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first questions
posed to
audience
second questions
posed to
audience
third questions
posed to
audience
Discussion
with
Audience
2 min.
6 min.
6 min.
6 min.
Q1
Q2
Q3
Intro.
Similar to
Masterpiece
Theater
Introduction
Section 1:
1000 to
1750 AD.
Section 2:
roughly
1750 - 1950
Section 3:
roughly
1950 - present
Figure 1. Audience interaction.
Intherestofthisarticle,wewillexamine Te rmi na l Time from three vantage
points: its relationship to and examination of the popular historical documen-
tary, its function as a critique of cyber-utopian navigation and control in “new-
media”, and issues of authorship and representation raised by using Artificial
Intelligence (AI) techniques to operationalize ideological construction.
The “cookie-cutter documentary”
Ever since the first moving images were recorded, filmmakers have been aware
of the power of their medium to effect historical meaning; the historical docu-
mentary became one of the first identifiable film genres. The popular model of
this form in America today, most clearly exemplified by Ken Burns' “The Civil
War,” has the familiar structure of Western narrative: each program has a dis-
tinct dramatic arc, a beginning, middle and an end. The rhetorical structure -
also familiar and now almost universally expected - invariably involves a crisis
situation, a climax, and a clear resolution. Generally there is one prevailing nar-
rative, one interpretation of the historical facts presented. Overall the tone set is
one of progress. Usually the narrative is delivered to the audience by an unseen,
yet obviously white, male narrator. So popular is this model that networks and
cable channels, including the public television networks, rarely show programs
that diverge from it - thus the form has become even more codified.
With Te rmi na l Time we imitate the model of this “cookie-cutter docu-
mentary” with a machine that produces and reproduces it, until the model
itself is revealed for the tool of ideological replication that it has become. Al-
though dominant in popular media today, the cookie-cutter documentary is
just one form of historical documentary. Te rmi na l Time derives its impetus
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