104823 - NIGHT AND CULTURE: NIGHT LIGHTING

Subject type: Optional

Coordinator: Maddalena Fedele

Trimester: Third term

Credits: 6

What is this subject about?

To talk, analyze, reflect and experiment on different topics related to night and night light, from different angles, especially cultural.

A research that, in the end, brings a new vision, and new uses, of the night, oriented to a more conscious way of making images.

In this link you can find the proposal made in the presentation of the subject, in 2014: https://blocs.tecnocampus.cat/grau-mitjans-audiovisuals/2014/09/08/il·luminacio-nocturna/

The theoretical objectives include:

• Know aspects of biology, geography and physiology related to circadian rhythms (day-night).
• Study and analyze the archetypal aspects inherited from the social vision of the night before the appearance of electric light and its persistence in the models reproduced in photography and cinema.
• Evolution of the presence of night lights in the modes of reproduction of cinema and photography, and their influence on our perception of the world.
• Analyze and reflect on the current use of night light, starting in the sociological and industrial aspects, but delving into the historical evolution of the presence of night and night in artistic representations.
• Know how to analyze and interpret situations, spaces, images made or visible with artificial light and that refer to classical archetypes, as well as know the evolution of the technical tools that have facilitated the use of night light, both sociologically and in modes of representation artistic.
• Develop experimental, theoretical and technical skills related to night and night light.

WORKING METHODOLOGY

• Theoretical concepts will be presented in theory classes, complemented by image analysis.
• The methodology is based on debate and research.
• Some studies or analyzes will be completed by each student as autonomous learning.
• At the beginning of the course, a detailed planning of contents, work to be done and delivery dates will be provided.
• Workshop sessions to guide student work.

1. The Night: culture, image, thought

2. Biology, Physiology, Geography, Sociology.

2.1.Biology of night vision in living things

2.2 Circadian rhythms. Night and sleep.

2.3. The nocturnal presence in popular culture. The moon and its cycles.

2.4. The light in the cities. Architecture. Industry. Light pollution.

3. Representation in images of the night I. Historical aspects

3.1.The nocturnal representation in painting. From antiquity to today

3.2. Photography and night: De Brassai and O.Winston al night painting.

3.4. Cultural archetypes: female models. Male models.

4. Representation in images II: Current events and technical aspects

4.1. Current and night photography. Topics and resources. The long exposure. The shadows. The fire.

4.2. American night and set fiction: diegetic lights.

4.3. Night light in music clips.

4.4. Light-sensitive surfaces, from film to sensor. The brightness of the optics

5. Cultural light I. Signs and coding: from the mechanism of the symbol to its cultural functioning.

5.1. The symbol as a sign.

5.2. Specific symbols: the shadow in photography and cinema.

5.3. Some kind of terror: Lewton.

5.4. Black cinema.

6. Cultural light II. Within films and within cinema: cinematic aesthetics and cinema as an obscure device.

6.1. Gothic cinema: from literature to films. The American Gothic.

6.2. Night and violence: from passions to hunting exaltation.

6.3. Inside the mechanism: cinema with photographs, celluloid and empty spaces.

6.4. The movie theater as a dark place: from voyeurism to dreams.

7. Art and experimentation

7.1. ART / Concepts: Light abstractions: M Ray / M Nagy.

7.2. Light machines. Kinetic art. Futurism

7.3. Light fairs: Evolution of contents and presence of art. Technological progression.

7.4. New materials. Contributions of artists to light. Uses and proposals.

Internships on set, in the laboratory and self-employed. With images obtained in the set sessions and independently, the student will have to do a composition work with Photoshop that includes visual, reflection and design elements.

Film analysis: Exercise of analysis on an audiovisual fragment linked to the subjects worked in class (blocks Cultural light I and II). Prior to its execution, guidelines will have been given and rehearsed in class. The film analysis exercise is done within the class schedule.

Presentation in class : Analysis work from 5 films and five different sources, related to the night and proposed by students or by default by teachers.
Present a written document and make a presentation in class.

Visual rehearsal: Carrying out personal research and autonomous learning using the audiovisual's own tools. Translate into images different concepts related to the night, based on the student's own vision.

Final exam.

a) Internships and assignments: 70%

- Internships: 20%
- Film analysis: 15%

- Research and presentation in class: 15%
- Visual test: 20%

b) Final exam 30% ¿

Recovery: to be eligible for recovery the final grade of the sum of a) and b) must be less than 5. Only the exam can be recovered. ¿¿¿

Lance Keimig. Night photography. Omega 2012

Mario Rubio. The photographer at night. Mario Rubio 2014

The night in the lighting of current music videos. Cristòfol Casanovas UOC 2013. http://openaccess.uoc.edu/webapps/o2/handle/10609/36001

“The obsessive gaze: images of time in the avant-garde European cinema of the 20s ″ Mª Soliña Barreiro http://hdl.handle.net/10803/31884

 “Light and Emotions: A Study of the Influence of Urban Lighting on Emotions; based on Emotional Design ”Amparo Berenice Calvillo Cortés  http://www.tdx.cat/bitstream/handle/10803/6138/TABCC1de1.pdf?sequence=1

"Praise of the shadow" by Junichiro Tanizaki. Siruela 2010

Sense of light, He. Ideas, myths and the evolution of the arts and shows from light to cinema. Castillo Martínez de Olcoz, Ignacio Javier  http://www.tdx.cat/handle/10803/1378

T Gunning - Camera obscura, camera lucida: Essays in…, 2003 - Amsterdam UP Amsterdam

Baxter, Peter. On the History and Ideology of Film Lighting Screen (1975) 16 (3): 83-106

Vernet, Marc; Photo, painting, theater: night lights in the Triangle. Cinema Archives. http://cinemarchives.hypotheses.org/627

Alekan, Henri, Lights and Shadows. Paris, Le Sycomore, 1984 and Ed. The Collector 's Bookstore 1991

Loïe Fuller and the Art of Motion: Body, Light, Electricity, and the Origins of Cinema

1896: Pyrotechnics. A history of incendiary cinema Directed by Thierry Lefebvre, Laurent Le Forestier and Philippe-Alain Michaud http://1895.revues.org/157

Masters of light Conversations with cinematographers. Dennis Shaeffer / Larry Salvato Ed. PLOT 1992

Cueto, R. (2010). What is Gothic? The adjective that became a genre. In AJ 

Navarro (Ed.), Nightmares in the Dark. Madrid: Valdemar.

Schrader, P. (1972). Notes on Film Noir. Film Comment, 8 (1), 8-13. (Spanish version: http://www.historiadeltraje.com.ar/archivos/notas%20sobre%20el%20film%20noir%20paul%20schrader.pdf)

VV. AA. (2009). The shadow. Madrid: Thyssen-Bornemisza.  

Barthes, R. (1993). Elements of semiology. Barcelona: Paidós.

Vieira, MA (2019) Darkness, Darkness: The Films of Val Lewton: Looking Back at a B-Movie Master. Retrieved from: https://brightlightsfilm.com/wp-content/cache/all/darkness-darkness-films-val-lewton-looking-back-b-movie-master/#.XI-1tShKhPY

Metz, Ch. (2001). The imaginary signifier. Psychoanalysis and cinema. Barcelona: Paidós.