80218 Expanded Image Studio: The Moving Image

Warning: The information on this page is indicative. The subject outline for a particular session, location and mode of offering is the authoritative source of all information about the subject for that offering. Required texts, recommended texts and references in particular are likely to change. Students will be provided with a subject outline once they enrol in the subject.

Subject handbook information prior to 2025 is available in the Archives.

UTS: Design, Architecture and Building: Design
Credit points: 12 cp

Subject level: Undergraduate

Result type: Grade and marks

Requisite(s): 80065 Critical Image Studio: Image Activism and Documentary Practice AND 80066 Expanded Image Studio: Post Photography
These requisites may not apply to students in certain courses.
There are course requisites for this subject. See access conditions.

Description

This subject involves an exploration of the moving image and its particular relationship to photography; it focuses on what it means to give an image duration. Students gain an understanding of the origins of the moving image and study its history, with a particular focus on how it is deployed in contemporary art. The subject introduces principles of videography and lighting, audio, editing and post-production, export and display.

Subject learning objectives (SLOs)

On successful completion of this subject, students should be able to:

1.	Cooperatively and professionally as part of a team, initiate partnerships with others, take a leadership role when required, and constructively contribute to peer learning
2.	Communicate ideas effectively in a variety of ways including oral, written and visual
3.	Position work within an extended disciplinary context
4.	Recognise and engage in a diverse range of technical and practical contexts
5.	Reflect and engage in self-critique and critical thinking
6.	Demonstrate knowledge of photographic history and theory and to place creative practice within a contextual framework
7.	Produce inspirational response that exemplify integration of learning experiences
8.	Initiate and execute meaningful self-directed iterative processes

Course intended learning outcomes (CILOs)

This subject also contributes to the following Course Intended Learning Outcomes:

Ability to work cooperatively and professionally as part of a team, initiate partnerships with others, take a leadership role when required, and constructively contribute to peer learning (C.1)
Ability to communicate ideas effectively in a variety of ways, including oral, written and visual (C.2)
Ability to initiate and execute meaningful self-directed iterative processes (I.3)
Ability to produce inspirational responses that exemplify integration of learning experiences (I.4)
Ability to innovatively use photographic and media technologies (I.5)
Ability to recognise and engage in a diverse range of technical and practical contexts (P.1)
Ability to demonstrate knowledge of photographic history and theory and to place creative practice within a contextual framework (R.4)

Contribution to the development of graduate attributes

The term CAPRI is used for the five Design, Architecture and Building faculty graduate attribute categories where:

C = communication and groupwork

A = attitudes and values

P = practical and professional

R = research and critique

I = innovation and creativity.

Course intended learning outcomes (CILOs) are linked to these categories using codes (e.g. C-1, A-3, P-4, etc.).

Teaching and learning strategies

Weekly on-campus 1hr screening, 2hr tutorial, 3hr workshop

This subject uses a problem-based learning strategy across screenings, tutorials, and workshops. These provide students with historic and contemporary examples of moving image-based work, as well as assisting students in idea generation, idea development, and critical reflection.

In the tutorial that follows the screenings, students will present their work in progress and participate in peer and mentor lead discussions. The formation of open and encouraging peer learning is a priority. Students will investigate and provide critical reflections according to a series of key questions related to the subject matter presented in the screening session.

Three tasks are assigned to students. Two of them will be individual, and one will be a group assessment.

Oral Feedback on tasks is given iteratively throughout the semester. Assessments will be presented in class and feedback and marking, supplied in REVIEW.

The assessment process employed in this subject has two key components to each task:

A visual presentation of work produced
A verbal presentation accompanying the work

Workshops will focus on the acquisition of technical skills that will have real-world applications. Upon completion of this subject students will have the skills they require to both produce moving image work and articulate verbal expositions on the subject of the work to a real-world/industry standard.

80% attendance is required at lectures and tutorials. Records of attendance will be kept and students are expected to come to tutorials adequately prepared. This means doing preparatory work as noted in the subject outline weekly schedule and being ready for class discussions. The screenings, tutorials and workshops are an interconnected system where if one part suffers the whole suffers as a result. The high degree of continuity across the session means that missing one week can leave you ill-equipped to participate in the following week’s discussion.

Content (topics)

Subject content will include:

Moving image related screenings.
Peer to peer and tutor led discussions and feedback sessions.
Compositional studies - exercises that introduce and refine the students' basic understanding of composition in relation to the moving image. These will include advice on camera operation.
Workflow procedure - Students will be introduced to appropriate use of codecs, import, and export.
Conceptual moving image production - the production of a moving image work with a conceptual basis.
Historical and theoretical studies - Work will be produced with a sound knowledge of historical and theoretical basis.

Assessment

Assessment task 1: Still Moving/Moving Still

Intent:

Task 1: Still Moving/Moving Still (40% individual work to be submitted in two parts)

Still Moving / Moving Still

“Movement, when it concerns the image, is necessarily experienced in its contrast with stillness, a contrast mediated by technologies that have changed historically. Once it became possible to reproduce movement in images - rather than simply reflect it in a mirror or produce it ephemerally with optical devices - the meaning of stillness in an image changed forever. In a sense, the emergence of images that move in a fine art context had been the province of immobile objects and still images reversed the situation. Whereas for Cinema, that the image moves is an a priori condition, once the moving image is placed in the gallery it is implicitly experienced in relation to art that does not move: painting, sculpture, and photography. The meaning of movement in the image, rather than being taken for granted as ubiquitous in everyday life, is once again thrown into question.”

Comer, S. (2009). Film and video art. London: Tate Publishing, p.96.

Part A - Still Moving: Assignment (20% individual work)

What is a moving image? In its most basic form it is a series of still images placed next to each other that is then shown on a screen at rate of speed that denies the existence of each image as a still picture. Each still in a moving image work is called a frame. In most moving image works a single second of time is composed of 24 frames.

For this task, using only 24 still images (frames), you are to compose a moving image work. The aim of this task is for you to understand the unique characteristics of the moving image, that is the relationship of the still image to time and movement.

The time of your moving image work can vary from anywhere between 1 second to 2 minutes in length, yet you must keep in mind that you can only use 24 still images (frames) to do this. The subject matter you choose is entirely up to you.

Specifications

Students will provide one video file with a length between 1 second and 5 minutes.
Students will provide their submissions on a hard drive or storage unit. Naming convention: Student_Studentnumber.mov etc.
One verbal presentation maximum two minutes

Please note this is not a photo slideshow. All submissions are to be exported as per the specifications.

Part B - Moving Still: Assignment (20% individual work)

Having looked at the relationship between various still images (frames), time and movement, we now look at the sequential recording of moving images; the take. A ‘take’ at its simplest definition is the time that exists between the moment you start to record and the moment you stop recording.

In this portion of the task, you will be looking at a single take or sequence. It can be of any length of time your recording device is capable of. The aim of this task is to understand the shift between a still image and a sequence of images taken over time. How you choose to create your sequence and its subject matter is entirely up to you, you are only restricted to the continuous time running between the beginning and the ending of your recording.

Specifications

A single video sequence without edits (cuts).
Students will provide their submissions on a hard drive or storage unit. Naming convention: Student_Studentnumber.mov etc.
One verbal presentation maximum two minutes.

Objective(s):

This task addresses the following subject learning objectives:

2, 4, 5, 7 and 8

This task also addresses the following course intended learning outcomes that are linked with a code to indicate one of the five CAPRI graduate attribute categories (e.g. C.1, A.3, P.4, etc.):

C.2, I.3, I.4, P.1 and R.4

Type:

Presentation

Groupwork:

Individual

Weight:

40%

Criteria linkages:

Criteria	Weight (%)	SLOs	CILOs
Ability to recognise and engage in a diverse range of technical and practical contexts	20	4	P.1
Ability to reflect and engage in self-critical thinking	20	5	R.4
Ability to produce inspirational responses that exemplify integration of learning experiences	20	7	I.4
Ability to initiate and execute meaningful self-directed iterative processes	20	8	I.3
Ability to communicate ideas effectively in a variety of ways including oral, written and visual	20	2	C.2

SLOs: subject learning objectives
CILOs: course intended learning outcomes

Assessment task 2: New Narratives

Intent:

Task 2: New Narratives (60% individual work)

Cinema is a medium of beginnings, middles, and ends, although as Jean Luc Goddard has observed “not necessarily in that order”[1]. When the moving image shifts from the cinema to the gallery the artist loses even these most basic modes of temporal orientation. Placed within a gallery context the artist cannot determine when the viewer will enter their work, nor can they know when they will leave. As a result the moving image when exhibited in the gallery often possesses a strange non-linear narrative. As Steven McQueen recently stated “(m)aking a film is like writing a novel- you’re telling a story - whereas art is more like poetry: fractured and compressed.”[2]

The story-telling structure offered by Hollywood Cinema is largely linear in nature: with each narrative generally being divided into a set up, conflict, and resolution. In 24 Hour Psycho Douglas Gordon slows down Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho from its original running time of 109 minutes, extending it to 24 hours. In doing so Gordon echoes Steve McQueen’s statement, as he fractures the story line and makes the narrative close to impossible to follow. As Newman observes “(Gordon) can assume that Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is part of the cultural memory of his viewers and that it is so in a positive way, creating a tension between absorption in details of the very slow-moving image, and the narrative retrospection and anticipation, so that a suspended, free-floating attention replaces the driving suspense of the movie.”

In this Task you will produce a moving image work that does not rely upon a linear a narrative to produce meaning. The work must be able to be entered at any point and still remain coherent. In this task like in the previous one, you are not creating movies, you are producing moving image pieces and/or environments.

[1] Sterritt, D. (1999) The Films of Jean-Luc Godard: Seeing the Invisible. London. Cambridge University Press, p.20

[2] smh. 2014. http://www.smh.com.au. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/12-years-a-slaves-steve-mcqueen-says-the-past-is-absolutely-about-the-present-for-me-20140123-319ni.html#ixzz2tdQ94DLu. [Accessed 30 July 2018].

[3] Comer, S. (2009). Film and Video Art. London: Tate Publishing, p.172