Daniel Binns - Material Media-Making in the Digital Age

Material Media-Making in the Digital Age

Material Media-Making in the Digital Age

Daniel Binns

First published in the UK in 2021 by

Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds,

Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK

First published in the USA in 2021 by

Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,

Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Copyright 2021 Intellect Ltd

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Hardback ISBN: 978-1-78938-349-2

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For Adrian Miles

This is all your fault. We miss you .

Contents

The question, really, is nothow can we marry media theory and practice, at long last? The true question is why we ever thought it was a good idea to split them apart in the first place.

The divide between theory and criticism in most of the arts (and especially in the teaching and/or training of them) yawns like a seemingly unbridgeable abyss. How did we arrive at this sorry pass? Every day we encounter the resistances, the complaints, the justifications and the so-called common-sense arguments on this battlefield. Music departments have the respected branch of musicology, for example but I have heard music students literally object to their professors: Ive no time for theory I need those precious hours to practise my oboe! Theory is the irrelevant cherry on their cake of practice.

When it comes to art (painting, sculpture) and film/media, one is more likely to hear the individual inspiration excuse dimly inherited from the long and venerable, even dusty tradition of Romanticism. If I have too much theory in my head, I will be affected and unduly influenced, and I shall no longer be able to spontaneously create! More cynical students in these fields, believing the same credo but keeping it silently to themselves, decide to play the theory-game only as much as they reckon they need to in order to win their degree: externally, they spout a few theoretical keywords (the gaze, hybridity, decolonization and whatnot) while, internally, they desperately seek their personal muse. Good luck to them.

Even a mainstream American director as smart and sophisticated as Blake Edwards (of the Pink Panthermovie series fame) chose to put this old keep that theory away from me! chestnut into modern, neurosis mode. Once, swatting away questions from an Australian interviewer about how scholars and critics had analysed his work, he essentially replied: OK, Im a neurotic, and I dont understand myself at all. Im a fine mess! But I dont want to be cured. My problems and neuroses are methey compel me to write and direct the way I do, and Im successful at what I do. If you analyse me and tell me what Im really all about, then my career is over! Get outta here! (original emphasis).

And boy, was I ever surprised on the day at the progressively minded Rotterdam Film Festival, circa 2002, when I timidly introduced myself to one of my all-time cultural heroes, the essentially avant-garde (but feature narrative) French filmmaker Philippe Grandrieux who, I figured, is a pretty serious and intellectual guy. I know you possess several books, catalogues and journal issues where I have written admiringly about your work, Monsieur Grandrieux, and I just wanted to ask you at which point he cut me off with a polite but firm gesture. Look, he patiently explained, as if to an ailing child. You seem like a nice guy and Im sure your work is good. Im glad youre doing it, I appreciate it, it helps my career along in places like this festival. But Ive never read it.