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April 17, 2006
Sounds, Images, and Smells
Here's some of what I've been reading today instead of working on an article with a relatively imminent deadline:
- k-punk's review of Burial's self-titled album, which they describe as a "MASSIVE new addition to the sonic hauntology canon." Burial sounds like an incredible CD, but I also wanted to point to the reference to Erik Davis's "Dead Machines: A review of The Ghost Orchid and electromagnetic voice phenomena." In his review of The Ghost Orchid, a CD collection of EVP recordings, Davis, echoing arguments by Jeffrey Sconce, explains that "From the moment that human beings started communicating with electrical and electromagnetic signals, the ether has been a spooky place."
- I continue to envy everyone who has been able to attend this year's Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham (the good news: I might be able to attend next year). Eugene Hernandez reports on the fest for indieWire, with an emphasis on Katrina docs.
- Finally, a Yahoo article reporting that Japanese film distributors are planning to use digital technologies to incorporate smells into film screenings. While the article suggests that these plans are unprecedented, film historians may recall that there were brief and generally unsuccessful experiments with "Smell-o-Vision" in the 1950s. There's a similar discussion of "immesrive TV" at the Hero website, with a brief historical overview of the 1950s scent experiments. In both cases, the emphasis seems to be on producing a fully immersive experience, providing the viewer with a sense of virtual "presence."
Posted by chuck at April 17, 2006 3:53 PM
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Comments
hey chuck you can always go to silverdocs in june--in fact i'm coming down for it so perhaps we could meet up.
Posted by: cynthia at April 19, 2006 9:17 AM
Yeah, I'm planning to go to Silverdocs, so I'd definitely enjoy meeting up. The reference to attending Full Frame is a cryptic way of saying that I may be moving to that part of the country in the near future.
Posted by: Chuck at April 19, 2006 10:32 AM
nice--you can hang with cinetrix!
Posted by: cynthia at April 19, 2006 2:00 PM
Yeah, that would be very cool. I've enjoyed her Durham Dispatches quite a bit over the last two years.
Posted by: Chuck at April 19, 2006 11:24 PM