Evolving Media (Asynchronous)
Translating Cyberpunk: A Computational Study of Swear Word Translation from English to Spanish in Neal Stephenson’s "Snow Crash"
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mike Field
This paper presents a specific example of how swear word translation can be studied computationally using mathematical techniques. The study describes a method for predicting where swear words can be added or omitted in English-to-Spanish translations. In Juanma Barranquero’s Spanish translation of Neal Stephenson’s "Snow Crash", we see the English sentence “Whatsit (sic) stand for?” translated to “¿Qué coño significa?” (or “What the hell does it stand for?”) Note the addition of a swear word. We know from research by Davoodi (2009) and Ávila-Cabrera (2016) that translators at times expand or condense the original text, but when is this allowed for swear words, and can we predict it using a computational model? This study begins by outlining how a bilingual corpus was created using Stephenson’s cyberpunk novel and Barranquero’s Peninsular Spanish translation. It then demonstrates how Quinlan’s (1993) C4.5 decision tree classifier was used to generate a predictive model based on lexical, syntactic and semantic properties including the swear word itself, its part of speech, and its category as defined by Ávila-Cabrera’s swear word taxonomy.
Violence on the Margins: The Ethics of Realism in the Cinema of Víctor Gaviria View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Martin Ruiz Mendoza
In a 1986 essay entitled “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism,” Fredric Jameson suggests that Latin American cinema is necessarily allegorical insofar as the private stories function as metaphors for the ties between the personal and the political; the individual and the national; the private sphere and the larger sphere of history. This phenomenon is attested in an especially compelling way by Colombian cinema. The release in 1990 of Víctor Gaviria’s Rodrigo D constituted an epochal event that marked the course of Colombian cinema in the twenty-first century. As John Beverly (2019) points out, Gaviria’s debut feature “is put together in a nervous, rapid, «masculine» style, founded on a cinematic simulacrum of punk rock and the effects of cocaine, marijuana, and amphetamines” (113). Through this frantic style, Rodrigo D captures the social turmoil of 1990s Colombia in a way that has often been blamed for commercially exploiting the social malaise of Medellín’s slums to satisfy the expectations of "dirty realism" that define today's global cultural market. This paper explores the ethical dilemmas that are at the core of Gaviria’s exploration of the potential of cinema to articulate a non-historiographic approach to contemporary history from the global margins. In addressing those dilemmas, my analysis seeks to show how Gaviria’s cinematic exploration of the human effects of structural violence in Latin America leads to an unprecedented approach to the relationship between ethics and aesthetics in contemporary world cinema.
An Introduction to Inevitable Failure: A New Media Artist's Guide to the Risks and Rewards of Ephemeral Platforms View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Andy Deck
Bound up with the apparent technological miracles of new media are a variety of persistent problems related to rapid obsolescence. Artists who embrace new technology, and the immateriality of the digital, find more than just convenience and opportunities. Creatives who engage with media innovation are especially vulnerable to instabilities of tools, media formats, and platforms. Social memory is adversely impacted by these upheavals, which have been especially disruptive for experimental interactive media and visionary media art. Since before the advent of the personal computer, countless cultural artifacts have died on the vine. The maelstrom of transformation that affects media platforms and technologies raises important questions about how artists should organize to assert more continuity, control, and autonomy. How are practical and tactical experience passed on when media contexts disappear overnight like circuses? An intoxicating blend of presuppositions – about technological progress, empowerment of the individual producer, and cyber-liberation – excites exuberance for the new. But innovative, creative technological practices don't escape the industrial hangover for long as systems evolve, platforms fold, and code languages change. So that participants may understand these dynamics better, there is a need for more media archeology and retrospectives to reveal the entropy, deferred dreams, and regression that are concealed in today's media culture.
Theater’s Pandemic: Evolving Practices, Adapting Strategies in the Global South View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jesus David Valencia Ramirez, Julian Mauricio Gómez Ocampo
The Covid-19 pandemic deeply affected the theater industry at a global scale. Lack of resources and information technology expertise, and several structural constraints sometimes made adaptation impossible. Locally, there are stark differences between the Global North and South in the way how artists, practitioners, and teachers are coping with the new normal. In Cali, Colombia, educational institutions and local theaters geared up to survive the pandemic, adapting IT strategies to keep up engagement of theater students and audiences alike. The BFA program in acting at Universidad del Valle, and the Festival Brújula al Sur deployed different strategies to survive the pandemic and keep theater alive. This paper explores the difficulties and solutions that both institutions faced and deployed, focusing on new forms of audience engagement, and the new practices and skills acquired. When the traditional sites of production, consumption and display were disrupted, new knowledge and pedagogy were needed to adapt social, political and community agendas to the new circumstances. Both institutions managed to adapt successfully, although theater as an art form shifted conspicuously, creating a new kind of art between presence and absence, with new digital communities. This paper maps difficulties and solutions, clusters the data set and reflects upon the new kind of theater that the institutions are doing. It is yet to be determined whether this “digital theater” is a stopgap or is poised to endure after the return of traditional venues. The conclusion addresses new possibilities in both educational and public settings.
Teaching Camera Craft Online during the Covid Pandemic View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rehan Zia, Jiwon Chun, Srilakshmi Balaji
This paper identifies and explores the challenges of teaching specialist camera and studio craft based production courses online given the Covid-19 pandemic. The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in all courses at the National Centre for Computer Animation, Bournemouth University being delivered online rather than face-to-face. This was particularly challenging for the units that involved camera production. This paper explores the different strategies used to deliver online three different camera based units with very different intended learning outcomes; a) Visual Storytelling and Previsualisation, b) Visual Studies, and, c) Visual Effects Photography and Acquisition. A novel teaching model emerged that allowed for enhanced student engagement and practice whilst working within the constraints of inaccessibility to specialist camera equipment and location work. This can be summed up as an iterative spiral model; Introduce>Set>Practice>Reinforce>Assess>Feedback The resulting outcomes, both in terms of the teaching and delivery approaches as well as the student work is discussed and analysed.
Translation for the Stage: Actor Preparation and Cultural Imagery View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Macarena Losada
This investigation is concerned with the fields of theatre and translation. Themes consider the ways in which we can frame cultural encounters working with a foreign source text. The influence of imagination in the work of theatre practitioners and the spectators is also reviewed. Lastly, cultural implications on psychophysical training methodologies in the work with actors in the rehearsal room are discussed.
A Raw Approach for Audiovisual Situational Arts View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ali Alperen Sahin
The form of expression through computational and digital artworks is different from traditional techniques. In this study by the nature of the inspected art forms, works, and approaches, we provide an understanding on how to have a raw take on creating art projects through its complicated systems. Such understanding can lead into a mindset that can be expressive and relaxed despite the technical limitations of the medium used. Art works using the mediums like audiovisual installations and performances, computational arts and new media are considered through the outsider arts point of view. Thoughts considering the art world of new media and the outsiders of the traditional art are compared and analysed together. Terms like art brut, raw art and outsider art reconceptualized together with the technology driven art world of new media. Through this point of view we aim to open up another mind state while creating or observing a new media project. This mind state can break the heavy rules and complex techniques that are required to create technology-driven art work.
