Includes bibliographical references (pages 277-297) and indexes.
Contents:
1. Introduction. A literary approach to media art ; Russian Formalism and Neoformalism ; Reflecting on terminology: Media art and its categories ; Four artistic approaches : About the structure of this book -- 2. Literariness and media art: theoretical framing. 2.1 The aesthetics of language: Literary theory. The obstrperousness of poetric language ; Art as device: Estrangement and complicating form ; Poetics of deviation ; The palpability and perfomativity of poetic language ; Ambiguity and the split sign -- 2.2 Literariness beyond literature: Transdisciplinary perspectives ; Literariness and Ostranenie in audiovisual arts ; Russian Formalism and film ; Technology as device ; The poetics of neoformalism; Literariness between media ; Overabundance, excess emptiness, and retreat of synthesis ; Medial opacity and perception -- 3. Voice and script in media art. 3.1 Voice and the materiality of sound. The voice as medium and the mediatized voice ; Sound poetry and transrational language ; Iteration and the alphabet as aesthetic devices ; The perfomative power of the acousmatic voice ; Technical alienation of the voice ; Voice and image, voice and script -- 3.2 Script: Between visuality and legibility. Russian Formalism and the written word ; Script: Between transparent representation and palpable body ; Script as image/script in images ; Written work in film ; Recognition versus seeing ; Framing as aesthetic device ; Playing with words ; Writing on and with bodies -- 4. Literary genres in media art. 4.1 Elements of poetry. Poetry as literary genre; Excess structuring: Language use in poetry ; Vertical compositions: Poetic structures in the audiovisual arts ; Lyric subjectivity ; Visual poetry and media art ; Poetical practices and lyrical speech in media art ; Poetic images: Experimental video poems -- 4.2 Elements of drama. Drama theory and media art ; Core elements of drama ; Ostranenie and the alienation of effect ; Features of postdramatic theater ; Dialogic and perfomative installations ; Theatrical overabundance: Playing with the theatrical frame ; Citing elements of classical tragedy -- 4.3 Elements of prose. Narrative prose and time-based media ; Narrative order, narrative integration: Fabula and Sužet ; narrative voice: The mediating instance ; Narrative mode: Perception and perspective; Variations on first-person ; Narration in media art ; Autobiography as act and device ; Audiovisual explorations of epistolary fiction -- 5. Works of literature in media art. Adaptation as appropriation ; Intertexual dialogism ; Adaptation, translation, transcription ; Adaptations as deviant derivatives ; Voice and sound: Acousmatic adaptations ; Baring the signifier: Written allusions ; Aesthetics of superimposition 1: Reflecting memory ; Aesthetics of superimposition II: Queer defamiliarizations ; Theatrical appropriation: Personifying literary figures ; Poetics of quotation: The literary in perfomative installations.
Summary:
"The beginning of the 20th century saw literary scholars from Russia positing a new definition for the nature of literature. Within the framework of Russian formalism, the term "literariness" was coined. The driving force behind this theoretical inquiry was the desire to identify literature--and art in general--as ways of revitalizing human perception, which had been numbed by the automatization of everyday life. The transformative power of "literariness" is made manifest in many media artworks by renowned artists such as Chantal Akerman, Mona Hatoum, Gary Hill, Jenny Holzer, William Kentridge, Nalini Malani, Bruce Nauman, Martha 4 Rosler, and Lawrence Weiner. These artists, much like the young Russian and German scholars of the 20th century, use literariness as a tool to analyze the aesthetics of spoken or written language within experimental film, video performance, moving image installations and many more media-based art forms. This volume uses as its foundation the Russian formalist school of literary theory, with the goal of extending these theories to include contemporary concepts in film and media studies, such as neoformalism, intermediality, remediation, and post-drama"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.