Grotesque, Gothic, and bizarre, are some of the adjectives that commonly describe the films directed by Tim Burton. Although their stories are often simple, Burton’s films have unique visual and aural styles that complement the lack of narrative complexity and captivate the audience with their rich symbolism and energy. On the one hand, their visual…
I have been back in my homeland, Colombia, and I have been on the road and on the streets re-visiting some towns and cities. I received the new year 2012 in Cartagena de Indias, a city in the Caribbean coast plenty of history (founded in 1533 by by Spanish commander Pedro de Heredia in the…
Children-Computer Symbiosis and the Reinvention of Childhood Since the 1950s, researchers in the fields of artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and computer science, were asking questions about how humans learn and think. At university laboratories they were designing theories of the mind and imagining machines that could think and augment human intelligence. One of the most influential…
The cover of BYTE magazine (the small systems journal) from November, 1976, is a color photograph of two children sat in front of what it seems to be a home computer system. The children are not looking at the camera. Instead, they are looking the screen of a 15” TV monitor that is placed in…
Among the Catalan traditions that surprised me during the year I lived in Barcelona (2004), was the Caganer (literally translates: pooper, defecator), a popular icon that multiplies during Christmas times. I remember visiting the Christmas market of Santa Llucia, and being introduced by my office colleagues to the little statue of a peasant (payés catalán)…
As a researcher interested in the aural dimension of culture and everyday life, I feel engaged with the scholarly conversation on sound studies that is presented in Cinema Journal In Focus Issue 48.1. Several times during my academic journey, I have asked myself similar questions and confront similar problems to the ones that Coates, Friz,…
It is rare to find film documentaries that are narrator-less and avoid having a first person point of view. Even more rare, is to find documentaries that are at the same time poetic, lyric, and musical. Last week I discovered the works of Les Blank, an American filmmaker that creates documentaries with such unconventional characteristics….