From Light to Byte: Toward an Ethics of Digital Cinema
Cinema has been undergoing a technological shift in recent years, in which celluloid film is being replaced by digital media in the production, distribution, projection and reception of moving images. While these changes have had a direct impact on the organizational and economic operations of movie industries across the globe, they have also led to new aesthetic forms in both mainstream and avant-garde moviemaking, as well as novel possibilities for the ventures of independent and amateur moviemakers alike. Indeed, as the binary codification of the computer introduces different modes of recording and creating images, and expands the spectatorial experiences of movies quite significantly, we are faced once again with that primordial question: what is cinema? Concerned with the debate of digital cinema’s ontology, and the interrelationship between old and new media that is revealed in cinema cultures, From Light to Byte addresses the very idea of change as it is expressed in the current technological transition. In so doing, this book asks what is different in the way digital movies depict the world and engage with the individual, and how we may go about addressing the question of technological change within media archaeologies.