5 ms·

Do you have some concrete or specific examples of intentional compensation or purposeful scaffolding in mind (outside the topic of the article)?

by vodou 11mo ago

quuxplusone 11mo ago
Not scaffolding in the same way, but, two examples of "fetishizing accidental properties of physical artworks that the original artists might have considered undesirable degradations" are - the fashion for unpainted marble statues and architecture - the aesthetic of running film slightly too fast in the projector (or slightly too slow in the camera) for an old-timey effect
- chrisweekly 11mo ago
  Great examples. My mind jumps straight to audio: - the pops and hiss of analog vinyl records, deliberately added by digital hip-hop artists - electric guitar distortion pedals designed to mimic the sound of overheated tube amps or speaker cones torn from being blown out
  - robotresearcher 11mo ago
    - Audio compression was/is necessary to get good SNR on mag tape.
    - chrisweekly 11mo ago
      true - but are you implying audio engineers are now leaning into heavy compression for artistic reasons?
      - robotresearcher 11mo ago
        Not necessarily heavy (except sometimes as an effect), but some compression almost all the time for artistic reasons, yes. Most people would barely notice it as it's waaaay more subtle than your distorted guitar example. But it's there. Part of the likeable sound of albums made on tape is the particular combination of old-time compressors used to make sure enough level gets to the tape, plus the way tape compresses the signal again on recording by it's nature.
- tsunamifury 11mo ago
  Motion blur. 24fps. Grain. Practically everything we call cinematic
  - the_af 11mo ago
    I wouldn't call it "fetishizing" though; not all of them anyway. Motion blur happens with real vision, so anything without blur would look odd. There's cinematic exaggeration, of course. 24 FPS is indeed entirely artificial, but I wouldn't call it a fetish: if you've grown with 24 FPS movies, a higher frame rate will paradoxically look artificial! It's not a snobby thing, maybe it's an "uncanny valley" thing? To me higher frame rates (as in how The Hobbit was released) make the actors look fake, almost like automatons or puppets. I know it makes no objective sense, but at the same time it's not a fetishization. I also cannot get used to it, it doesn't go away as I get immersed in the movie (it doesn't help that The Hobbit is trash, of course, but that's a tangent). Grain, I'd argue, is the true fetish. There's no grain in real life (unless you have a visual impairment). You forget fast about the lack of grain if you're immersed in the movie. I like grain, but it's 100% an esthetic preference, i.e. a fetish.
    - BeFlatXIII 11mo ago
      I suspect 24fps is popular because it forces the videography to be more intentional with motion. Too blurry, and it becomes incomprehensible. That, and everything staying sharp at 60fps makes it look like TikTok slop.
      - jmb99 11mo ago
        I think the "real" problem is not matching shutter speed to frame rate. With 24fps you have to make a strong choice - either the shutter speed is 1/24s or 1/48s, or any panning movement is going to look like absolute garbage. But, with 60+fps, even if your shutter speed is incredible fast, motion will still look decent, because there's enough frames being shown that the motion isn't jerky - it looks unnatural, just harder to put your finger on why (whereas 24fps at 1/1000s looks unnatural for obvious reasons - the entire picture jerks when you're panning). The solution is 60fps at 1/60s. Panning looks pretty natural again, as does most other motion, and you get clarity for fast-moving objects. You can play around with different framerates, but imo anything more than 1/120s (180 degree shutter in film speak) will start severely degrading the watch experience. I've been doing a good bit of filming of cars at autocross and road course circuits the past two years, and I've received a number of compliments on the smoothness and clarity of the footage - "how does that video out of your dslr [note: it's a Lumix G9 mirrorless] look so good" is a common one. The answer is 60fps, 1/60s shutter, and lots of in-body and in-lens stabilization so my by-hand tracking shots aren't wildly swinging around. At 24/25/30fps everything either degrades into a blurry mess, or is too choppy to be enjoyable, but at 60fps and 1/500s or 1/1000s, it looks like a (crappy) video game.
- the_af 11mo ago
  Another example: pixel art in games. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of pixel art and retro games. But this reminds me of when people complained that the latest Monkey Island didn't use pixel art, and Ron Gilbert had to explain the original "The Curse of Monkey Island" wasn't "a pixel art game" either, it was a "state of the art game (for that time)", and it was never his intention to make retro games. Many classic games had pixel art by accident; it was the most feasible technology at the time.
  - avadodin 11mo ago
    I don't think anyone would have complained if the art had been more detailed but in the same style as the original or even using real digitized actors. Monkey Island II's art was slightly more comic-like than say The Last Crusade but still with realistic proportions and movements so that was the expectation before CoMI. The art style changing to silly-comic is what got people riled up.
    - the_af 11mo ago
      Hard disagree. (Also a correction: by original I meant "Secret of" but mistyped "Curse of"). I meant Return to Monkey Island (2022), which was no more abrupt a change than say, "The Curse of Monkey Island" (1997). Monkey Island was always "silly comic", it's its sine qua non. People whined because they wanted a retro game, they wanted "the same style" (pixels) as the original "Secret", but Ron Gilbert was pretty explicit about this: "Secret" looked what it looked like due to limitations of the time, he wasn't "going for that style", it was just the style that they managed with pixel art. Monkey Island was a state-of-the-art game for its time. So my example is fully within the terms of the concept we're describing: people growing attached to technical limitations, or in the original words: > [...] examples of "fetishizing accidental properties of physical artworks that the original artists might have considered undesirable degradations"
- MBCook 11mo ago
  Isn’t the frame rate of film something like that? The industry decided on 24 FPS as something of an average of the multiple existing company standards and it was fast enough to provide smooth motion, avoid flicker, and not use too much film ($$$). Overtime it became “the film look”. One hundred-ish years later we still record TV shows and movies in it that we want to look “good” as opposed to “fake” like a soap opera. And it’s all happenstance. The movie industry could’ve moved to something higher at any point other than inertia. With TV being 60i it would have made plenty of sense to go to 30p for film to allow them to show it on TV better once that became a thing. But by then it was enshrined.
wanderingmoose 11mo ago
I work in vfx, and we had a lecture from one of the art designers that worked with some formula 1 teams on the color design for cars. It was really interesting on how much work goes into making the car look "iconic" but also highlight sponsors, etc. But for your point, back during the pal/ntsc analog days, the physical color of the cars was set so when viewed on analog broadcast, the color would be correct (very similar to film scanning). He worked for a different team but brought in a small piece of ferrari bodywork and it was more of a day-glo red-orange than the delicious red we all think of with ferrari.

Do you have some concrete or specific examples of intentional compensation or purposeful scaffolding in mind (outside the topic of the article)?

by vodou 11mo ago

Do you have some concrete or specific examples of intentional compensation or purposeful scaffolding in mind (outside the topic of the article)?

quuxplusone 11mo ago

Not scaffolding in the same way, but, two examples of "fetishizing accidental properties of physical artworks that the original artists might have considered undesirable degradations" are - the fashion for unpainted marble statues and architecture - the aesthetic of running film slightly too fast in the projector (or slightly too slow in the camera) for an old-timey effect

chrisweekly 11mo ago
Great examples. My mind jumps straight to audio: - the pops and hiss of analog vinyl records, deliberately added by digital hip-hop artists - electric guitar distortion pedals designed to mimic the sound of overheated tube amps or speaker cones torn from being blown out
- robotresearcher 11mo ago
  - Audio compression was/is necessary to get good SNR on mag tape.
  - chrisweekly 11mo ago
    true - but are you implying audio engineers are now leaning into heavy compression for artistic reasons?
    - robotresearcher 11mo ago
      Not necessarily heavy (except sometimes as an effect), but some compression almost all the time for artistic reasons, yes. Most people would barely notice it as it's waaaay more subtle than your distorted guitar example. But it's there. Part of the likeable sound of albums made on tape is the particular combination of old-time compressors used to make sure enough level gets to the tape, plus the way tape compresses the signal again on recording by it's nature.
tsunamifury 11mo ago
Motion blur. 24fps. Grain. Practically everything we call cinematic
- the_af 11mo ago
  I wouldn't call it "fetishizing" though; not all of them anyway. Motion blur happens with real vision, so anything without blur would look odd. There's cinematic exaggeration, of course. 24 FPS is indeed entirely artificial, but I wouldn't call it a fetish: if you've grown with 24 FPS movies, a higher frame rate will paradoxically look artificial! It's not a snobby thing, maybe it's an "uncanny valley" thing? To me higher frame rates (as in how The Hobbit was released) make the actors look fake, almost like automatons or puppets. I know it makes no objective sense, but at the same time it's not a fetishization. I also cannot get used to it, it doesn't go away as I get immersed in the movie (it doesn't help that The Hobbit is trash, of course, but that's a tangent). Grain, I'd argue, is the true fetish. There's no grain in real life (unless you have a visual impairment). You forget fast about the lack of grain if you're immersed in the movie. I like grain, but it's 100% an esthetic preference, i.e. a fetish.
  - BeFlatXIII 11mo ago
    I suspect 24fps is popular because it forces the videography to be more intentional with motion. Too blurry, and it becomes incomprehensible. That, and everything staying sharp at 60fps makes it look like TikTok slop.
    - jmb99 11mo ago
      I think the "real" problem is not matching shutter speed to frame rate. With 24fps you have to make a strong choice - either the shutter speed is 1/24s or 1/48s, or any panning movement is going to look like absolute garbage. But, with 60+fps, even if your shutter speed is incredible fast, motion will still look decent, because there's enough frames being shown that the motion isn't jerky - it looks unnatural, just harder to put your finger on why (whereas 24fps at 1/1000s looks unnatural for obvious reasons - the entire picture jerks when you're panning). The solution is 60fps at 1/60s. Panning looks pretty natural again, as does most other motion, and you get clarity for fast-moving objects. You can play around with different framerates, but imo anything more than 1/120s (180 degree shutter in film speak) will start severely degrading the watch experience. I've been doing a good bit of filming of cars at autocross and road course circuits the past two years, and I've received a number of compliments on the smoothness and clarity of the footage - "how does that video out of your dslr [note: it's a Lumix G9 mirrorless] look so good" is a common one. The answer is 60fps, 1/60s shutter, and lots of in-body and in-lens stabilization so my by-hand tracking shots aren't wildly swinging around. At 24/25/30fps everything either degrades into a blurry mess, or is too choppy to be enjoyable, but at 60fps and 1/500s or 1/1000s, it looks like a (crappy) video game.
the_af 11mo ago
Another example: pixel art in games. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of pixel art and retro games. But this reminds me of when people complained that the latest Monkey Island didn't use pixel art, and Ron Gilbert had to explain the original "The Curse of Monkey Island" wasn't "a pixel art game" either, it was a "state of the art game (for that time)", and it was never his intention to make retro games. Many classic games had pixel art by accident; it was the most feasible technology at the time.
- avadodin 11mo ago
  I don't think anyone would have complained if the art had been more detailed but in the same style as the original or even using real digitized actors. Monkey Island II's art was slightly more comic-like than say The Last Crusade but still with realistic proportions and movements so that was the expectation before CoMI. The art style changing to silly-comic is what got people riled up.
  - the_af 11mo ago
    Hard disagree. (Also a correction: by original I meant "Secret of" but mistyped "Curse of"). I meant Return to Monkey Island (2022), which was no more abrupt a change than say, "The Curse of Monkey Island" (1997). Monkey Island was always "silly comic", it's its sine qua non. People whined because they wanted a retro game, they wanted "the same style" (pixels) as the original "Secret", but Ron Gilbert was pretty explicit about this: "Secret" looked what it looked like due to limitations of the time, he wasn't "going for that style", it was just the style that they managed with pixel art. Monkey Island was a state-of-the-art game for its time. So my example is fully within the terms of the concept we're describing: people growing attached to technical limitations, or in the original words: > [...] examples of "fetishizing accidental properties of physical artworks that the original artists might have considered undesirable degradations"
MBCook 11mo ago
Isn’t the frame rate of film something like that? The industry decided on 24 FPS as something of an average of the multiple existing company standards and it was fast enough to provide smooth motion, avoid flicker, and not use too much film ($$$). Overtime it became “the film look”. One hundred-ish years later we still record TV shows and movies in it that we want to look “good” as opposed to “fake” like a soap opera. And it’s all happenstance. The movie industry could’ve moved to something higher at any point other than inertia. With TV being 60i it would have made plenty of sense to go to 30p for film to allow them to show it on TV better once that became a thing. But by then it was enshrined.

wanderingmoose 11mo ago

I work in vfx, and we had a lecture from one of the art designers that worked with some formula 1 teams on the color design for cars. It was really interesting on how much work goes into making the car look "iconic" but also highlight sponsors, etc. But for your point, back during the pal/ntsc analog days, the physical color of the cars was set so when viewed on analog broadcast, the color would be correct (very similar to film scanning). He worked for a different team but brought in a small piece of ferrari bodywork and it was more of a day-glo red-orange than the delicious red we all think of with ferrari.