Course syllabus

This course explores how moving images mediate our experience of time, from the actualités of early cinema to video games and digital special effects. It addresses the representation and articulation of time across documentary and narrative cinema, experimental film and video, television and new media, with reference to key concepts in philosophy and media theory.

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

  • Demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the historical development of moving image technologies, and the ways in which they have been used to represent and mediate time
  • Demonstrate an advanced understanding of modern and contemporary critical ideas about the technological mediation of time
  • Critically analyse and synthesise ideas about temporal mediation, and articulate a strong and coherent position within this field of debate
  • Analyse, with reference to critical concepts and theories, the way that time is presented across a range of different media formats, including film, television and new media

For detailed information, see the course outline

Seminars: Mondays, 12:00-15:00, Arts 1, Room 201
Convenor: Dr Allan Cameron - allan.cameron@auckland.ac.nz
Office: Social Sciences Building, Room 535
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Assessment
Digital journal | 30% | 3,000 words (ten 300-word blog entries)
Research proposal | 10% | 1,000 words
Presentation | 10% | 10 minutes + questions
Critical essay | 50% | 5,000 words

Topics
  1. Framing Time: From Stillness to Movement
  2. Sampling Time: From Early Cinema to Digital Video
  3. Privileging Time: From ‘Movement-Image’ to ‘Time-Image’
  4. Transforming Time: From Slow Motion to Digital Effects
  5. Structuring Time: From Narrative to Games
  6. Saving Time: From Memory to the Archive
  7. Transcoding Time: From Database to Algorithm
  8. Telescoping Time: From Speed to Boredom
  9. Transmitting Time: From Broadcast to Broadband
  10. Saving Time 2: From Navigation to Nostalgia
  11. Reframing Time: From Video Art to Music Video
  12. Wrap-up

Course summary:

Date Details Due