history acting out the spirit of
machismo espaol as a marker of community identity, an enabler of individual self-expression and a means of resistance to the ideological and
Jos Mara
Rodrguez
Mndez was
one of the rst
dramatists to
challenge the
Franco regimes
dogmatic,
chauvinistic
denitions of
national history
and identity...
Rodrguez Mndez in Barcelona / Photograph courtesy of J.M. Rodrguez Mndez
Performing Spanishness
iQuote Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre. Gail Godwin
Right
Los inocentes de la Moncloa, Teatro Cmico (Madrid),
January 1964 / Photograph by Manuel Martnez Muoz
Far Right
La marca del fuego, Real Coliseo Carlos III (San Lorenzo
de El Escorial), November 1986 / Photograph by Chicho,
courtesy of Centro de Documentacin Teatral, Madrid
Below
El pjaro solitario, CEU San Pablo (Valencia), 1998 /
Photograph courtesy of J.M. Rodrguez Mndez
cultural control exercised by the state and by dominant social groups.

The other side of the coin is that Rodrguez Mndez offers a bleak picture of contemporary society (since the civil war), in which the participative creativity enabled by traditional forms of popular culture has
been eroded by industrialization, political control and the spread of
the mass media. This outlook becomes a cynical, sometimes simplistic or reactionary, view of post-Franco Spain which has ensured that he
remains as difcult and unorthodox a gure in the liberal, democratic
present as he was under the dictatorship. The past in his theatre is a
foreign country that is, paradoxically, more Spanish; they do things
more colourfully and creatively there.
Despite the fact that Rodrguez Mndezs work never explicitly
expressed political opposition to Francoism, he was one of the playwrights whose career was most severely damaged by the strict censorship maintained throughout the life of the regime. His plays provide
fascinating case studies of the unpredictable nature and stiing effect of
censorship on theatre in Spain in the 1960s and 70s. The censors tended
to be uncertain about how to evaluate them, perceiving something of

their profound cultural dissidence often puzzlingly at odds with an
apparently innocuous tone or conventional form but unable to agree
on exactly what made them dangerous. In a sense, Francos censors
paid Rodrguez Mndez an unwelcome backhanded compliment, fearing his work to be more powerful and subversive than he could have
hoped for. In the process, they repeatedly conrmed the political and
cultural importance of history and the unsettling power of theatre to
make the past simultaneously more foreign and more immediate. {
In a sense, Francos censors

paid Rodrguez Mndez an
unwelcome backhanded
compliment, fearing his work
to be more powerful and
subversive than he could have
hoped for. In the process,
they repeatedly conrmed the
political and cultural importance
of history and the unsettling
power of theatre to make the
past simultaneously more
foreign and more immediate.
FURTHER READING
Performing Spanishness:
History, Cultural Identity and
Censorship in the Theatre of
Jos Mara Rodrguez Mndez
By Michael Thompson | 19.95, $40
ISBN 978-1-84150-134-5
Performing Spanishness delves into the theatre
of Spanish dramatist Jos Mara Rodrguez
Mndez, one of the most signicant Spanish
playwrights of the twentieth century and an
acerbic cultural commentator.
This book traces the development of
Rodrguez Mndezs work from the hard
times of the Franco dictatorship through the
uncertainties of the transition to democracy.
Rodrguez Mndezs theatre is saturated by
the socially explosive concept of Spanishness,
dramatized as a dazzling range of popular
performances of cultural identity in various
periods from the middle ages to the present.
The author locates this impression in Rodrguez
Mndezs interpretation of machismo espaol
as a volatile, universal articulation of Spanish
identity charged with the dissident voice of
popular resistance to constraining political and
ideological structures.
The analysis of Rodrguez Mndezs work
from the late 1950s to the mid-70s is enriched by
detailed evidence from censors reports, providing fascinating case studies of the unpredictability of censorship under a dictatorial regime.
Art & Design

iQuote The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection. Michelangelo
The Visual in Communication

Some Hidden Dimensions. By Harry Jamieson
he visual as an agent in the communication process has grown

in importance as the means or
media through which it is transmitted has
expanded, but it is rarely explored with
the same rigour as that shown for the verbal, as, for example, in linguistics. This
state of affairs could be accounted for by
its apparent surface level innocence, its
engagement with the senses and, thus,
it appears closer to the natural order of
things. In terms of measurement, its existence as analogue means that it is based
upon a continuous scale, upon degrees
of difference, rather than the discrete
steps accorded to the digital. Even in the
case of half-tones in print and electronically generated images, the digitalized
is perceived perceptually as analogue, as
continuous, not composed from separate
elements, such as dots and pixels. When
cast in the register of language, a province
of the digital, the visual undergoes loss,
the loss, for example, of the subtle gradations that the eye can detect in colour and
words cannot explain. Likewise, there
is an inability to give full expression in
language to an aesthetic experience, for
example, the feelings engendered when
viewing mountain scenery. To these conditions we can also add the insufciency
of words to express adequately the nuances of visually perceived cues in social
encounters, which are echoed in lm and
television. Be that as it may, on closer
inspection it will be seen that a proper
understanding of the implications of the
visual as a medium in the communication
process calls for an awareness that goes
Near Capel Curig, North Wales by B.W. Leader, Walker Art Gallery
beyond the obvious, beyond its place as

a medium given to sight. It calls upon a
search for connections and inuences
that play a part additional to that given
to the eye. Thus we are led into elds as
diverse as those of, for example, psychology, semiology, information theory and
aesthetics. Here we may nd a rich source
of established research and writing which
can be drawn upon and used to uncover
the hidden dimensions that lie behind
the whole enterprise that we call visual
communication. At its base it is an intellectual activity, a search for relationships
and an awareness of the inuence they

exert upon the observable surface of the
visual in communication.
While at the practical/physical level,
visual media has undergone signicant
developments, from print to photography, including moving images and more
recently to computer-generated images,
and while its uses and abuses for political
and other purposes are raised in media
courses, the factors at work within the
individual viewer which coalesce to produce visual awareness and visual knowing
are rarely brought to the fore. Generally
Visual Communication
iQuote The idea of a mass audience was really an invention of the Industrial Revolution. David Cronenberg
The power of the visual

in communication relies
upon its involvement
with perception, the raw
perception of being in the
world of the senses, and,
thus, it may be said that it is
closer to nature than other
media which are not so
clearly identied.
Highway, USA
speaking, the medium itself becomes the

focus of attention, the wizardry of technical innovations casts its spell, the visual
assumes its pre-eminence as a carrier of
illusions.
The power of the visual in communication relies upon its involvement with
perception, the raw perception of being
in the world of the senses, and, thus, it
may be said that it is closer to nature than
other media which are not so clearly identied. This raises a paradox that while it
carries this potential, its engagement with
media introduces an arbitrary element,
one that is shaped by social and cultural
codes and conditioning. Taken to extremes the medium itself can appear to be
reality, if only momentarily, for example
the illusion of reality that lm and television is able to generate, and, likewise,
the illusion of reality that static images
known as trompe loeil can create.
Apart from the illusions which it can
generate, visual perception is, by its
nature, given to seeing things in contexts;
its engagement with the world is always
with settings. This attribute, with its
closeness to the natural state of things,
provides a signicant clue not only to
the way in which inference or meaning is
constructed, but also to the feeling engendered by the form of the visual image, its
aesthetic. In both cases it is the relationships between the parts, their spatial
proximity, that provides the signicant
clue to the way in which information is
inferred and aesthetic sensibility is felt.
However, although the viewer of images is presented with things in spatial
proximity, natural in direct perception
and artefactual in indirect, mediated
perception, it is only an offering of parts;
in both instances it calls upon the mind
to fuse the parts. The media creator offers
parts in juxtaposition, the viewer is called
upon to integrate them. It is a dynamic
act echoing visual perception itself, it is
individual. The fusion that takes place
becomes the meaning to that person, or
in the case of aesthetics, the feeling or

emotion. Film and television in their role
as image generators are perfect examples
of this state of things, they are given on
screens; things, people and events are
portrayed in spatial contexts. The contexts
may change serially, over time, as in moving images, but there is always a given or
an implied relationship which the viewer
has to complete from his or her repertoire
of mental connections, it is a search of
mind which may be conscious or subconscious. Likewise, in abstract paintings the viewer is called upon to search
for relationships between parts which,
when made, may evoke feelings without
any necessary recourse to verbalization or
conceptualization; this we refer to as an
aesthetic experience.
In all cases, when viewing images,
static or moving, the same principle applies; the mind is called upon to perceive
or search for relationships, to jump the
gaps between parts, to join that which
is proximal. The outcome of the search
depends not only upon the motivation to
carry out the task but the preparedness
of the mind that is carrying out the task.
The in-forming the form that the mind
takes as a result of the search, and the
connections it makes, is to that person
the meaning or, in the case of the aesthetic, the feeling. The maker of images,
moving or static, provides a spatial context in which he or she has placed (or has
arranged to be placed) specic elements
with the intention that, when fused, the
viewer will be informed (in-formed) in the
way intended.
To the importance of spatial proximity
we must add another term that is relevant
to the study of visual communication,
namely, the place of the icon. Here we
move into the shaded territory of the
verbal, and here the proximity factor
that we saw as a spatial entity shifts to
an ideational one. The ground is opened
for symbolism, for the icon to be read
as metaphor. Thus the relationship that
Art & Design

iQuote To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong. Joseph Chilton Pearce
Above Print by Derrick Hawker, 1975

Right Sibylla Palmifera by D.G.
Rosetti, Lady Lever Art Gallery
...I think the whole

digital revolution
has fostered a
tolerence for error.
In turn this tolerance
is producing a
generation of lazy
button pushers.
Further reading
we discussed earlier, the one of spatial

proximity, is extended to incorporate a
further dimension which may be termed
ideational proximity. The physicality of
the spatial is replaced by the space of the
mind, a search for connections in another mode, in another set, the icon acts
as metaphor, standing for something else
which has to be drawn from another pool
present only in the mind.
On the grounds put forward here, we
are now in a position to posit a connection with linguistics. The spatial proximity factor and the relationships observed
in images is known in linguistics as
metonymy, whereas when the image is
employed as icon it takes on the mantle
of metaphor. The importance of the visual
image in this scheme of things is that it
can take upon itself, in one image, each
of these roles. For example, it can display
features that, by their physical proximity within a frame, suggest a particular
meaning; it can arouse feelings through
the arrangement of the form without
concern for meaning; and, it can, as
icon, represent an idea, bring to mind
something which is not observed but only
suggested. However, in all cases, there
is a relationship issue. When employed
as metonymy, the clue is found in spatial
relationships, whereas when employed as
metaphor, as icon, the relationship is not
there before the eye but in the recesses
of the mind. In the rst place, that of
metonymy, there is a physical presence,
in the second, that of metaphor, the presence is one of thought.
In this article, some of the unobservable dimensions surrounding the visual
in communication have been brought to
light, it could be extended to include many
others; for example, the tacit dimension,
the covert visual cues which inform and
govern so much of human intercourse and
their employment in moving images. What
becomes obvious is that the surface level
of the visual hides much deeper strata. {
Visual Communication:
More Than Meets the Eye
By Harry Jamieson | 14.95, $30 ISBN 978-1-84150-141-3
We exist in a visual culture. The importance of reading and interpreting
signs has become a rapidly increasing
concern in recent years. This book
offers an intricate theoretical perspective regarding the study of visual
communication and expands the
academic arena for debate concerning the visual.
Veering away from normative
approaches, the author advances
with original strides into new ways of
understanding the visual experience. Departing from aesthetic and
graphic-based directions, the book
employs information and language

theory to support an enquiry into
the connection between perception and linguistics. In dealing with
ideas, rather than solutions, the book
resonates with a philosophical tenor.
However, the author is effective in
providing a practical basis for many
of the issues discussed alongside
this theoretical stance. This book is
targeted at a wide range of interdisciplinary readers including media,
cultural and communication studies
and particularly those with interests
in visual theory.
New for 2007/8
Intellect Journals
Publishers of original thinking / www.intellectbooks.com
Creative Industries
Journal
3 Numbers/Volume 1
ISSN 1751-0694
The Creative Industries

Journal studies talent and the
potential for wealth creation
in advertising, architecture,
the art & antiques market,
crafts, design, fashion, lm,
interactive leisure software,
music, the performing arts,
publishing, television and
radio. The journal provides a
forum to challenge denitional
assumptions, advance the
social, economic, cultural, and
political understanding and
engagement with the creative
industries at local, national and
transnational levels.
The Soundtrack
Northern Lights
Journal of Adaptation
in Film & Performance
1 Number/Volume 6
ISSN 1601-829X
Northern Lights: Film and

Media Studies Yearbook
has an emphasis on lm,
television and new media. The
publication takes the form of
a book-length anthology of
articles related to a specic
theme, incorporating some
deviations to add diversity of
INTELLECT OFFER n
content. Northern Lights was

rst published in 2002 and
acquired by Intellect in 2006
as an excellent companion to
their lm studies titles.
3 Numbers/Volume 1
ISSN 1751-4193
The Soundtrack focuses its

attention on the aural elements
which combine with moving
images. It regards the sounds
which accompany the visuals
not as a combination of disparate disciplines, but as a unied
and coherent entity. In addition
to the scholarly contribution of
academics, the journal will give
voice to the development of
professional practice.
3 Numbers/Volume 1
ISSN 1753-5190
Adaptation in the form of the

conversion of oral, historical
or ctional narratives into
stage drama has been common
practice for centuries. In our
own time the processes of
cross-generic transformation
continue to be extremely
important in theatre as well

as in the lm and other media
industries. Adaptation and the
related areas of translation and
intertextuality continue to have
a central place in our culture
with a profound resonance
across our civilisation.
Journal of Arab and

Muslim Research
3 Numbers/Volume 1
ISSN 1751-9411
The Journal of Arab and Muslim

Media Research will review
unprecedented developments
in Arab and Muslim media
during the last ten years. The
emergence of satellite TV, the
internet and digital technology
have dramatically changed
the way audiences receive
information and interact with
the media. The sudden success
of Al-Jazeera channel and other
Arab broadcasters have altered
the way the Arab world narrates
itself and reports news from the
region to the rest of the world.
NEW2008TITLES
For a print sample issue for 10 or a free electronic copy contact: Intellect. PO Box 862. Bristol BS99 1DE, UK
Tel: 44 (0)117 958 9910 / Fax: 44 (0)117 958 9911 / E-mail: mail@intellectbooks.com / www.intellectbooks.com
Media & Culture

iQuote Dont hate the media, become the media. Jello Biafra
Televisions New Engine

The Principle of the TV Format. By Albert Moran
elevision is all shook up!

In the post-broadcasting
present of television, new
structures, nances, technologies and players dominate the
global mediaspace. One of the
most important of these new
engines is the new worldwide
system for the distribution and
production of programming
based on the principle of the TV
format. All television programs
like all other human artefacts can be variously copied,
imitated, cloned, adapted,
counterfeited, parodied and so
on quite irrespective of what one
thinks of the results. The TV
format principle, then, simply
increases the adaptability of a
program from place to place
and from time to time. It does
this by systematically gathering
together into a total package the
set of knowledges, skills, information and other data which
will make it easier to produce
another version of the program.
Hence, one homely way in which
the international TV industry
thinks about formats is as akin
to cooking recipes out of which
attractive and engaging concoctions can be prepared. A much
more useful way of understanding the TV format is in terms of
being a franchising service that
producers prepare for licensees
in other television territories. A
franchise from MacDonalds offers much more than tips on how

to prepare hamburgers and fries.
Hence, a TV program format
franchise is a complex and comprehensive body of knowledge
that not only offers a lot of advice
on how to make a particular program but also carries signicant
information and advice in such
areas as nancing, programming, scheduling, promotion,
marketing and so on.
However, the full signicance
of this extension to parts of the
service industry of franchising cannot be conned to the
phenomenon of worldwide
circulation of such formatted
programs as Big Brother, Pop Idol
and Changing Rooms. Instead, the
format principle has acted as
Trojan Horse to two highly signicant developments in the area
of international programming
distribution and production.
For franchising is, primarily, a
means of distributing a service
on a large, international scale
where the franchise becomes
a means of drawing a series of
small geographically dispersed
companies in the areas of production and transmission into
relationship with a centralized
body which is in the business
of franchising out to nationally
local companies. In turn, it is
with the latter, often working in
Eddie McGuire in Australias Who Wants to be a Millionaire!
...one homely
way in which the
international TV
industry thinks
about formats is
as akin to cooking
recipes out of
which attractive
and engaging
concoctions can
be prepared.
conjunction with an experienced

visiting producer provided by
the licensor, who actually brings
the German or the Australian
version of Dancing with the Stars
into existence. Because much of
the latter processes have been
templated, it is best to think
of this latter set of processes
as manufacturing rather than
producing. Hence, a second
signicant effect of the global
TV format is to fracture program
production into creative work on
the one hand and manufacture
work on the other and to also
despatialize them in the process.
Altogether, it is high time that
this new engine of international
television was better understood
and investigated. {
Televisions New Engine

iQuote The advertisements are the most truthful part of a newspaper. Thomas Jefferson
MORE BOOKS
OF INTEREST n
FURTHER READING
Understanding the
Global TV Format
By Albert Moran with Justin Malbon
19.95, $40 / ISBN 978-1-84150-132-1
In this concise and well-researched

study, the authors examine the global
television format as an entity in itself
and monitor the developmental stages
from conception to distribution.
The book charters the exceptional
success of such shows as Big Brother
and Who Wants to be a Millionaire and
in turn the powerful inuence these
programmes have commanded in
shaping the global television industry.
Focusing on the marketing of cultural
demand, the TV format is shown to
have evolved into a commodity blueprint, which is then imitated, marketed
and sold for mass consumption.
Understanding the Global TV Format
addresses the different stages and issues of the broadcasting business. The
book tracks the steps whereby formats
are devised, developed and distributed.
Major companies are proled, as are
the international markets and festivals
at which trade occurs.
RT and the Globalisation of Irish Television

By Farrel Corcoran / 14.95, $30 / ISBN 978-1-84150-090-4
For about 40 years, RTEs radio and television channels have played an enormous
role in shaping Irish social and cultural life. As the national publicly owned and
funded broadcaster, RTE is the biggest cinema, school, sports stadium, market
square, performance stage, town crier and concert hall in Ireland. It sets the agenda for the national conversation that drives modern Ireland.
This work is a study of the structural transformations now taking place in Irish
broadcasting. The book will focus on the broadcasting section generally, but primarily on RTE, as it adjusts to a number of radical changes in the eld of forces
whose impact began to accelerate in the mid-1990s. The book will take the form of
a critical history of the present and an investigation of the future of broadcasting
in Ireland. Its analytical framework will be situated within the broader context of
contemporary European media policy and trends in the global structure of the cultural industries as they adjust to the deployment of digital compression technology, increasing conglomeration in the media industry worldwide and new regulatory regimes profoundly inuenced by the ideology of market liberalism.
RTEs work is frequently shrouded in secrecy and mystique, which means that
conspiracy theories abound about how it is governed and how it relates to various
power centres in Irish life. This book is rmly aimed at increasing the transparency
that should characterise public broadcasting and demystifying this national institution that plays such an enormous role in the cultural and political life of Ireland.
There is a huge appetite for such a book because of the general high level of curiosity about the institutional life of the national broadcaster and because no seriously
analytical book on RTE has appeared on the market for over twenty years.
Sensing the City through Television:

Urban identities in ctional drama
By Peter Billingham / 14.95, $30 / ISBN 978-1-84150-842-9
An investigation of the ctional representations of the city in contemporary British
and American television drama, assessing their political, sociological and cultural
implications. The book draws on the following ve key case studies for specic and
detailed analysis: Queer as Folk Armistead Maupins Tales of the City The Cops
Homicide - Life on the Street Holding On.
Each is discussed in terms of structure, content, characterisation and narrative,
and placed within its specic ideological context. The case studies represent an
interesting range of British and American cities and city sub-cultures. The author
extends his analysis to investigate the intrinsic issues related to the implications
of popular and high drama and culture. Featuring excerpts of exclusive interviews
with Tony Garnett and members of the production team of The Cops and Tony
Marchant and David Snodin of Holding On.
As one of the rst substantial investigations of the city in television drama, this
book reects a growing general interest in the politics of representation. It is also
designed for accommodation into the very popular academic courses on drama
and in lm and media studies: as a textbook and for supplementary reading.
TO ORDER THE BOOKS ABOVE, GO TO WWW.INTELLECTBOOKS.COM

intellect books| Film Studies / Theatre & Performance / Art & Design / Media & Culture
Spring
Books
Media & Culture
Media & Culture
Film Studies
One for the Girls: The

Pleasures and Practices of
Reading Womens Porn
ByClarissa Smith
Reclaiming the Media

Edited by Bart Cammaerts
and Nico Carpentier
Film, Drama and the

Break-Up of Britain
By Steve Blandford
29.95 / $55.00
19.95 / $40.00
19.95 / $40.00
ISBN 978-1-84150-164-2
ISBN 978-1-84150-163-5
ISBN 978-1-84150-150-5
Hardback, 230 x 174mm
Paperback, 230 x 174mm
Paperback, 230 x 174mm
Against the claims of the increasing

sexualization of culture, one truism is
constantly rehearsed that women have
little taste for pornography. In One for
the Girls!, a new basis for understanding
womens pleasures in sexually explicit
materials is offered, focusing on the
production and consumption of For
Women magazine. This thought-provoking book argues that theories of harm and
womens subordination have deected
attention away from the lived experiences and practices of pornography.
The book examines the ways in which
pornography has become a favoured
repository of social fears and debunks
the myth of the evil pornographer
producing images of objectied women
for troubled male viewers. By focusing
on an individual publication, this book illuminates the ways in which pornography
is a social product and subject to a range
of institutional practices which inuence
its styles and presentations.
It hardly goes uncontested anymore that

media organizations play an important
role in democracy. The main questions
have now become whether the contemporary media conjuncture offers enough
to our democracies, how their democratic
investment can be deepened and how our
communication rights can be expanded.
This book looks at four thematic areas
that structure the opportunities for
democratizing (media) democracy.
Section one is devoted to citizenship
and the public spheres, giving special
attention to the general theme of communication rights. Section two elaborates
further on a notion central to communication rights, namely that of participation.
Section three returns to the traditional
representational role in relation to democracy and citizenship, scrutinizing and
criticizing the democratic efforts of contemporary journalism. Section four moves
outside of the (traditional) media system,
and deals with the diversity of media and
communication strategies of activists.
This book engages with ideas that are

highly topical and relevant: nationalism,
nationhood and national identity as well
as the relationship of these to post-colonialism. However, it does so within
the broad eld of drama. Examining the
debates around the relationship between
culture and national identity, the book
documents the contributions of actual
dramatists and lm-makers to the chronicling of an important historical moment.
Breaking down what have been traditional barriers between theatre, lm
and television studies, the text takes into
consideration the very broad range of
ways in which the creators of dramatic
ctions are telling us stories about ourselves at a time when the idea of being
British is increasingly problematic. A
very wide range of material is discussed
in the book, ranging from box-ofce hits
such as The Full Monty to communitybased theatre in Scotland and Wales.
Order from www.intellectbooks.com
Q&A
iQuote There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you its going to be a buttery. Buckminster Fuller
Practice-Led Research
Q&A with Graeme Harper, editor of
The Journal of Creative Industries
Practice-led research is getting a lot of attention

lately in the Arts, Film and Media around universities
in Britain? What does it mean?
Thats the question on everyones lips! The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is currently investigating what the various
subject communities mean by practice-led research. Subject associations from Architecture, Fine Art, Art and Design, Dance and Drama,
Music and Creative Writing, among others, are considering this, and
a national Steering Committee has been set up by the AHRC, and will
report back in early 2007. Without preempting what the AHRC Committee and Subject Associations might say my denition would be research undertaken through creative practice, most often resulting in
the production of an original piece of creative work.
So practice-led research means creative practice?
To a large extent. However... ! Many practice-led research projects
also incorporate some record or element of critical analysis. I call this
a piece of responsive critical understanding. That is, something that
shows the creative practitioner understands their own practice and
the practice of others, within context, and is able to respond to this
and show that understanding. This is also important in a university
environment because universities need to show that, through teaching and research, they have enhanced a body of knowledge, and the
practitioners critical response assists in articulating that knowledge
gain in such things, say, as postgraduate research degrees in lmmaking or creative writing or digital media production or drama.
Doesnt that make such postgraduate degrees almost two degrees?
Thats something that can happen, if the thing is done badly. Its important to see the creative practice and
the critical understanding as a complete
package, not as two separate things.
But dont you think this kind of research can have a negative effect: that
it might make creative practice academic rather than about the creating
of something in its own right?
Thats an interesting angle to consider.
Firstly, we have to remember that Higher Education has always involved higher
learning in creative practice. Always!
From Platos Academy onward and elsewhere, beyond the western world, places of higher learning have been places
of advanced creative practice. Secondly,
we have to wonder why the explication
and examination of practice in the creative industries subjects still concerns
some people its as if somehow Romantic ideas about creative genius pre-
Video Conference Glass Cube, CAST (Bangor) / Photo: GH
So we argue that the question

should no longer be do the
media cause violence? but
what factors may be important
in adding to the potential of the
media to cause (harm/offence)
among a range of factors?
Media & Culture

iQuote Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. Erich Fromm
vail and are undermined by close consideration of creative practice.

They dont and, anyway, theyre not! What does undermine creative
practice, I believe, is a failure to give it university kudos; that is, a failure to recognize its importance in and around universities. That lack
of kudos we have to work on and counter by promoting universities as
places of creative teaching and creative practice research.
What kinds of things have you seen going on in practice-led research?
The list is not as endless as it might be! Certainly areas of thematic
study: someone producing a lm or a novel or a set of paintings based
on a theme, and then investigating that theme as a cultural phenomenon. Areas also of structural and form-based research: practice-led
researchers attempting to evolve an established creative form and,
then, investigating in their critical responses the historical context and
then contemporary difculty of moving that particular form on. Also,
areas of research involving the links between self and society through
creative works whether new media, drama, lm, music or otherwise.
Sometimes the latter focuses on looking at other individual practitioners and their contributions, modes of working, or life histories and
then producing original work that reects on the links between that
creative and working life and the practice-led researchers own creative work. At present what limits the range of practice-led research
going on is perhaps not so much a lack of ideas. If that were the case
wed be in trouble! What limits the range is a lack of a set of practiceled research denitions, theories and models in our elds and, thus, a
lack of condence that such research will be supported by universities
and research councils.
So that is what the AHRC is currently considering?
Yes. The importance of current national discussions on practice-led
research cannot be overemphasized. Creative practice is
a mode of engaging with the
World, and it is a mode of examining the things and ideas
in and around us, investigating
them, exchanging ideas about
them, advancing our engagement with, and understanding
of, them. The range of practiceled research in Britain is already
cutting edge in many ways, but
as yet it is not as well recognized
and internationally known as it
could be. The new Creative Industries interest from governments worldwide has helped to
raise questions about practiceled research that should have
been asked some time ago. But
thats ne we can ask them
now. And make inroads into answering them!

What kind of questions?
Quite basic, but fundamental, ones. Such as: where is practice-led research taking place? What activities does practice-led research cover?
Who is doing practice-led research? Who nancially supports practice-led research currently at least? How is practice-led research
acknowledged? Those kinds of things. Questions about the research
itself, but also about its cultural, economic and societal importance.
So the future of practice-led research, then?
Is very exciting, for starters! Its full of possibilities around the idea
of exploring ideas, subjects and themes through the production of
original creative work. Fantastic possibilities! Once better acknowledgement is given to this type of activity as a way of investigating, examining and responding to questions then more opportunities arise
to create collaborative work, to link up creative practitioners with critical specialists in order to investigate modes of human understanding,
to support cutting-edge creative projects that might reveal more about
ourselves and our World, as well as enhance the dimensions of culture. Similarly, cross-cultural work, work between arts and sciences,
thoughts about technologies and their impact on creative practice.
This is just a small cross section of the probable future. Much of this
is happening already, but it is often poorly supported nancially, and
sometimes poorly supported politically, within universities. The future
is about recognizing the university as a creative place and a place of excellence in learning, and making more of the wonderful link between
those two important things. {
The range of practice-led research in

Britain is already
cutting edge in
many ways, but as
yet it is not as well
recognized and internationally known
as it could be.
Sculpture, Centre for Advanced Software Technology (CAST) / Photo: GH
Art & Design

iQuote The world is but a canvas to the imagination. Henry David Thoreau
Indexed Lights
Text by Pierre Auboiron The artist is always engaged in writing a detailed history of the
future because he is the only person aware of the nature of the present. Wyndham Lewis
ne of the most vivid modern metaphors for light is its allegoric our streets safer, has swiftly become a powerful tool which rationalizes
embodiment of electricity. Although invisible, electricity is of- and signposts the City at nightfall. At night, a city is rst announced from
ten represented by brightly coloured sparks and ashes. In the the distance to an approaching traveller by its diffused lights in the sky.
collective consciousness light is the true substance of electricity. On a However, owing to the development and democratization of new techcomputer, small ickering lights indicate an active hard drive or network nologies, urban lighting schemes have entered a new age and, accomconnection. Many people are familiar with the image of HAL, the computer panying this, an alternative and oneiric approach to light has emerged.
which played a leading role in Stanley Kubricks lm 2001, A Space Odyssey. This has lead to a signicant break with the traditional comprehension
HALs physical presence was manifested by a visual sensor: a simple lens of light in the City.
lit by an inner, reddish glow. Arthur C. Clark describes HAL as a simple
Two artists in particular have embraced this new approach to urban
spherical lens in his epic. The red glow
lighting: the French light designer Yann
was Kubricks addition; it allowed him
Kersal and the Japanese architect Toyo
to animate HAL with an inner re giving
Ito in collaboration with the engineer Kaoru Mende. Using very complex lighting
HAL a disconcertingly human feel. This
systems, made of sensors and computers,
is directly linked with both metaphorical
these artists can materialize and visualand metaphysical aspects of light: since
ize environmental phenomena such as
the origin of humankind, light has represented and embodied what is invisible
noises, draughts, the current of a river and
invisible human activity on the buildings
and intangible, as well as what has disappeared.
themselves. Thereby they intend to make
Visual culture is here and now and its hebuildings t back into their historical and
socio-geographical environment.
gemony within our cities no longer needs ralph lombreglia
This type of project is not exclusively
to be proved. Light, being the essence of
any visual communication, and new techJapanese or French. When Jonathan Speirs
nologies, as prevailing information vecwas asked in 1996 to design the lighting
NEW INTELLECT TITLE FUTURES PAST:
tors, have both played a leading role in
of the technical tower of Bridgewater Hall
30 YEARS OF ARTS COMPUTING n
the hegemonic expansion of visuality in
in Manchester, he decided to turn it into a
the City. The proliferation of neon signs,
Tower of Time. There are three different light
plasma screens, and lighted shop windows are all symptomatic. The his- indexations: the interior lighting changes according to the zodiac cycle,
tory of urbanism tells us that the City has always been the birthplace of while light on the exterior reects the time of year, starting with green for
every paroxysm: technological, social, cultural, artistic and economic. spring, and running through yellow, red and blue, denoting each subseFrom this perspective, the City has, naturally, become the temple where quent season in a gradual wash of colour. Last but not least, lines of light
all forms of visual media are not just celebrated but even over-consumed. tubing delineate the eight storeys of the building and indicate the day of
Cities have become the privileged scene of this complete and radical trans- the week. This complex abstract clock obviously echoes ancient observaformation of the rhythm of human society. A new architectural approach tories like Stonehenge and the ancient desire to adjust human activity to
to light has become widespread: in the course of the last few years the natural cycles.
In 1997, James Turrell was commissioned to light the ofce building
novelty of new architecture lies more in the way that it is illuminated than
in its outer design.
and computer centre for the natural gas industry, the Verbundnetz AG in
Architects and town planners have always obsessively sought to master Leipzig. The building is totally self-sufcient in terms of energy due to
light, but it has proved ever-elusive. The discovery of electricity and its both its own gas-fuelled power station and to a system adjusting the heatlarge-scale generation provided the rst true opportunity to push back ing and air-circulating systems. The artist decided to index his lighting to
the night. From this perspective, light, which was initially used to make this autarchic technological world. The light colours vary according to the
The proper artistic response to

digital technology is to embrace
it as a new window on everything
thats eternally human, and to
use it with passion, wisdom,
fearlessness and joy.
Indexed Lights
iQuote All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once they grow up. P. Picasso
temperature that the energy supplier provides. According to Turrell, Light

should be a material with which we build. This suggestion echoes among
light designers throughout the last third of the twentieth century.
Thanks to the sensitive application of new technologies, these artists
make concepts and aspects of our everyday life visible and more tangible.
Thereby, they try to ght the decline in interpersonal communication in
todays urban life which is one of the results of increasing visuality. In
this instance, computers, associated with light, act like prostheses and
compensate for our inability to comprehend our environment in its entire complexity. They materialize phenomena we can no longer perceive
because we have developed our visual sense to the detriment of our other
senses. Here the artists work does not deal with creating something new
but with making existing things visible. Ito, Turrell, or Kersal, do not
claim to produce an aesthetic experience in their work. They do not use
light for its ability to mesmerize, but for its ability to embody the intan-
They teach us how

to look again at our
direct environment
by looking beyond
the static, aesthetic
veneer which
now covers and
conceals all aspects
of society.
gible. They teach us how to look

again at our direct environment
by looking beyond the static, aesthetic veneer which now covers
and conceals all aspects of society.
Kaoru Mende commented that we
are getting fewer opportunities to
enjoy the sense of changing time.
Part of the reason is that we have
become accustomed to lighting
environments which always stay
the same. Thanks to this visual
experience, people are becoming
visually aware of the complex and
highly interwoven societal system
in which we live. This concurs
with the desire of contemporary
architects to incorporate light as
a material in its own right as well
as providing nocturnal visibility,
when designing public buildings.
From this perspective, they offer a
more organic and intimate perception of their buildings by depriving them of any precise outlines
and invading them with light.
We may now moderate the
widespread notion that computLeft and Below Le thtre-temps (1993)
ers are synonymous with a cold
Yann Kersal AIK
and sanitized individuality. For
Above La ville-euve (19911998)
Yann Kersal AIK
instance, when Yann Kersal or
Toyo Ito tell the story of a particular building or district, they force
the viewer to gaze afresh at the world. The current association of light
and new technologies in large Light Festivals represents a new step in
todays re-appropriation of our urban and technological environments.
The City has become much more than a simple artistic subject, it is now
a large-scale location for societal experimentation. It seems that the last
gaps in dreams must be sought in the eye of the visual whirlwind itself,
in other words, in the City itself. {
Pierre Auboiron is a Ph.D. student of Contemporary Art History at Panthon-Sorbonne University in Paris. His research is concerned with light
as a material in current artistic practices, such as installations, videos,
projections, architecture and theatre. Drawing on his background in visual
electrophysiology and his interest in visual semiotics, he is currently writing a textbook of visual physiology for Art History students.
Art & Design

iQuote You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all at. Renoir
ESTABLISHED IN 1985, Computers and the History of Art (CHArt) is

an independent, international group of academics, students and
professionals. CHArt looks at the transformation that Arts and Art
History are undergoing through engagement with digital technology.
CHArts original, largely university-based, membership was
augmented over the years by members from museums and art
galleries, as well as individuals involved in the management of visual
and textual archives and libraries. More recently CHArt has become a
forum for the exchange of ideas concerned with all aspects of visual
culture. CHArt continues to promote this activity in a number of ways.
CHArt publications draw from the CHArt annual, two-day
conference, which focuses on topical issues and current developments
in the eld. Papers and a newsletter are published online at www.chart.
ac.uk. Papers also appear in the CHArt Yearbook, which has been
published by Intellect Books since 2005.
FREEBIES
PREVIEWS
DISCOUNTS
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FURTHER READING
Digital Art History | Computers

& the History of Art Series Vol. 1
Futures Past: Thirty Years of

Arts Computing | Computers &
the History of Art Series Vol. 2
Edited by Anna Bentkowska-Kafel,

Trish Cashen and Hazel Gardiner
19.95, $40.00 / ISBN 978-1-84150-116-1
This collection of papers represents the variety, innovation and richness
of signicant presentations made at the CHArt Conferences of 2001 and
2002. Some show new methods of teaching being employed, making
clear in particular the huge advantages that IT can provide for engaging
students in learning and interactive discussion. It also shows how much
is to be gained from the exibility of the digital image or could be gained
if the road block of copyright is nally overcome. Some papers here show
how it also offers the opportunity of exploring the structure of images and
dealing with the fascinating possibilities offered by digitisation for visual
analysis, searching and reconstruction. Another challenging aspect covered here are the possibilities offered by digital media for new art forms.
One point that emerges is that digital art is not some discreet practice,
separated from other art forms. It is rather an approach that can involve
all manner of association with both other art practices and with other
forms of presentation and enquiry, demonstrating that we are witnessing
a revolution that affects all our activities and not one that simply leads to
the establishment of a new discipline to set alongside others.
Edited by Anna Bentkowska-Kafel,

Trish Cashen and Hazel Gardiner
19.95, $40.00 / ISBN 978-1-84150-168-0
Eleven contributors to this volume reect upon the unprecedented ways in
which digital media have been transforming art practice, study and education. The authors researchers, teachers, custodians of art collections
and picture libraries, and an artist cover a wide range of issues, arguing
for a more profound understanding of digital culture. With the benet of
hindsight it is now possible to look at futures past and assess the disparities between earlier visions of the future and reality. Frank accounts are
given of projects which had promised great advances but failed to deliver,
and others that have not only survived but continue to ourish. Another
account demonstrates how an individual can make a difference to students learning by applying new technologies in a very pragmatic way. One
of the most exciting advancements hinted at in this volume are the ways
in which communities of interest are developing shared resources and cultivating a richer use of common vocabulary and standards to transmit an
abundance of knowledge and experience. A look forward to the Semantic
Web promises an even wider sharing of knowledge.
024 filmfeature
Media
& Culture
exclusive
interview
living
alone
iQuote All media exist
to invest our lives with
articial perceptions
and arbitrary values. M. McLuhan
Media and Democracy

A Strange Paradox
By Paolo Baldi and Uwe Hasebrink
FEW PEOPLE would disagree

with the idea that broadcasting is
one of the most important facilitators of the democratic process.
European citizens are constantly
asked to express their views and
opinions on increasingly complex
issues: consequently they have
developed legitimate expectations regarding the broadcasting
output, notably to providing the
cultural resources required for a
full and modern citizenship. From
the Iraq conict to the European
elections (including the vote on
the EU Constitution); from the
reforms of educational or pension
funding systems to the debate on
the climate or nutrition changes,
European citizens need to be appropriately involved by the media.
They need extensive coverage,
accurate treatment and editorial
independence. Beyond news, citizens expect knowledge oriented
programming. The very concepts
of democracy and welfare are
based on such simple but vital
provision of civic services.
Everybody agrees on that. But
if we look at the (recent) impoverishment of the television
programming and in parallel
at the difculties that national
governments and media authorities encounter in regulating (that
is, improving) the broadcasting
From the Iraq conict to the European

elections... from the reforms of
educational or pension funding systems
to the debate on the climate or nutrition
changes, European citizens need to be
appropriately involved by the media.
output we discover a real paradox:
a discrepancy between declared
political objectives and the available television output. As a matter
of fact, broadcasters (including the
public service broadcasters) are
probably the most reluctant institutions and here is the paradox
in accepting to be accountable to
society. In other sectors of activity
like the nancial one social
responsibility, corporate governance, accountability and transparency have recently acquired
the status of serious issues to be
urgently addressed: in all sectors
except in what is unanimously
called the most important one:
the broadcasting sector.
This situation has its social
costs. Inferior programming
cannot be considered simply as
a bad show that people are not
obliged to watch. The growing
presence of poor programming in
the European schedules prevents
any other type of programming

reaching viewers. Too many and
too important are the sectors of
the society health, employment,
environment, education, etc.
that are damaged by poor programming. In short, beyond the
moralistic attitude that demonizes
trash or cheap television, there
is a more simple and urgent issue
of knowledge availability.
The multiplication of the digital
platforms (Internet, broadband,
mobile phone, etc.) does not
change the nature of the problem
and its political urgency. Television is still playing a central
role in our lives as we are still
spending an important part of
our time watching what few and
increasingly concentrated media
corporations produce and disseminate via the classic platforms
(cable, satellite and terrestrial) or
the new digital ones. As a matter
of fact, the broadcasting output
in all its variety of genres (news,

sports, movies, cartoons, events,
etc.) is still the golden content
that all the platform operators
in all the countries are ghting
for. In short, television programming is and will be regardless
the platform that we will use or
the screen we will watch the
primary source of information
that people have at their disposal
for shaping their opinions and
for participating, therefore, in the
democratic process. {
FURTHER READING
Broadcasters and
Citizens in Europe
Edited by Paolo Baldi & Uwe Hasebrink
29.95, $55 / ISBN 978-1-84150-160-4
In this book, ve authors present
the main results of an extensive
programme of research that was
nanced by the European Commission. The study was conducted
in 29 European countries and
each author analyses European
trends from different but complementary perspectives: from
the broadcasters side (media
accountability and responsibility,
including the key role of Public
Service Broadcasting); from the
citizens side (viewers participation mechanisms) and from the
regulatory side (legal instruments
which protect viewers rights).
Film Studies
iQuote Everyone has a photographic memory. Some dont have lm. Unknown
Pride and Panic
Russian Imagination of the

West in Post-Soviet Film
By Yana Hashamova
PRIDE AND PANIC: Russian
Imagination of the West in Post-Soviet Film examines lm images,
characters and themes in order to
investigate how Russia has reacted
and adjusted to the expansion
of western capital and culture in
Russia itself. My analysis focuses generally on Russian lms
produced after the collapse of the
Soviet Union, paying special attention to those made during the last
ve to six years a period in which
the Russian lm industry began to
revive and became more marketoriented, fully reecting social
angst. In drawing on lm imagery,
I address a number of compelling
questions: How is the image of
the other constructed in recent
Russian lm? Is it possible to
embrace a foreign culture and be
simultaneously afraid of it? How
does this fear affect the perception
of self and other in an ever-changing identity formation? What are
the fantasies and defenses that
operate when national and cultural
identity is in ux?
This book studies Russias
imagination of the West as it
developed at the turn of the millennium, an imagination which in its
shifting sentiments, fantasies, fears
and anxieties resembles changes
similar to those the adolescent undergoes in search of a more stable
and permanent identity. Russian

national identity adjusts to staggering political, social, economic and
cultural transformations occurring
in Russia and in the global world.
In this adjustment, the Russian
collective imagination reacts to the
western presence in Russian society
and culture as it exhibits disparate
attitudes that take the form of
superuous and impatient relations
with the (western) other, aggressive
and paranoid urges, complete rejection of external (western) models,
search for positive internal sources
(past and culture) for identication,
and a more mature and reective
perception of self (Russia) and
other (West) with their constructive
and destructive aspects.
Attempting to establish links
between political ideology, psychoanalysis and cinema, I have
also traced the shifting dynamics
of Russias fantasy of the West as
it appears in post-Soviet cinema.
Thus, my cultural critique (literate
in fantasy) of early 1990s lms
reveals the apparently illusionary nature of this fantasy as
manifested in clichd images and
patriotic messages. The collapse
of the Berlin Wall tempted Russian
viewers with unimagined opportunities, but, as it becomes clear
in the lms, these opportunities
were deceptive and the fantasy of
Storozhevas The Frenchman
Barber of Siberia and Sokurovs Russian Ark turn the Russian viewers
attention to Russias rich history of
honor, dignity and loyalty to ones
country, as well as world-class
culture, and, thus, its potential for
a glorious future.
There are lms that testify
to a more diverse discourse of
anxieties and fantasies that not
only produce aggression but also
deate it. Peculiarities of the National
Hunt in Fall and Cuckoo encourage
understanding and acceptance of
difference. Rogozhkin advocates
agreement and friendship and resists hatred and violence. Of Freaks
and Men even suggests Russias
Russia has continually shocked the

world. It implemented Marxist theories
the rst in the world to do so much
to Marxs own disbelief in that countrys
readiness for revolution.
the West remained potent. In the
mid-1990s when the West became
a part of Russian life, the distance
between the (Russian) subject and
his/her fantasy collapsed and new
fantasies emerged, namely aggressive anti-western sentiments
as well as admiration for Russias
moral superiority (evident in
Balabanovs lms).
To compensate for a global traumatic experience, Russias search
for a new national identity nds
expressions in lms that glorify
Russias uniqueness in history,
art and religion. Mikhalkovs The
own destructive attitudes and the

way it is capable of victimizing its
own ethnic others.
Russias entanglement with
the West also becomes apparent
in lms that portray romantic
relationships between Russian and
western characters. Russian viewers desire to nd happiness in a
union that transgresses national
borders is inscribed in lms such
as On Deribasovskaia, Window to Paris, The Barber of Siberia, Gods Envy,
and The Frenchman. Most of these
lms, however, deny the possibility of such happiness, which in
NEW INTELLECT TITLE

FURTHER INFORMATION OVERLEAF n
Q&A
iQuote An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
turn speaks of political, social and

historical conditions hostile to
international relationships. The
desire to identify with ones country and its problems reigns over
the desire to be cosmopolitan.
Over the last two centuries,
Russia has continually shocked
the world. It implemented Marxist theories the rst in the world
to do so much to Marxs own
disbelief in that countrys readiness for revolution. Ready or not,
the October Revolution shook the
world with its attempt to liberate
people from their idols (money,
property and religion) and in its
own way prepared the postmodern rearrangement of knowledge
by questioning all traditions. This
book uncovers Russias latent
desires and fantasies in her relations with the West, but in spite
(or because) of them, Russia has
always been a fascinating place,
with its mixture of globe-shaking
politics and world-class culture.
The future whatever it holds
promises nothing less. {
FURTHER READING
Pride and Panic: Russian

Imagination of the West in
Post-Soviet Film
By Yana Hashamova | 29.95, $55
ISBN 978-1-84150-156-7
Now available. Order from:
Loving Books and

the Life of the Mind
Q&A with Robert W. Lawler
Why did you choose Intellect as
your publisher?
When I met Masoud Yazdani many
years ago at Le Centre Mondial
LInformatique in Paris, I was
impressed both by his intellectual
seriousness and geniality. He was
very helpful as a consulting editor
with Ablex before Intellect. I knew
his values in regard to scholarship
and supporting authors would be
primary values of Intellect as well.
This was an obvious choice for me.
How many books have you
published with Intellect and why?
The two pioneering volumes of
Articial Intelligence and Education were
published by Ablex as was Case Study
and Computing, with Kathleen Carley,
Professor of Sociology at Carnegie
Mellon. That book is both a defense
of the Case Method in the social
sciences and concrete examples of
such studies that work contains
ideas for data organizations and
analysis that will be useful whether
access is local or through the
Internet. Learning and Computing was
my rst book published by Intellect.
It is designed to be accessible to
non-specialist readers and to bring
together my papers in Computing,
Education, Psychology and Articial
Intelligence.
What is the underlying argument
put forward in your books?
Professionally my life has revolved
around the use of case studies in

exploring the nature of knowledge.
My books are less like scholastic
argument than trips taken, observations made and conclusions drawn.
My companions on these trips are
diverse heroes Ive known, ranging from humanist savants such as
Susanne Langer and Piaget through
scientists from Pauling and Feynman
to Warren McCulloch and Minsky,
and psychologists from Kurt Lewin
to Robert White and, of course,

the diverse polymaths Ive enjoyed
working with, as different as Papert
and Selfridge as well as the poets
who always whisper in my ear during
quiet times.
Clearly books are an important part
of your life. How did that happen?
Where I grew up, the local library
was a nearby place I could explore
on my own. I remember looking into
Spinozas attempt to axiomatize
When I was young, libraries were a place

I could explore on my own. Books became
places to seek answers to the deepest
questions and, even more, places to
discover good questions to ask.
MARVIN MINSKY (LEFT) WITH

ROBERT W. LAWLER IN 2005 AT MIT
Robert W. Lawler
iQuote Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order. Virginia Woolf
ethics and pursuing many other

dead ends but I also encountered
there Peter Vierecks book The Unadjusted Man, focused on individual
freedom and the value of western
civilization in providing more and
various burrows of freedom in
which such independent people
could exist. When I was young,
libraries were one such place. Books
became places to seek answers to the
deepest questions and, even more,
places to discover good questions
to ask. There, too, I found N. J.
Berrills book Mans Emerging Mind, a
lodestone of my intellectual journey.
Ive heard your colleague Minsky
is publishing a new book. Is it an
important one?
When I mention other thinkers to
him, Minsky always asks, Whats
really profound in the work of X?
So its appropriate then to ask,
Whats really profound in the work
of Minsky? Many years ago, Marvin
(Minsky, ed.) mentioned how hard it
was to write academically respectable articles about his view of mind.
I urged him then to write a sequel
to The Society of Mind, arguing for a
future suite of web pages, with all
the lexicographical simplicity of
structured programs, reecting in its
variety the variety of aspects of mind.
The aim? To create a foundation for
a new generation of AI research, a
foundation permitting and supporting future research efforts branching
off from the proposals and challenges each page could suggest.
This idea, which Marvin surely had
thought of himself too, may have had
a special appeal to him because it directly addressed a theme close to his
heart, the importance of engaging
adolescent geniuses in a discipline
somewhat like mathematics, where
early creativity is most frequently

found.
So, future students will be able to
look here for research problems
and ideas.
I would describe the two volumes of
The Society of Mind and The Emotion
Machine as a conceptual armory for
attacking the kludge-like structure
and function of our evolved minds.
If this is more than merely a
collection of popularized ideas, tell
me why.
The deepest root here lies in the
long division between psychology
and Articial Intelligence. In The
Emotion Machine, the three most
frequently referenced psychologists
are Freud (for his structural creativity), Williams James and Aristotle.
The Harvard psychologist Sheldon
White suggested to me, after reading
an early draft of The Emotion Machine,
that Minsky should look into the
ways that his view of mind was similar to that of William James. Marvin
found his ideas very congenial.
The prominence of Aristotle in The
Emotion Machine is amusing to those
of us who know of Marvins long
engagement with science ction.
His friend Van (A. E. Van Vogt) wrote
the sci- masterpiece The World of
Null-A, which followed Korzybskis
argument that contemporary science
shows we live in a non-Euclidean,
non-Newtonian and non-Aristotelian universe (respectively in terms of
both space-time and mentally coping
with experience). This is appropriate
to mention, because the dramatic
climax of The World of Null-A focuses
on the slogan the negative judgment
is the peak of mentality (from A.
N. Whitehead, Process and Reality).
But it is also deep, in pointing to
a profound aspect of Minskys The
Emotion Machine its appreciation

of the power of negative thinking.
Every mathematician knows there is
no argument so powerful as a counter-example. Life provides counterexamples to our mis-conceptions.
Minsky describes internal criticism
as a structural key to the adaptation
and learning in an evolved nervous
system, which creates and explains
the very possibility of mind such as
we embody.
How would you summarize your
appreciation of this new book?
It is more than a book. I think here
of a question the playwright DeVigny
asks, What is a great life, if not a
youthful idea made real with the
focus and perseverance of the mature
mind? The Emotion Machine and
The Society of Mind together realize
Minskys vision of a general theory
of intelligence covering mind as embodied in biological and electronic
machines. Minskys life work is a
successful effort to re-conceive our
understanding of knowledge and
thinking through computationbased description of structures and
functions necessary for the existence
and behaviour of mind. His work is
distinguished by a commitment to
mechanistic descriptions that cross
from the common sense of everyday
experience to more exotic sciences
derived from the deepest examination of reality. The Emotion Machine
will become the ground for a new
generation of research. This book is
the nest and most accessible single
work of cognitive science your audience members will encounter in their
lifetimes.
I certainly have a feeling for how
important books have been in your
life and how intertwined for you
are scholarly works and the lives of
friends and the enduring affection

you feel for other scholars. So we
publishers have their lives in our
hands, not just their books.
If digital libraries come to dominate the future, as they are rapidly
doing, that is certainly true. It is an
awesome responsibility for men of
scholarly sensibilities. But there is
even more. Inasmuch as the delight
I have had in such friends and their
books gives rise to a deep sense of
gratitude even of an indebtedness
that almost amounts to obligation
this is also a ground of inspiration,
the source of goals and energy for
future work for me and for future
generations as well. Also, on the
grand scale, books are the communication lines for the whole worlds life
of the mind (what a grand business
Intellect is in) and your commitment
to work at the frontier of these modern technologies is a great service
you have committed to provide for
that long conversation which is the
heart and soul of human culture.
Weve gone on a long time, and we
havent even talked about your work.
Let me say simply, then, that it is ongoing and continues to be inspired,
both technically and in terms of the
goals Ive set, by the ideas and values
of these, my heroes, as I pursue the
questions voiced by John Berrill:
Who am I? Where have I come from?
Where am I going? Why am I going
there? Ive made these questions my
own as well, still following Robert
Whites case study method, believing with Kurt Lewin that studies of
individuals not only exemplify laws
of psychology but embody and reveal
those laws. {
FIND BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR:

Book Reviews
iQuote Writing is the best way to talk without being interrupted. Jules Renard
FILM STUDIES
Cinemas of the Other:

A Personal Journey
with Film-makers
from the Middle East
and Central Asia
By Gonul Dnmez-Colin
Reviewed by Parviz Jahed
s an Iranian Ph.D. student

working on the origins of the
new wave in Iranian cinema, I have
faced an immense lack of knowledge
about the historical aspects of Iranian
cinema in English resources. Whereas
most of western lm critics and lm
historians are focused on the recent
ow of Iranian cinema and lm-makers like Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen
Makhmalbaf, Jafar Panahi and
other newcomers, it seems that the
forerunners of the modern Iranian
cinema such as Ebrahim Golestan and
Farrokh Ghaffari, who had a great
role on the formation of new Iranian
cinema, were totally ignored. In the
meanwhile, except for Kiarostami,
there are hardly even any talks
about the other lm-makers of that
generation, like Dariush Mehrjui and
Bahram Bayzaee who formed the new
wave of Iranian cinema before the
Islamic revolution.
That is why I think Gonul DnmezColins book, which provides excellent
interviews with the above three
Iranian lm-makers of that generation, is unique.
Although the book is not limited to
Iranian cinema, the interviews with
Iranian lm-makers construct the
main part of it. It seems that Iranian
cinema was so important for DnmezColin when she refers to it as the most
vibrant and challenging cinema of the
Middle East.
The relative long introduction of

the book shows Dnmez-Colin as a
well-informed researcher familiar with
the region and looking at the national
cinema of the region with a particular
approach.
With a remarkable knowledge on
the history of Iran and Iranian cinema,
She met Makhmalbaf twice, rst

during the Thessaloniki International
Film Festival in 1995 and then at the
Locarno International Film Festival in
1996. She also met Dariush Mehrjui in
France where both of them served on
the jury of the International Film Festival of Asian Cinema in 2005. In her interview with Bayzaee, which took place
in Istanbul at the Istanbul Film Festival,
Bayzaee, who is an outspoken gure in
Iranian cinema, talks openly about his
lms and life without any fear of the
censorship or further consequences.
By putting together the views of
lm-makers from different generations and with a different background,
Dnmez-Colin gives her reader a
chance to be familiar with some new
aspects of Turkish and Iranian cinema
Instead of relying on the second-hand information

and resources in the West about the Other
Cinema, Dnmez-Colin has tried to gather fresh
information by contacting the lm-makers directly.
Dnmez-Colin has succeeded in doing
some interesting and challenging
interviews with Iranian lm-makers. Despite several books which
were published recently on Iranian
or Middle East cinema, it seems that
these cinemas still remain unexplored
and need to be examined precisely; lets
leave alone the Central Asian cinema
which is suffering from a serious lack
of knowledge and investigations.
Instead of relying on the secondhand information and resources in
the West about the Other Cinema,
Dnmez-Colin has tried to gather fresh
information by contacting the lmmakers directly.
She has travelled from Middle East
countries to Central Asia to conduct
the interviews, attending lm festivals
and other lm events where she had a
chance to meet the lm-makers.
or other territories.
Apparently there is nothing similar
between Kiarostamis documentary
style and Bayzaees ritual, mythical
cinema or even Mehrjuis philosophical
and thoughtful lms about the Iranian
middle-class modern life at all. But, according to Dnmez-Colins book, what
relates these lm-makers to each other,
despite their different approaches
towards cinema, is their ability to
work under similarly hard conditions.
In the current climate of Hollywood
dominance, economical limitations and
state censorship have jeopardized their
professional position. The lm festivals
and distribution systems of the West
imposed their tastes and tendencies
onto the national lm-makers, which
culminated in a st of lms that are not
interesting for the audience of their
countries at all.
She also saw a very similar concern

among these lm-makers from different countries regarding culture and cinema in a postmodern age: Erden Kiral
and Ali Ozgenturk from Turkey, Dariush
Mehrjui from Iran and Chingiz Aitmatov
(who is the only novelist and scriptwriter among the interviewees) from
Kyrgyzstan, lamented the loss of values
in our consumer-oriented societies
where intellectuals are either shunned
or pushed to the margins. (p.16)
Despite the fact that her approach
is not academic, it at least has the potential to provide some fresh material
for the academicians and lm students
who are working on national cinema.
Although some of her mistakes on
Iranian cinema are hard to ignore, for
instance, she says:
the revolutionary fervour set re
to more than 180 movie houses killing
hundreds of people (p.10), which, I
believe, is not true because when the
revolutionaries wanted to burn down
the cinemas they were evacuated
earlier. Except for one cinema, called
cinema Rex, which was burnt down and
many of the people in it were killed, but
no evidence had been found proving
who did this, whether it was the Shahs
security force or the revolutionaries.
And the misspelling of the name
Varouj Karim Massihi, which in the
interview with Bahram Bayzaee has
been written down as Baroush Karim
Nasseki. (p. 36)
She has also described Bayzaees
The Death of Yazdgerd as a lm about
the history of Islam, where as it is
clearly about Iran during the verge of
the Arabs invasion and is dealing with
the identity of Iranians rather than
history of Islam.
I recommend this book to people
who are interested in cinema of
other cultures and of the East and
all students and writers to use for
reference. {
Book Reviews
iQuote Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. Cyril Connolly
ART & DESIGN
Drawing
The Process
By Alexander Adams
his collection of papers, interviews

and reections presented at the
January 2003 Drawing The Process
conference at Kingston University
(and those developed from it) provides a useful resource for teachers,
students and practitioners. Covering
topics as diverse as Renaissance architecture, illustration, fashion design,
corporate communication graphics,
animation and 3-D printing, as well
as personal testimonies, the book
touches on much of what we think of
as drawing in addition to that which
we might not previously have considered drawing. The sheer diversity of
subjects and styles makes for engaging
reading and difcult reviewing.
James Faure Walkers contention
that Picasso and Matisse are overrated
draughtsmen (and that Sigmar Polkes
drawings have fearless, searching

energy) diminishes not Picasso and
Matisse but the writer and, by extension, his argument, which is a shame
because he has ideas worth considering. Unfortunately, Ruskin, being a
good judge of drawing, is not one of
them. Ruskins dicta The perfect way
of drawing is by shade without lines
and No good drawing can consist
throughout of pure outline rule out
Ingres to Shiele, Rembrandt to Picabia, and are pure gibberish.
Walker has a witty take on the peculiarities of life-drawing conventions
and he (rightly) identies Lucian Freud
as a mannerist rather than a realist.
Surely an article which follows
What we need is a substantial
Department of Drawing in a good
Only Fire Forges Iron: The Architectural Drawings of Michelangelo

is an adept but tantalizingly short
discussion of the relation between
drawn conceptualizations of space,
anatomical studies and an artists understanding of light effects and how
this may have inuenced Michelangelos architecture. Will Lynch treat this
area at greater length elsewhere?
Russell Lowes informative paper
on 3-D printing is marred by an
example of doublethink common
among proponents of digital technologies. It runs along the following
lines: digital technologies are unfairly
excluded from the hierarchies of ne
art. Such conventions are hidebound
and archaic. Then the volte-face: this
area of digital technology should be
Drawing The Process is a useful, thoughtprovoking sourcebook, proving by turns

contentious and amusing.
college [] with My own hope is that
the craft-based divisions between
painting, drawing and printmaking
[] will continue to dissolve is undiluted provocation? It is sure to cause
arguments among art students and is
therefore recommended reading.
Less contentious is Kevin Flynns
engrossing (and judiciously illustrated) discussion of medieval English
drawing. Likewise, Patrick Flynns
classed as part of that eld of ne

art. One moment the advocate is
denigrating conventional classication as iniquitous and declaring it ripe
for abolition, the next moment he is
attempting to crowbar his specialty
into an inappropriate (and unwelcoming) class in order to benet from a
supposedly despised cachet.
To broaden denitions until they
are virtually meaningless does not
validate new processes, it merely

makes intelligent debate impossible.
Emerging technologies can be best
understood by using new, discrete
terms rather than by mangling
established denitions. Damaging
language diminishes us all and the
urge to appropriate unsuitable existing classications betrays a certain
timidity. If science can manage this
area effectively, then why cant the
visual arts? (See this reviewers
article Cause for Concern, Printmaking Today, vol. 13 no. 2 for discussion
on this point.)
There is much more besides. Veteran illustrators George Hardie and
John Vernon Lord provide personal
accounts of their experiences and
approaches that are both illuminating
and heartening. In Discussion with
Zandra Rhodes is a mixture of direct
questions and paraphrased answers
that might have been better recast as
either a prole or a verbatim interview transcript, such as the revealing
dialogue with animator Joanna Quinn
included in this book.
Drawing The Process is a useful,
thought-provoking sourcebook,
proving by turns contentious and
amusing. {
Alexander Adams is an artist based in Newcastle upon Tyne. His next solo exhibition
is at Oriel Ceri Richards Gallery, Swansea,
January-February 2008.
download our new

spring catalogue from:
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To the editors...
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Intellect Quarterly no. 5 / thinking in colour / spring 2007

media & democracy

COMPUTERS AND THE HISTORY OF ART

jos mara rodrguez mndez

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exemplify our mission as publishers of original thinking. We like to

on established topics along university departmental boundaries and

An artists career always begins tomorrow. J. Whistler

The tension between Intellects

Art & Design

intellect Book Focus

lthough a comparatively new

dering engine with equally realistic

musical instruments (Julian Olivers

Videogame art is becoming more

Iraq by Joseph Delappe and Waco

Videogames and Art

Videogame art is a rapidly emerging genre of digital art and a

The Future of Art

This book develops the thesis that

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ISSUE 25 NOW AVAILABLE. 8 WWW.FILMINT.NU

Theatre & Performance

intellect Book Focus

Troubling Postcards from the Past

drguez Mndez is a comprehensive study of his theatre from the 1950s

cultural control exercised by the state and by dominant social groups.

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In a sense, Francos censors

Art & Design

intellect Book Focus

The Visual in Communication

he visual as an agent in the communication process has grown

beyond the obvious, beyond its place as

and an awareness of the inuence they

The power of the visual

speaking, the medium itself becomes the

in the case of aesthetics, the feeling or

Art & Design

intellect Book Focus

Above Print by Derrick Hawker, 1975

...I think the whole

we discussed earlier, the one of spatial

employs information and language

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