Reconstruction 8.3 (2008)

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"The Image-Interface": New Forms of Narrative Visualization, Space and Time in Postmodern Cinema / Chiara Armentano

 

Abstract: This essay argues for an analysis of the narrative models of postmodern cinema by looking at them as visualization forms re-mediated (Bolter and Grusin 1999) by new media's formal structures. Instead of being organized in a classical way through causal and temporal logics, contemporary storytelling models seem to be structured according to "casual," "catalogue" and "homogeneous" aggregative logics following the "database" and "navigable space" visual forms of new media (Manovich 2001). The conventional "narrative" paradigm (Metz 1974; Branigan 1992, Jullier 1997) in postmodern film seems to be fully "fragmented," following textual organization models similar to computer logic and aesthetics. This essay aims to classify these new models as "database forms" (aggregation of events, by "accumulation," or "catalogue"), and "navigable space forms" (aggregation of events by "loop/repetition," "hyperlinking" or the "network" of stories). They show the importance of the "space paradigm" over the "temporal" one in the postmodern film. What is fundamental now seems to be the way of "composing" the images and the storytelling with them, that is the film's "spatial dimension." For this reason, this paper defines the cinematic image (and the image tout court) in the postmodern era as "image-interface," because it behaves like the computer interface, that is as a "spatialized image," for every kind of data with which every user/spectator wants to interact. The aim of this essay is to explore and define new forms of storytelling visualization, of space and time in contemporary postmodern cinema, supporting a prolific osmosis between "film theory" and "new media theory".

 

I. Introduction

<1> It has been some time since when academic studies on new media have proved that the main way for media to work is to repropose contents and aesthetic forms belonging to the previous media. Notions such as the "non-transparency of the code" and of "transcoding" become essential in this debate and are directly connected to the first study about the theory and changes of mass media. Such a study led its author to the well-known slogan "medium is message."(McLuhan 1964). As Lev Manovich (2001) points out,

in cultural communication, a code is rarely simply a neutral transport mechanism; usually it affects the messages transmitted with its help. ... A code may also provide its own model of the world, its own logical system, or ideology. Most modern cultural theories rely on these notions, which together I will refer to as the "non-transparency of the code" idea (64).

Whereas the code used in communication affects the messages transmitted, providing an ideology and its own structure of belonging, the paradigm of hierarchical file system (database) provides the world is ordered according to a "logical multilevel hierarchy," and the hypertext paradigm of World Wide Web organized as "a non-hierarchical system ruled by metonymy" (Manovich 2001:65). Mass media change the real at a phenomenal, social and ideological level. While the printed word had been conveying knowledge for centuries, thus nourishing the public imagination and unconscious, cinema has significantly changed that original code, equipping it with a (mechanical) eye, with an ear (dialogues and music) and their synaesthetic reproposals.

<2> Cinema soon imposes itself as a technology and at the same time as a multi-sensorial machine able to bring forth myths and history. Yet, with the advent of new media, even cinema has changed and "re-mediated" (Bolter and Grusin 1999) [1] its structure. Such an impact has affected mainly the film storytelling, its modes of aggregation, its models of formal and aesthetic visualization and the notions of space and time, developed in a different kind of image, which turns out to be definitively manipulated in its sign and functions.

II. Re-mediated Visualizations in Contemporary Film: Database and Navigable Space

<3> While "classical cinema" used to visualize its own contents through strictly-codified narrative structures and "modern cinema" used to organize them by showing meta-referential points of view, "postmodern cinematic narrative" [2] becomes an experimental place where to confirm its "scattering" at every level of the old structure. The narrative paradigm of contemporary films shows storytelling elements aimed at full "fragmentation" (according to Jameson's theory, 1992): whereas old narrative used to organize data in space and time according to the conventional cause-effect relations  [3], contemporary film often organizes its narrative structure as a set of events devoid of any logical-causal connection, following organized models close to the new media logic and aesthetics. I would like to review the narrative models of postmodern cinema by looking at them as visualization forms re-mediated by new media formal structures, such as the "database" and the "navigable space." Instead of being organized in a classical way through logical and temporal causes, they seem to be structured according to "casual," "catalogue" and "homogeneous" aggregative logics following the "database" and "navigable space" visual forms of new media.

<4> The advent of digital media has witnessed the spread of systems aimed at filing and storing data, whereas film technology had already started a media revolution leading to reconfigure "culture tout court" like a system of audio-visual data. As Manovich (2001) underlines, "mass media and data processing are complementary technologies; they appear together and develop side by side, making modern mass society possible"(23). Mass culture is therefore the result of the parallel meeting between these two technologies originating an irremediable change in the cultural system of the advanced western societies. However, the consequences of this transformation get more visible with the world-wide marketing of computers (from 1980's onwards), and are confirmed by the advent of the Internet in the following decade  [4]. Since "accumulation" and "indexing" ("cataloguing") hundreds of thousands of data have become possible, that is, since the mass advent of cinema, information (image/word/sound that is to say every possible "significant"), has started "to float" through the cultural macro-system. Moreover, we must also consider that some cultural forms which have become manifest after the advent of computers (though they didn't born with it), have then been translated into old media such as cinema and television according to the "transcoding" principle  [5]. The "remediation" principle (Bolter and Grusin 1999) indeed can also be applied in reverse, in other words it enables the first media to update, using new technologies and its cultural forms to their purpose.

III. Postmodern Storytelling Paradigm: Database (I)

<5> The first of the forms re-mediated by postmodern cinema is the "database": potentially contained in the film medium which created prototypes of it during the Lumière brothers' first short movies, this form was also used by multimedia computers taking on a dominant role. Now it returns from computers to culture and cinema. As Manovich (2001) writes

... a computer database becomes a new metaphor that we use to conceptualize individual and collective cultural memory, a collection of documents or objects, and other phenomena and experiences. ... In computer science, database is defined as a structured collection of data. The data stored in a database is organized for fast search and retrieval by a computer and therefore, it is anything but a simple collection of items. ... Following art historian Ervin Panofsky's analysis of linear perspective as a "symbolic form" of the modern age, we may even call database a new symbolic form of the computer age ..., a new way to structure our experience of ourselves and of the world (214,218,219).

In the early cinema, the method of attracting by "displaying" a "catalogue" (the Lumière brothers' "Views," a sequence of shots of remote locations), was the essential part of the film work [6]. This cultural form is exactly a "database," a structured collection of data organized around an identical and repetitive "centre" represented by the views themselves. "From the point of view of the spectator/user's experience, a large proportion of them are databases in a more basic sense. They appear as collections of items with which the user can carry out various operations – to view, to navigate, to search" (Manovich, 2001:219).

<6> In postmodern cinema storytelling structure, without its traditional centripetal structure tied by causal connections, often appears similar to a (1)"database," a data collection, following a double distinction of "repetition" formulas: (a)"accumulation" and (b)"catalogue" [7]. Though complying with the same paradigm, the database forms of "accumulation" and "catalogue" are based on different criteria. As Edward Branigan (1992) and Laurent Jullier (1997) point out, there are different strategies by which the spectator can combine the film projection data: at a first level, there would be "accumulation," a purely "casual" association mode. At a upper level, there would be the "catalogue," made up of a collection of data connected to the same (thematic, space, time) core. At the third level, there is "causality" represented by a set of "episodes," originated by a spectator who connects the consequences of a central situation (Branigan 1992) [8]. In postmodern cinema, the use of narrative structures based on "causal" links (and often "chronological time") as the "episodes," becomes more and more unusual. However, according to me, in some similar cases we will obtain (2)"hybrid" forms between "database" and "narrative," in the modes referred to as (a)"hierarchical," one original cause ranks first in this hierarchy followed by its consequences, and (b)"relational," wherein the prosecution of an action depends on the causal relations between the events. Eventually, there will be the case of the (3)classical "narratives", characterized by a kind of events prosecution based exclusively on causal and chronological effects. The more the generative causes will be binding to the effects in the development of the story meaning, the closer we will get to the "classical narrative model".

<7> In the first one of the "database" paradigms, that I call "accumulation," the events result from a very simple "remote cause" serving as a pretext(a), or just happen, "without any apparent motive," developing different stories linked by a metonymic bond of pure "contiguity"(b). In both cases, stories prefer to use structural "centrifugal" modes, ellipsis, pauses and digressions, in order to take away the organic idea of story "entirety" (or centre). There is plenty of examples of "accumulation-database"(a) in the American contemporary film production: movies such as The Darjeeling Limited (2007, directed by Wes Anderson), start with a simple event which causes an action, the desire to plan a journey to India, and go on with a repeated series of unconnected situations, alternating past (the father's funeral) and present events achieving the only purpose of building up different textual lines with no impact on the narrative consistency. The initial pretext becomes less and less relevant when faced with the digressions and the long pauses of the diegesis, thus proving an "aleatory condition" for the spectator, wherein a set of information with no centre cancels the traditional organic structure and makes the story a pure "divertissement". Films as Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Down by Law (1986), Broken Flowers (2005) directed by Jim Jarmusch or Brazil (1980) by Terry Gilliam, start from a weak cause used as a "pretext", such as the journey, the escape from prison, the attempt to find his ex-girlfriend and his son, or to fight an unfair government system, in order to show stories connected by "accumulation" where the only aim is the storytelling "digression".

<8> Conversely, "accumulation" paradigms of the second type(b) are well summed up by the prototypic model of Pulp Fiction (1994, directed by Quentin Tarantino), that is by those film products that erase the original cause of the events and make the story go on alternating stories of different characters, often involved just "by chance" in the diegesis. The textual film structure develops around several plot lines (different stories about different characters), not linked by any necessity bond, with the explicit view to confounding and altering its organic perception. The paradigmatic gun shot which starts the digression about the dead passenger in Pulp Fiction, succeeds in moving the unitary sense of the work further away (Jullier 1997). A useless episode in a general perspective which however proves to be a "cumulative syntagm" inside the film centripetal structure. He Died with a Felafel in His Hand (2000, directed by Richard Lowenstein) is a clear-cut example of this type: it is about a young unemployed man whose story starts and interlocks with several other stories and people, according to an undifferentiated principle of "casualty." "Sound" (that means extra-diegetic sounds, like off-screen noises and music), becomes indispensable in postmodern cinema, even within the paradigms of "cumulative" and "casual" repetition. In both films, sound becomes like a "sensory texture" necessary to cover the holes scattered throughout the main textual structure.

<9> In the second-type "database" paradigm, the "catalogue," the events follow one another displaying a "central" (a)theme or character, (b)place where all of them happen, or (c)time or chronological duration in which they take place. An essential difference, compared to the previous notion of "accumulation," is the existence of a "centre" which elicits the following events. In the first case "a," the catalogue syntagms are connected by "consecutive" elements, building stories linked by the actions of a single character or by the events about a general theme; differently, in the second and third case "b" and "c," the catalogue syntagms are "not consecutive," that is they are not correlated at all, so that they make an exact "catalogue" of data where the different plot lines are totally independent each other.

<10> The centre of the first kind of catalogue(a) is the main "character" (heroic or nostalgic), or a particular "theme" (love, friendship, suffering, speed and cars, dinosaurs, and so on). Some of these films are often built on a series of special effects perceived as "immersive experiences." Examples of this type are a wide variety of films with frequent "sensory effects" also due to the high volume of the music and the sounds: the whole series of Die Hard  [9], The Fast and The Furious (2001, directed by Rob Cohen) [10], xXx (2002, by Rob Cohen), Rollerball (2001, by John McTiernan) and Jurassic Park (and its successors), based on the original matrix of Jaws (1975, directed by Steven Spielberg) [11]. These films are often realized in order to produce second episodes and sequels and whose contents remain basically unchanged, with a more and more frequent use of audio-visual effects going toward a more "hyper-sensorial" direction.

<11> In the second-type of "catalogue-database"(b), the "place" plays a key role for the information sequence. Different stories without other connections develop in the same physical space, room, apartment, car, city or whatever. Night on Earth (1991) and Mystery Train (1989), both directed by Jim Jarmusch, appear as "place catalogue" structures: in the first one the episodes take all place inside a taxi, while the second one depicts three odd stories connected to one another by the same city (Memphis). Four Rooms (1995) [12] follows the same structure but divided into four parts, alternating four different stories set in 4 rooms of the same hotel. Hotel Room (1993) [13] directed by David Lynch and James Signorelli, commissioned by the satellite network HBO, show the room 603 of an hotel where three stories take place in different periods of time. The storytelling structure is always the same, a "place catalogue" where the plot lines are normally not linked in other way except for the mentioned places.

<12> In the third-type catalogue(c), database structure alternates a series of stories happened in an identical "time" or "chronological duration" frame. Humanity's Last New Year's Eve (L'ultimo capodanno, 1998, directed by Marco Risi) is a good example of this type of catalogue: the action takes place in the same night (time) of December 31st in different flats of a residential area in Rome. Similarly, Crash (2004, directed by Paul Haggis) is about the heartbreaking stories of some people in Los Angeles, in the duration of about 36 hours (chronological duration) of the daily life in the famous Californian metropolis. Here, several car accidents provoke the only possible physical contact mentioned in the film title. The plot lines are again without causal connections, displaying the "time catalogue" as the main storytelling aggregation structure.

<13> The "database film" paradigm, considered from both the "accumulation" and "catalogue" points of view, behaves as a "objects-container" implied into the aesthetic forms of the new media. Whereas the aesthetic category of "fragment"(Calabrese 1987) would convey a semantic relevance to the object detached from the whole and reproposed in a different context, in the same way, the "database film" selects a wide amount of "fragment-objects" and reproposes them into new contexts, according to "destructured" and "a-causal" film morphologies. The principal aspect of postmodern cinematic storytelling seem to be the totally "fragmentation" of film plot.

<14> At a second level, after the database model(1), the structural storytelling form of postmodern films leaves room to a "hybrid" paradigm between the "database" itself and the "classical narrative," what I refer to as the "narrative-database"(2). This is the form of many film stories, half-way between an "a-causal structure" and the attempt to explain narrative by only one or a series of connected causes whose consequences would have visible effects on the story. In this paradigm, there would be two different levels of "narrative-database": at level(a) corresponds to the so-called "hierarchical" [14] structure, in which the "original cause" ranks first into the hierarchy. This cause would lead the action to move into a specific direction involving specific consequences. Atonement (2007, directed by Joe Wright) is an example of this hybrid type, in which the false accusation against a promising young man will spoil his own and his lover's life. This film shows the consequences of such an original cause inside a chronological-time frame. Level(b) corresponds to the so-called "relational" [15] model, whose original motive multiplies and gives life to a thick network of "relations" and consequences, whose outcomes build the film plot itself. Michael Clayton (2007, directed by Tony Gilroy) places in a similar relational structure the deeds of a lawyer who strives to disclose the corrupted strategies of a multinational company. Many postmodern films appear like "hybrid forms" between "narrative" and "database," based alternatively on the accumulation of "casual" links and on the evolution of "causal" connections, such as Cachè (2005), Funny Games (1997) both directed by Michael Haneke, where the actions are half-way between "causal link" and "pure casualty".

<15> The third paradigm is "narrative"(3), which uses a classical textual pattern mainly based on "causal-logic" links. This model will entail films coming from classical literature, theatre adaptations as well as historical biographies. William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996, directed by Baz Luhrmann) is one of them. As the adaptation of the most known Shakespeare's play, excellent at transposing dialogues and developing causal and temporal events, this film is an accurate film version of the famous theatre play but with clear differences from the original one. First of all, "settings": the story is set no longer in the classical scenario of the quite Verona but in the versatile "Verona Beach," an urban area more similar to a futurist Los Angeles than to a Medieval village. Secondarily, young Romeo wears Hawaiian skirts like a Californian surfer, Mercutio wears a tight suit which he has on proudly at the party held by the Capulets family. All these details are dressed up by guns and shootings and by an accelerated rhythm of psychedelic, excessive, deafening and immersive sounds soaked in the most redundant postmodern style. As you can see, even if the plot structure follows a classical "narrative paradigm", the result of postmodern version always distorts and emphasizes the differences from the original story, producing again a "fragmentary effect" of the first storytelling prototype.

<16> From all three analyzed "visual plot organization" levels, of (1)"database," (2)"narrative-database" and (3)classical "narrative", postmodern film is always based upon a "variations of the repetition" system, devising different modes of thematic and temporal "alteration" which always produce highly "destructured systems" as to forms and contexts. For example in Atonement (narrative-database), the first sequence shows the same scene with the main character twice (going out of the fountain of her garden) according to the double point of view of different characters. Conversely, in the last sequence, we can see two different stories of the reunion of the characters. One of the stories is fictional and reflects the narrator's expectations, the other one is real and differs from the first one to the extent that the above-characters are no longer there because they are dead. Only at the end, we have a consistent idea of what really happened because of the presence of a "deus ex machina", the female-author of the biography, that discloses the narrative tricks of what she created. The result of these multifarious operations is a constant character in the aesthetic visualisation of contemporary films in the postmodern era: the repetition of "variation forms" ruled by the "difference", that does not imply any longer the need for causal relations even when there are some. What is important is they are always "fragmented" and "deconstructed".

IV. Postmodern Storytelling Paradigm: Navigable Space (II)

<17> According to what said so far, the plot structure of postmodern film would result from the following three forms of visualization: (1)"database" (as "accumulation" and "catalogue"), (2)"narrative-database" ("hierarchical" or "relational" types), and eventually (3)simple "narrative" (adaptation of stories of the past, with different levels of "variations of the repetition"). According to Manovich, the need for remediation had come up highlighting the visualisation forms which, as the "database," derived from new media, started to appear in an indefinite amount of cultural products, starting from that medium which is the closest one to computer, that is the cinema. Nevertheless, the structures of postmodern films would not consist in models similar only to the "database" forms.

<18> The second "remediated" aesthetic form used in this analysis about contemporary film texts is (4)the "navigable space" paradigm. Whereas in "database", syntagms followed one another along a linear development and asked only to be read (from a "fixed" and "contemplative" position) to the spectator (according to cases), the most important things in "navigable space" occurs no longer in terms of "contemplation" but rather in terms of "exploration". The interactive system to which responds the video-player or the virtual navigator is a good example of this new operative condition of the user of audio-visual products. Here, the purpose is no longer "displaying" stories, characters, or situations in their "causal," "temporal" or "casual" evolution: the aim is now "to create" worlds, to give life to whole universes where "to move", "interact", "navigate", "choose" a personal pathway based on one's own preferences. Hence the prerequisites for a new contact with spectators could be summed up in this simple way: I (film director/author/programmer) create a world for you (any user) enabling you to explore it and to be the one to decide what to do with, which ways to go and which ones to miss. Nonetheless, if you do not accept these conditions, the game is over, the "inter-action" is over and above all there is no meaning for this kind of game. The films that want to create "navigable universes" show a similar type of "negotiation" (Casetti 2002), with the risk to exclude from the game the player-spectator. This would seem the reason why similar products are often accused of being incomprehensible, perhaps because the starting agreement has been neglected. In other words, one refuses to play a role which is not exclusively contained between "contemplation" and "interpretation." Universes like these ones do not want to be any longer read and understood as "codes": they only need for "cybernauts".

<19> What is meant for "navigable space" is well explained by Manovich (2001):

The term cyberspace is derived from another term – cybernetics. In his 1947 book Cybernetics, mathematician Norbert Wiener defined it as "the science of control and communications in the animal and machine." Wiener conceived of cybernetics during World War II when he was working on problems concerning gunfire control and automatic missile guidance. He derived the term cybernetics from the ancient Greek word kybernetikos, which refers to the art of steersman and can be translated as "good at steering." Thus the idea of navigable space lies at the very origins of the computer era (251).

While trying to organize the substantial amount of literature which studied "navigable space" or "cyberspace" [16], the first thing to point out is its main paradox which can be summed up into the slogan: "There is no space in cyberspace" (Manovich 2001:253). The navigable space can be depicted as a system whose coordinates of digital graphics correspond to "an empty Renaissance space"(254).

<20> "Empty," "aggregate" and "haptic" space. That calls to mind the sequence of the first film of the trilogy of Matrix [17], where Morpheus explains to Neo what Matrix really is by showing him an empty and white space, subsequently filled with different objects and characters, selected and put inside it. The navigable space is exactly this and in order to be realized, it must meet some requirements:

1. "aggregation" in a double sense: (a)as "overlapping" of objects, (b)as "stratification" of different levels (aggregate space);

2. "navigability", by a simulation system (optical-haptic) enabling the user to enter it (navigable space);

3. "virtuality", meant as the union between an "isotropic" condition, that is not structurally linked to the physical reality and to the human body, not preferring any specific axis, and at the same time an "anthropological" condition which conversely prefers "horizontal" and "vertical" axis by which man acts into the space (virtual space);

4. "homogeneity", since despite deriving from an aggregation, it is nonetheless made up of objects of the same material, that is all "pixel on the level of surface; polygons or voxels, on the level of 3-D representation" (Manovich, 2001:266), (homogeneous space);

5. "subjectivity", as "its architecture responding to the subject's movement and emotion"(269), (subjective space).

<21> Each one of these characteristics falls under the form of visualisation of film texts re-mediated by the "navigable space" wherein the old narrative, as it was the case for "database", abandons the traditional causal and temporal connections in favour of a "formal aggregative structure," also referred to as navigable, virtual, homogeneous and subjective at the same time. This paradigmatic structure is characterized by an "explorative way" (exploration) followed by the user, which can be explained by three different types of textual "aggregation," obtained always by combining "consecutive syntagms" along the film structure: (1)the combination of "identical/identity" stories coming back to the starting point (that can be called "loop forms"); (2)the combination of different stories which meet at some points ("Hyperlink forms"); and in the end (3)the combination of different stories able to make remote worlds collide into space and time ("Network forms") [18]. Postmodern cinema shows these trends alternatively, according to some modes characterized often from an "interactive" and "hyper-sensorial" point of view.

<22> The first type of the "navigable space" paradigm, referred to as "loop form", includes the films which develop a textual line which suddenly stops to start again, reflecting precisely the pattern of a "loop."

Characteristically, many new media products, whether cultural objects (such as games) or software (various media players such as QuickTime Player) use loops in their design, while treating them as temporary technological limitations. I, however, want to think about them as a source of new possibilities for new media. ... all nineteenth-century pro-cinematic devices, up through Edison's Kinetscope, were based on short loops. ... Can the loop be a new narrative form appropriate for the computer age? It is relevant to recall that the loop gave birth not only to cinema but also to computer programming. Programming involves altering the linear flow of data through control structures, such as "if/then" and "repeat/while"; the loop is the most elementary of these control structures. Most computer programs are based on repetitions of a set number of steps; this repetition is controlled by the program's main loop. ... As the practise of computer programming illustrates, the loop and the sequential progression do not have to be considered mutually exclusive. A computer program progresses from start to finish by executing a series of loops (Manovich 2001:315,317).

<23> According to Manovich, both the film and the computer techniques were already based on this "loop" form: on the other hand, the two operations of repetition (loop) and sequential storytelling (narrative) do not cancel each other out. The films reproposing this model ("loop", as a kind of "navigable space" storytelling structure) depict: stories of "variations of one's own identity" which repeat into the text (type a: "identity variations," where a character splits into a series of different repetitions of him/herself); or stories of "structural variations" which repeat the same story with different outcomes (type b: "variations of identical structures"). Lost Highway (1996, directed by David Lynch) meets the "a" type loop requirements. The film opens with the scene of a man answering the intercom and hearing a voice saying: "Dick Laurant is dead," and closes with the same man speaking the same words into the same intercom. There are two "explorative" possibilities: either the character has two different identities or the film starts from the beginning showing a real version of the story and an imaginary one [19] which reflects what the main character would have done before (or after) the murder of his wife (in any case, it will be a type of "identity variation").

Much more productive is to insist on how the very circular form of narrative in Lost Highway directly renders the circularity of the psychoanalytic process. That is to say, a crucial ingredient of Lynch's universe is a phrase, a signifying chain, which resonates as a Real that insists and always returns – a kind of basic formula that suspends and cut across time: ... in Lost Highway, the phrase which is the first and the last spoken words in the film, "Dick Laurant is dead," announcing the death of the obscene paternal figure (Mr. Eddy). The entire narrative of the film takes place in the suspension of time between these two moments. At the beginning, Fred hears these words on the intercom in his house; at the end, just before running away, he himself speaks them into the intercom. We have a circular situation: first a message which is heard but not understood by the hero, then the hero himself pronounces this message. ... The temporal loop that structures Lost Highway is thus the very loop of the psychoanalytic treatment in which, after a long detour, we return to our starting point from another perspective (Žižek 2000:17–18).

<24> Slavoj Žižek confirms the "navigable" structure of Lost Highway, implicit in a large amount of other films repeating the "loop form" as their own visualisation plot system. Mulholland Drive (2001, by D. Lynch) follows exactly the same structure showing the evolution of the film text to interrupt and start again the story of the two female characters. Sliding Doors (1998, directed by Peter Howitt) follows a similar explorative line realizing the alternative model of the "variations of identical structures" (type b). The main event is focused on the underground sequence: Helen takes the train and her life changes suddenly (she discovers her boyfriend's infidelity, etc.); a "variation of an identical structure" with different outcomes: Helen misses the train, her life goes on and the turning point will occur only in the end. The simple ways used in Sliding Doors do not match with the mysterious ones used in another "loop film" such as Donnie Darko (2001, directed by Richard Kelly) which ends with the initial scene revealing the mechanism of the film that rewinds and reproduces the implicit repetition of the film recording (type b again). The first sequence of the "loop" coincides with almost all the film development, while the second one corresponds to the final segment which reveals the "repetitive logic" of its discursive structure. Twelve Monkeys (1995, by Terry Gilliam) is based on a similar process where a correspondent coming from the future to prevent humankind from catching a deadly virus, is murdered in front of himself as a young boy and experiences a visionary déjà vu which had tormented him during his whole life.

<25> The second type of visual paradigm of "navigable space" is the "hyperlink" [20], wherein different stories meet at one or more common points (usually solved in the relationships among the characters). It is a plot structure frequently recognizable in postmodern cinema which differs from the "catalogue-database" form (with a centre), thanks to the presence of precise "links" among the stories depicted. And in fact, though not showing a unique and unifying point of view, these "links" among the stories (not necessarily "causal"), lead always to a further development of the narrative till their final outcome (if there is one). The "hyperlink" structure connect always different but "consecutive" plot lines.

If the World Wide Web and the original VRML are any indications, we are not moving any closer toward systematic space; instead, we are embracing aggregate space as a new norm, both metaphorically and literally. The space of the Web, in principle, cannot be thought of as a coherent totality: It is, rather, a collection of numerous files, hyperlinked but without any overall perspective to unite them. The same holds for actual 3-D spaces on the Internet. A 3-D scene as defined by a VRML file is a list of separate objects that may exist anywhere on the Internet, each created by a different person or a different program (Manovich 2001:257).

<26> An "aggregate" space represented as "homogeneous" and through which you can skip from a story-line to another one, is a kind of structure that can be often found in several postmodern film products. Requiem for a Dream (1999, directed by Darren Aronofsky) is an excellent example of "hyperlink form" where the stories of a mother, a son, a girlfriend and their friend merge and turn over creating crossing links even if not placed into a one-dimensional perspective. These stories remain separate evolutionary lines, able at the same time to be part of a film text aimed at "homogeneity". Love's a Bitch (Amores Perros, 2000, directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu) is a film about different love stories and dogs [21], wherein each single "episode" is perfectly linked to the other one by actions, micro-events or relevant elements, never closed inside a unifying perspective, just as Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys (Code inconnu–Récit incomplet de divers voyages, 2000, directed by Micheal Haneke), where we assist to the multifarious development of different suffering characters. Also 21 Grams (2003, by A. G. Iñárritu) and Magnolia (1999, by Paul Thomas Anderson) show a storytelling structure similar to the "hyperlink form" with a chain of stories intertwined by different links. "Because in new media individual media elements (images, pages of text, etc.) always retain their individual identity (the principle of modularity)" (Manovich 2001:141), it seems clear that the "hyperlink" and "network" forms show stories that, taken one by one, retain a "textual and semantic autonomy" from the rest of the film. This feature is in line with the particular way of new media of presenting the "homogeneity" of a cultural product despite the "independency" of each single element. The "textual smoothness" of these film structures would result from "visualizing the points of connection" (between "consecutive" plot lines, similar to the hyperlinks, precisely), which give to the film the impression to contain perfectly the stories connected to one another. Actually, they could be shown all alone and still have a sense. Theoretically, we are not so far away from the independence of the single segments of the "catalogue-database," but practically the difference consist of the absence of "connected points" and "consecutive plot lines" in "b" and "c" types catalogue film.

<27> The last type of visual paradigm of the "navigable space" closely connected to "hyperlink," is the "network form" which is similar to the previous one but moves away from it because of its wider range of representing the hypertextual links of the aggregate stories, producing a "net form". Following the structure of an indefinite-size "network" [22] such as the World Wide Web, some stories, far away and not able to collide in time and space, find some contact points which give life to further developments though from separate points of view. Babel (2006, directed by A. Iñárritu) develops a set of crossed episodes, "homogeneous" but "autonomous" in their perspective, which create a contact among irreparably far worlds like Morocco, the United States, Mexico and Japan, though with the manifest spatial distance. The Fountain (2006, by Darren Aronofsky) follows the same visual organization: the main characters, a man and a woman, live through different temporal dimensions to confirm the power of their love in front of the tree of love. Similarly, The Hours (2002, directed by Stephen Daldry), depicts the stories of different women keeping in touch with one another and living in times and spaces conflicting in the real life. Here the "Time" paradigm proves its uselessness: it becomes a "flat" variable depending on the space depicted in order to display a wide "network of relationships".

<28> By this classification of the re-mediated structures as "database" and "navigable space", hybrid forms as the "narrative-database" and variation forms of the classical simple "narrative", I have tried to delineate the different visual and storytelling structures of contemporary films, thus favouring the US films but also mentioning some European and particularly efficient examples. It is clear, however, that the current classification remains a regulatory analysing attempt that cannot include every contemporary postmodern film. There will be many films wherein different perspectives are mixed together, both crosswise (database/space navigable) and within the same category (for example accumulation/catalogue or loop/hyperlink) with different outcomes. Just think about any example such as Brazil by Terry Gilliam, already mentioned about "accumulation-database" type (a), which belongs to a "hyperlink" structure also, as well as Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt 1998, directed by Tom Tykwer) which, starting from a "loop" structure (the same story starts several times with different outcomes according to the main character's choices), also develops a "catalogue" element of "time duration" ("c" type).

V. The Image-Interface

<29> Many scholars have described postmodernism as a cultural change which privileged "space coordinates" exacerbated on one side by the two-dimensional flattening of mass media screens and on the other side cancelled by every possible distance [23]. At the heart of this exponential form of "enlarged and absorbing spaces" in which the remaining experiential coordinates (mainly time) collapse, there would be mainly the "mass-media image," guilty of making of reality as a "simulacrum" (Baudrillard 1981), depriving daily life of its volumes and of its three-dimension and making it equal to a series of "pseudo-events"(Boorstin 1962), according to a universal paradigm referred to as "pseudo-story." Culture, now global, would have "globalised" its own past, the old "history" which once become part of texts, hypertexts, films, televisions and networks, shows its own "variation forms" able both to change its features and to cancel even its original prototype. Whether it is "post-history" or not, the old "retrospective dimension" shows itself changed into an "accumulation" of original or not original images, aimed at cancelling that unique "aura" (Benjamin 1969) of the historical paradigm turning it into its "serialized counterpart".

In the 1980s many critics described one of the key effects of "postmodernism" as that of spatialization-privileging space over time, flattening historical time, refusing grand narratives. Computer media, which evolved during the same decade, accomplished this spatialization quite literally. It replaced sequential storage with random-access storage; hierarchical organization of information with a flattened hypertext; psychological movement of narrative in novels and cinema with physical movement through space, as witnessed by endless computer animated fly-throughs or computer games such as Myst, Doom, and countless others. In time became a flat image or a landscape, something to look at or navigate through. If there is a new rhetoric or aesthetic possible here, it may have less to do with the ordering of time by a writer or an orator, and more with spatial wandering (Manovich 2001:78).

<30> If "history" can be repeated endless times [24], it will be as much possible to alter and manipulate it, till its original and unrepeatable tracks are lost, confined only to individual memory. "Time" will turn out to be "flattened" in its global-mediatized dimension: it reappears in "synchronic", "nostalgic", "repetitive" forms always "fragmented" but never in its entirety and diachronic dimension. It is no longer the essential paradigm of the renewed historical experience of postmodernism which, once cancelled every spatial and critical distance, is now able to take form in terms of general "simultaneity." One might remark that the paradigm of "simultaneity", perhaps the main effect of time in postmodern era, shows itself as the consequence of a highly "spatial cause," as the result of a distance which cancels itself into its physical substance and into its heuristic-hermeneutic (critical) depth. The old notion of "space," wherein different kinds of interpretations developed, completely disappears, cancelling that temporal dimension which still guaranteed the right distance in order to obtain a pertaining and "deep" gaze. For this reason, scholars such as Marc Augé (1995), when defining an "anthropologie du proche" as key to contemporary world, talk about the presence of "spatial phenomena of the closeness," typically postmodern, the so-called contemporary "non-places": places where the ancient spatial coordinates loose any anthropological meaning as well as their ancient time value. The new postmodern sensitivity comes from the "excess" extended to every level: "time" and "event" excess, "spatial over-supply," floating references of collective identification to which corresponds a renewed user, also referred to as "space consumer".

<31> The system underlying the process of "spatialization" is the least common denominator of every (simultaneous)"postmodern pseudo-event", of any image or logo (both two-dimensional spaces), of each phenomenon or cultural product within the contemporary western societies. We could say that the "flat space" of the ancient mass-media image, after the main computer's advent, can also be defined as "image-interface" [25]. The computer screen represents the "interface" enabling every user to open a "spatialized passage" onto the virtual world of the network. From now on, every film, television, satellite image, according to a relevant "remediation logic" will be visualized and perceived according to the visual form and logic of an "interface." A "spatial limb" constantly connected to interact with the software, one's favourite show, film or any element possibly contained by an image. A code whose confirmation would have universal proportions able to include the generative and cognitive processes of the "culture tout court".

The term human-computer interface describes the ways in which the user interacts with a computer. HCI includes physical input and output devices such as a monitor, keyboard and mouse. It also consists of metaphors used to conceptualize the organization of computer data. ... The term HCI was coined when the computer was used primarily as a tool for work. However, during the 1990s, the identity of the computer changed. ... By the end of the decade, as Internet use became commonplace, the computer's public image was no longer solely that of a tool but also a universal media machine, which could be used not only to author, but also to store, distribute, and access all media. As distribution of all forms of culture becomes computer-based, we are increasingly "interfacing" to predominantly cultural data-texts, photographs, films, music, virtual environments. In short, we are no longer interfacing to a computer but to culture encoded in digital form. ... cinema language, which originally was an interface to narrative taking place in 3-D space, is now becoming an interface to all types of computer data and media (Manovich 2001:69-70,326).

<32> Every computer operation takes place into the "interface space." It means that the "spatialized interface" will constitute the common code to each cultural product of the "mediatized experience" [26]. It is the tip of the iceberg of a long cultural process which witnessed the gradual "flattening" of its own references and each one of its specific operations in the space of the two-dimensional image, promoting at the same time a new all-inclusive category of "spatialized image", which can be referred to as "image-interface." It is not an exclusive peculiarity of the film medium, but rather a new form concerning the "image tout court" and its different uses and implications in contemporary culture, that can be now referred to as a new "postmodern spatial culture" (according to Jameson's theory, 1992). Hence, flat hypertext and movement into the space, made possible by new media through the essential interaction of representative modes of the previous media, have gradually favoured the "spatalizing/spatialized way" of producer (broadcaster) and recipient (user/spectator) of any type of cultural message. As "computer culture gradually spatializes all representations and experiences" (Manovich 2001:80), it is important to see how cinema, its principal reference point and constant related medium [27], is as much involved in this mechanism.

VI. Spatial Visualizations. Cyber-Flâneur Gaze Vs Simulative Gaze

<33> The paradigm of space, essential into the "spatialized experience" of postmodernism, entails several definitions: it is the "empty space" of the monitor-window onto the world, the "aggregate space" that cancels the ancient physical and critical distances (subjective space), the "walkable space" introducing its cybernaut straight into the world to explore (navigable space), and in the end a space that keeps on showing itself, in spite of everything, in its whole "continuity" (homogeneous space).

<34> Cinema that even before computer had opened the two-dimensional-oriented process of the cultural experience, expresses now the relevance of the spatial values, the loss of the diachronic character of the film, in order to realise products whose space become the crucial dimension of sense and the fundamental element for any temporal link/construct. Postmodern film appears as a new visual space organization whose aggregative structure produces schematic pattern and precise axial directions for the plot lines. The image produced by postmodern cinema seems to be the result of an essential "spatial operation", similar to the "digital compositing" of new media products. The main aim of this type of operation is to constitute a "continuous" and "homogeneous" space without denying its own "aggregative substance" of independent elements. As Manovich (2001) writes,

As used in the field of new media, the term "digital compositing" has a particular and well-defined meaning. It refers to the process of combining a number of moving image sequences, and possibly stills, into a single sequence with the help of special compositing software such as After Effects (Adobe), Compositor (Alias/Wavefront), or Cineon (Kodak). ... For instance, a typical special effects shot from a Hollywood film may consist of a few hundred, or even thousands, of layers. ... Digital compositing exemplifies a more general operation of computer culture-assembling together a number of elements to create a single seamless object. Thus we can distinguish between compositing in the wider sense (the general operation) and compositing in a narrow sense (assembling movie image elements to create a photorealistic shot) (136-137,138,139).

<35> The "compositing" would be an essentially theoretical operation, both in computer and in cinema, followed only subsequently by its technical counterpart. Following Manovich's statements, two essential kinds of "compositing" in contemporary films could be defined: compositing 1, which concerns the spaces built in those films that do not use any digital or specific software but can obtain effects of "manipulated" and "continuous" space by means of camera movements (short and long shots, zooms, closes up and so on); compositing 2, which concerns instead the spaces based on the use of special effects and computerized graphics (creation of non-existent objects/bodies, impossible explosions effects and so on). In both cases, the final effect will be an "homogeneous" and "continuous" space resulting from the "aggregation" of different and/or non-existent spatial dimensions, always "manipulated":

Compositing in the 1990s supports a different aesthetic characterized by smoothness and continuity. Elements are now blended together, and boundaries erased rather than emphasized. This aesthetic of continuity can best be observed in television spots and special effects sequences of feature film that were actually put together through digital compositing (i.e., compositing in the narrow, technical sense). ... [But] The aesthetics of continuity cannot be fully deduced from compositing technology ... Digital compositing, in which different spaces are combined into a single seamless virtual space, is a good example of the alternative aesthetics of continuity; moreover, compositing in general can be understood as a counterpart to montage aesthetics (Manovich 2001:142,144).

<36> The space generated by the "database" and "navigable space" films will therefore be the result of a form of "spatial aggregate compositing" whose effects are always "smooth", following on one side the rules of an "aesthetics of continuity" and on the other side the supporting axis in the postmodern production, the "aesthetics of repetition". I'm about to analyse in detail the different characteristics and organization of the "visual space" into the two main film re-mediated paradigms of postmodern cinema. In the "accumulation-database" form, the continuous spatial effect is obtained by a series of "flat spaces," associated in a contiguous way according to a linear "horizontal-oriented" path. The attempt to create the image as the homogeneous result of different flat spaces would already trace back to some film tests popular in 1960's and 1970's when the use of telephoto lens, zooms and long focal-length lenses originated the "effect-flatness" (Jullier 1997). The films that will show similar points of view would make up flat and smooth spaces without perspective, just as a "database." Moreover, in its two forms of "accumulation" ("a" and "b"), the alternation of "contiguous" spaces will visualize an explorative line developed "horizontally". The representative pattern [28] of such a type of visualization of space would reflect what follows (fig. 1):

<37> The straight lines represent the spaces alternated into the film which are built up into the diegesis – according to "accumulation" form – thus obtaining a system of consecutive spatial connection comprising some tangent points (the intersection points (+) making the story go on). Many databases structured as a "road-movie" show a similar organization pattern where open places and pleasant scenarios are shown in the "flatness" of their perspectives. The above-mentioned Searchers 2.0 directed by Alex Cox, The Darjeeling Limited by Anderson, and films such as Carrie (1976) and Sisters (1973) directed by Brian De Palma, reflect this kind of spatial visualisation. In the last ones, the use of the split-screen favours the general perception of two-dimensionality, helped by the manifest erased perspective depth. Let's just think about the Anderson's film: the spaces inside the train, the Indian external landscapes (from the desert to the village, till the meeting with the mother), and still external and internal of the return to America, all represent "flattened spaces" (also thanks to the use of zoom and long focal lenses) which follow one another in a linear way, associated by misleading tricks which however show their points of connection. It is the possibility of "convergence" between the syntagm-spaces to favour the axial "horizontal" pattern.

<38> In the "catalogue-database" form (types "b" and "c"), the "continuous" spatial effect is provided by a series of non-contiguous "flat spaces", connected by "parallel association" modes, along a linear "vertical-oriented" pathway. The parallel lines, corresponding to the spaces which follow one another with a (place or time) centre, will never meet anywhere (as in "accumulation"), and will run on along a "vertical" linearity. The visual pattern of the space trend in the film would be the following one (fig. 2):

<39> The straight lines represent the spaces of the film displaying a "catalogue" of "place" or "time," achieving a parallel chain (the straight lines) whose directions will never cross (because of their being non-contiguous). The pattern shows a "vertical" trend where stories not connected by any points of intersection alternate with one another but whose spaces run along the same "isotopic" axis (space isotopy) [29]. Let's take as an example Night on Earth: the spaces of the taxies running all around the city of Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome and Helsinki develop along a parallel linearity that never meets, in the explication of a series of elements which will compose the catalogue of independent elements, as places (or time). The similarity of the meaning (some events happened in a taxi) of each plot segment causes the "isotopy space," or the semantic homogeneity of the singular spatial figures. As the plot lines are not contiguous, but follow each other by "choice criteria", the axial pattern will be "vertical-oriented".

<40> The "catalogue-database" type "a", of theme/character, will show several "flat spaces" still developed along a "vertical line" but with points of contact: because of this, it will follow a "consecutive chain" similar (not identical) to that of the "accumulation". The scheme will be the following (fig. 3):

<41> Some examples of the first pattern (vertical parallel lines, fig. 2) come from films such as Night on Earth, Mystery Train and Humanity's Last New Year's Eve (catalogues "b" and "c"), where places and time alternate along spatial lines that never meet. Films such as Die Hard will serve as a valid example for the second pattern (catalogue "a," fig. 3), where the story goes on connecting tangent spaces in which the main character moves (or the theme develops). In this last case, let's take as an example Jurassic Park: the centre of the theme-catalogue is the dinosaurs' astonishment. The (isotopic) spaces which will unite, must necessarily show some contact points as the centre of the catalogue is made up of "those" particular dinosaurs (as in Die Hard the main and only well-developed character is the one roled by Bruce Willis). The closed spaces of the laboratory and the open ones of the isle are associated as a "vertical-oriented" catalogue, though no longer parallel but tangent. It is clear that there will be some cases which cannot be included into these axis. For instance, there will be films wherein the catalogue "a" of the theme is obtained through several stories put together without any connection. In that case, the "a" type catalogue will follow a spatial type "b"/"c" pattern (fig. 2). This points out once again that any regulatory attempt as the present one, is to be always downsized and placed into perspectives open to mixing and hybridization.

<42> In the "catalogue-database," the perspectives are generally "flat": the spatial audio-vision "shows off," as in a painting. For this reason, Jullier (1997) used to talk about a "voyeur" spectator: similar to an "explorer", he has to jump from a space to another one while keeping the unbiased position of someone looking at a sequence of data. This could be defined as a "cyber-flâneur". By following the well-known journey of the Baudelaire's traveller [30], this "cyber-flâneur" lets himself be carried by the flow of information, looking from outside but refusing to get in. The typical film gaze defined by Anne Friedberg (1993) as "mobilized virtual gaze," corresponds here to the "cyber-gaze" of a postmodern flaneur made mobile and virtual by the explorative camera, yet in the case of the "database", still devoid of any participatory dimension.

The virtual gaze is not a direct perception but a received perception mediated through representation. I introduce this compound term in order to describe a gaze that travels in an imaginary flânerie through an imaginary elsewhere and an imaginary elsewhen. The mobilized gaze has a history, which begins well before the cinema and is rooted in other cultural activities that involve walking and travel. The virtual gaze has a history rooted in all forms of visual representation (back to cave painting), but produced most dramatically by photography. The cinema developed as an apparatus that combined the "mobile" with the "virtual." Hence, cinematic spectatorship changed, in unprecedented ways, concepts of the present and the real (Friedberg, 1993:2-3).

The "cyber-flâneur's eye" would be much more similar to the eye of an ephemeral "explorer" who, instead of "plunging" into audio-vision, prefers to remain quietly detached, "looking" what is displayed, just as it happens in a "database".

<43> In the "navigable space" form, the spatial effect appears once again aimed at the "aesthetics of continuity", though corresponding to several "deep spaces," always contiguous in their consecutive association, that constitute a "circular-oriented" explorative pathway. As the computer space, the postmodern film's navigable space is characterized by an "isotropic" condition, that is without any human vertical/horizontal axial scheme (see the point 3 explaining the characters of navigable space). Verticality and horizontality are "anthropological" conditions of the only "database", that need a kind of precise organization, otherwise it is totally ineffectual and confusing. Differently, the navigable space prefers a kind of organization oriented to "circular" or "spiral-shaped" forms, because it doesn't depend on a human organization. Consequently, the spectator will be spurred to go "into" the images, to entry those spaces no longer displaying vertical and horizontal spatial lines: this is the first reason why these kind of spaces are depicted as "deep". The depth of the space is also due to the use of some camera movements, such as travelling, louma or steadicam, as well as to the movement of the camera trying "to enter" (Jullier 1997) without apparent reasons in the story-meaning. The first aggregative mode of navigable space, the "loop," sees the spaces alternating, returning and travelling back the same "elliptic-shaped" way. The visual representative pattern would correspond to the following one (fig. 4):

<44> The two elliptic opposite lines represent the alternating spaces in the diegesis –which stops and starts again- along the same isotopic axis (as all "catalogue-databases"): the resulting system links two dimensions with "isotopic connectors" (points of contact between the two stories, usually similar meaning figures) yet not privileging any reading order, but supporting a visual space of plot development similar to the topology known as "the Möbius strip" [31]. Films such as Mulholland Drive and Sliding Doors privilege schematic models as these ones where alternating spaces depict an elliptic-shaped trajectory going back and forth thus confounding the origin and end points of the main plot line itself ("loop", types "a" and "b"). Just take Mulholland Drive: the open space of the first accident, followed by the closed ones at Bettie's house, at the diner, at Diane's flat and the confined place of the "Teatro Silencio", stops to show the isotopic spaces which, from Diane's mirror house, comes back outside at Rita's party and ends up with the suicide in the bedroom, whose outcomes had already been anticipated in the first part of the film. The visual plot organization is clearly cyclical and developed along an "ellipsis".

<45> In the remaining "navigable" forms, the "hyperlink" and the "network", the spatial effect still appears continuous and made up of "deep" and "consecutive" spaces though expressed along a "non-isotopic" axis which follows a "spiral-shaped" path. This time, the representative pattern would be the following one (fig. 5):

The alternating manipulated spaces follow here a "spiral-shaped pathway" thus generating a representative pattern wherein the dimensions are still connected in points of contacts but privilege a prosecution space closer to "labyrinth" [32] and to the so-called "rhizome" (Deleuze and Guattari 1980) [33]. The labyrinth is indeed the form, in the symbolic classical tradition, connected to "spiral" [34]. Similar examples of spatial organization can be seen in films such as Requiem for a Dream, Love's a Bitch, Magnolia and Babel, wherein the sequence of spaces shows a "spiral-shaped" prosecution marked by the tangent points of the stories: the tangled network generated by the events and characters originates a macro-system of relationships and connections whose visualisation reflects the space of the Net (the Internet). Let's consider Babel: the internal spaces of the house in America, where two children and a housekeeper live, connect continuously to their parents' external ones in Morocco, as well as to the outdoor spaces where the Moroccan family lives guilty of having injured one of them, till the hyper-technological indoor and outdoor spaces of modern Tokyo. These spatial connections follow once again a "spiral-oriented" labyrinth path.

<46> If these differing spaces of "hyperlink" and "network" structures, alternate consecutively – always showing their connection points – and run along a "spiral-shaped line" characterized by a "rhizomatic" development and effects of depth (also due to the use of travelling, and so on), it is clear that the here-assumed model of gaze will not match with the one of the "mobile observer/explorer" of the "cyber-flâneur". The message is now based on a pattern aimed at "including", "involving" and making the spectators "participate" as "insiders"—a kind of "internal gaze" suggesting that the spectator is and must feel totally involved. Hence this gaze will be referred to as "simulative".

<47> By "simulation", I mean a reproductive procedure not limited to maintain the superficial (audio-visual in this case) characteristics of the object to be reproduced but able to include its "dynamic"/"behavioural" model. "To make dynamic" means to interpret the "dynamism" (see "time" and "movement") of the object to be simulated and inscribe it into the recipient, that is to say to be able to repeat the exact operation "rules" of this dynamic object and make an individual, not involved in a direct way with it, "test" them. The first military flight simulators [35] proved the fundamental equation underlying every "simulational system": what is reproduced is not the image (icon) of a moving airplane but "the simulation of that movement," of its "rules," in other words the reproduction of a "dynamic model of the behaviour" of the airplane, which would enable the individual to control the flying means. It is no longer looking at an object by "decoding" its mechanisms, now it's time to "test" it, taking its dynamic and behavioural rules and being involved in the "real sensation" of manoeuvring and controlling the moving object. Just like in a videogame. The audio-visual effects generated thanks to digital and to the most recent softwares would produce a filmed and edited image that "is a better simulation technology than a physical construction; and a virtual image controlled by a computer is better still"(Manovich 2001:276).

<48> As it was already the case for the "database" and the "space navigable" forms, the osmosis between audio-visual reproduction and computerized technologies produced (and will still do it) a huge amount of "cultural remediation" products destined to become more and more visible within the universal media scenario. The case of the "simulation technology" proves this condition, passing from the original military uses to the industry of entertainment and to cinema itself.

<49> I would like to make clear that "navigable space films" belong to a gaze referred to as "simulative," as they are able to produce effects similar to "simulations." Thanks to the relevant use of Computer Graphics and digital effects, cinema is now able to "simulate" worlds and make the spectator equal to a "cybernaut" who can move "inside" the virtual reality of the audio-visual image. It is not at all a new frontier. Simulation has always existed, above all at several levels of "ludic forms": nonetheless, cybertexts are now able to realize the original potentials of media to reproduce multiple relational and identification networks and not just "virtual observations of dynamic changes." The present and necessary goal is now to generate the same changes by manipulating the identity of the film medium: from "representation's sign-generators" to "machines' behaviour-generators." According to Gonzalo Frasca (2003) [36]:

Simulation is not a new tool. It has always been present through such common things as toys and games but also through scientific models or cybertexts like the I-Ching. However, the potential of simulation has been somehow limited because of a technological problem: it is extremely difficult to model complex systems through cogwheels. Naturally, the invention of the computer changed this situation. In the late 1990s, Espen Aarseth revolutionized electronic text studies with the following observation: electronic texts can be better understood if they are analyzed as cybernetic systems. He created a typology of texts and showed that hypertext is just one possible dimension of these systemic texts, which he called "cybertexts." Traditionally literary theory and semiotics simply could not deal with these texts, adventure games, and textual-based multi-user environments because these works are not just made of sequences of signs but, rather, behave like machines or sign-generators. The reign of representation was academically contested, opening the path for simulation and game studies (223).

<50> I have already shown, when analysing "database" and "navigable space", that the film narrative-sequence (it means cause-effect and chronological time) constitutes a structural paradigmatic model which is dying out, as it is less and less considered by postmodern cinema storytelling. I want to argue that some postmodern films seem to follow structural models similar to simulational system. According to Frasca, "the key term here is 'behavior'"(2003:223). The reproduction of "behaviour rules" aimed at "making the model testable" becomes the essential theoretical and operating core for any simulation [37]. Cinema manages to enter this mechanism, not only with its privileged role of audio-visual machine able by itself to simulate the perceptive dimensions (eye and ear), but also setting up structures of data-aggregation which, avoiding the linear (and narrative) development and keeping in line with "hypertext" structures, supports multiple developmental systems, closer to the "sign-generator" of videogames. On one hand Torben Grodal [38] says:

Films make it possible to move freely through time and space. Films make it possible to cue and simulate an experience that is close to a first-person perception (either directly by subjective shots, POV-shots) or from positions close to the persons, contrary to the fixed and distant perspective in the theatre. The focusing and framing of persons, objects and events simulate and cue the working of our attention. ... As an audiovisual media, the dominant temporal dimension is the present tense; we directly witness the events. ... The medium more easily afford story development that focuses on a "now" with an undecided future that has to be constructed by the action of the hero. ... The linear narrative forms are different from some "paratelic" phenomena like dancing in which there is reversibility in which there is no source-path-goal-schema, and different from associative structures as found in hypertexts with dense nonlinear links (Grodal 2003:138,153).

<51> Frasca, like Grodal, considers the "non-linear associative forms" expressed in the cybertext as essential to its "simulational turning point". An important feature of this structure would seem its way to define itself as "dense aggregation". "Density" means the high amount of data stored within: when talking about cinema, it will also mean a type of "dense image" of objects, data and sensorial stimuli able to make the "perceptive effects" of audio-vision as an "immersion" (Jullier 1997), multiplying them in several directions (optic, acoustic, haptic) [39]. Massimo Maietti (2004) [40], when theorizing the presence of "hypertexts" in the narrative structures of videogames, defines one of these types as "environment hypertexts," from a semiotic point of view. In these "environment hypertexts" (videogaming), there would be some verbal and visual-graphic information blocks which, placed inside hypertextual structures and links, form an "environment," that is a space wherein data are organized in a "dense," "non-linear" and "undetermined" way. Each user's input originates different effects, while "dense" spaces and times depict an overall "environment" characterized by the notion of "hypertextual indeterminacy" according to which it is not possible to thoroughly identify all of the conditions produced by the videogame. Shifting from videogames to films, the theoretical question does not change quite a lot. I would like to assume that such "environment hypertexts" are the structural construction underlying also some postmodern films, because they are able to produce "indeterminate", "non-linear," "hypertextual networks", such as the "hyperlink" and "network" forms (which show "dense" information, overlapping and confused spaces and simultaneous times). Moreover, they originate a "simulative gaze" similar to the one used by videogames.

<52> If the starting point in the definition of "simulation" was the notion of "behaviour", the attempt to reproduce the object "dynamism" goes hand in hand with "haptics" and with the "tactile" dimension. The critical debate about the evolution of contemporary audiovisual means is still stick to the real or unreal chances to realize the conversion from "sight" to "touch". The "immersive" (Jullier 1997) effects of postmodern cinema would still be a slight confirmation of the retrieval of the "haptic dimension" by contemporary film. Haptics, the immediate touching reaction offered by interactive games, is still the only concrete dimension to divide the film reproduction (iconic-representational) from "videogame simulation" [41]. Yet, the "simulative gaze", coming from some kind of contemporary cinema, would confirm the essential analogy with interactivity [42] of "haptic media" such as videogames. In order to reproduce the behaviour of any dynamic system whose movement and interaction has to be simulated, it is important that the recipient-player identifies with his/her avatar and directs his/her movement and gaze from the first person POV. In this way, it will be possible to stimulate "tactile responses," from the activated "simulative gaze", which will control the movement of buttons, joystick, and so on (output). Let's take a scene from the above-mentioned Requiem for a Dream. While one of the characters, the protagonist's Afro-American friend, runs away to escape his torturers in search for drugs, the camera is behind his back following him snap by snap running speedy. The gaze is a "high-angle long shot", enabling the spectators to see what is happening in front of him and even what is back to him. The spectator moves alongside him, runs and vibrates "with his/her senses" together with the character: the shot is exactly identical to that "high-angle" (which could be meant, given the effects, as "semi-first-person") of a videogame [43]. Contrary to being seated in front of the computer monitor, this time we don't have a manual tool to "haptically" control the movement of one's own avatar. However, the cognitive-perceptive process underlying the path would seem to be quite identical. The haptics effects originated by the sequence are equal to the sensorial, participatory and euphoric feelings originated by any videogaming experience, and they provoke behavioural reactions wherein the user shares-takes part (feels the multisensory effects [44]) in a "semi-first person" condition, adopting the behaviour of the dynamic reference model (simulated system). These would be the characteristics and perceptive effects of the postmodern cinematic "simulative gaze".

<53> On the other hand, I want to underline that the forms of spectatorship analyzed such as the two kinds of gaze, "cyber-flâneur" and "simulative," could still appear overlapped and could mutually contaminate [45], finding connection points in the communicative tangle organized by every single film text.

VII. Temporal Visualizations in Postmodern Cinema

<54> While the "image-interface" is a typical example of "postmodern image tout court," the "image-space" represents the specific one of the film product. It is a kind of image which does not care any longer about "time" (and temporal dimension), but which is instead interested solely in conceiving "compositing strategies" of its own space and, only starting from them, it generates every following variable. The "image-space" would appear as the film result of a "digital compositing", whose purpose is to "re-compose" its own structure in the "homogeneous and continuous space" of the computer. Cinema seems to behave in the same way: just starting from its "spatial aggregation" forms, all the necessary variables for constructing the whole story meaning will be produced, i.e. the plot movement and its connected time morphologies.

In addition to montage dimensions already explored by cinema (differences in images' content, composition, and movement), we now have a new dimension –the position of images in space in relation to each other. ... The logic of replacement, characteristic of cinema, gives way to the logic of addition and coexistence. Time becomes spatialized, distributed over the surface of the screen. ...The result is a new cinema in which the diacronic dimension is no longer privileged over the syncronic dimension, time is no longer privileged over space, sequence is no longer privileged over simultaneity, montage in time is no longer privileged over montage within a shot (Manovich 2001:325,326).

<55> Whereas space, the main element in postmodern era, always generates its own "spatialized time", we may start to analyze the different time visualisations which can be found in contemporary films. In the "database" form, notably in the "accumulation" (types "a" and "b") and "catalogue" types ("a" and "b"), the temporal dimension moves in a "random" direction. "Randomization," essential to new media, corresponds to the possibility to reach every single datum at the same time, thus enabling a "time mapping" in a flattened two-dimensional space. It is nothing exclusive to computers: last-century machines, such as the Phenakistiscope, the Zootrope and so on, were able to reproduce the same mechanism (Manovich 2001:51). The temporal dimension of "database-film" would be represented by a "random time," because it goes on "randomly", without a precise aim (or important effects), and it shows itself as a dimension manipulated by the principle of "casualty." The events, following one another, witness a "data addition" along the time line so they are shown "before and after" by chance and without a chronological hierarchy. The "random time" goes back and forth, is mapped endless times and does not care whether images and stories are understandable, or whether they are temporarily relevant, because the spatial structures and their aggregation generate the story meaning. Also in the catalogue "a" type, that seems to have a diachronic time sequence, after a deeper analysis it could recognize that between the beginning and the end of the film, the spectator can change the time sequence of the actions/events and to obtain the same story meaning. This is the sense of randomness. The catalogue "c" will be characterized by a different temporal dimension, because it is the time itself to be the catalogue "centre" here: in this case, there will be a "synchronic time" wherein each single story, happened "simultaneously," proceeds according to a "simultaneity" condition. Examples of the "random time" would be "databases" such as Searchers 2.0, He Died with a Felafel in his Hand and Pulp Fiction, wherein temporal dimension results from a "spatial operation" and goes on with "random" events able to modify time. Conversely, films such as Humanity's Last New Year's Eve would show the "synchronism" of different events occurred during the same time frame ("synchronic time").

<56> In the "classical narrative" (as often in the hybrid forms of "narrative-database"), time dimension is usually "diachronic." Also in these cases, it originates relevant variations, such as in the so-called "nostalgia–film" (Jameson 1992:19), where crystallized past situations are depicted with "conventional" and "stylized" images. In this type of films "time" will be referred to as "nostalgic". A clear example of this kind of temporal dimension comes from Far From Heaven (2002, directed by Todd Haynes), where the Fifties style has an important impact for the story plot. The direct opposite of "nostalgic time," proposing a past "fixed" in its more characteristic and dazzling style, is the one obtained by "overlapping" the old and new time periods. Examples of this kind of time dimension comes from literary adaptations, such as William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, wherein two different "time styles," Shakespeare's Middle Age and contemporary postmodern, meet in a multiple and short-circuit plot situation. In this case, time will be defined as "strengthened" or "multiple".

<57> In the visual form of the "navigable space", the "loop" mode will originate a "cyclic" or "iterative" time. A first time dimension will be in fact followed by a second one repeating "cyclically" the previous one, though running along different directions. Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and films such as Sliding Doors show temporal dimensions characterized as such. The "hyperlink" and the "network", alternating instead times and spaces of different stories though still meeting somewhere, will bring forth "synchronic time" of a hypothetical present, depicted as "simultaneous". Requiem for a Dream, Babel and The Hours, visualize in the form of "hyperlink" and "network," some stories crossing in a precise way in spite of their spatial and time distance. Indeed, they show a "flattened continuum" in its way of displaying the events "at the present," that is an "a-historical present," which occurs "simultaneously" (in the first two films, Requiem and Babel) and again flattened in the "synchronic association" of different historical time periods (in the last one). The common result is the "re-composing" of a "simultaneous temporality" according to the "spatializing logics" of postmodernism aimed at levelling in a two-dimensional way every form of progressive and diachronic time.

<58> This essay tried to argue for an analysis of visual storytelling organization in contemporary cinematic fiction, by considering two fundamental models of representation re-mediated from the aesthetic of new media, "database" and "navigable space". It would seem to be clearer that on one hand the "narrative" paradigm (from a narratology point of view, meant as an organized system of cause-effect relationships, temporal event sequence and a final resolution, see Metz 1974; Branigan 1995, Jullier 1997), is still valid but more and more uncommon, and on the other hand, it would seem that new visualization forms as the "database" and "navigable space" paradigms (not narrative aggregation of events, by accumulation, cataloguing, loop-repetition of stories, or hyperlinking/network), are much more common in the film storytelling organization. They show the importance of the "space paradigm" upon the "temporal paradigm" in contemporary postmodern cinema. If the sequence of the events is no longer necessary in a "diachronic time" frame or in a "causal-logic hierarchy," what is fundamental now is the way of "composing" the images and the storytelling with it, that is the film spatial dimension. For this reason I have defined the cinematic image in the postmodern era as "image-interface," because it would seem to behave as the computer interface, that is as a "spatialized image", for every kind of data. In this general panorama, the "time" paradigm considerably changes: the old "chronological time" is replaced by a kind of "random time" in the accumulation-database and catalogue-database "a" and "b", and by a kind of "synchronic time" in the catalogue "c". "Loop time" and "simultaneous time" (that is the same as "synchronic", but I call it differently to distinguish them), will be very common in the different cases of "navigable space" system. In the "narrative" systems, the time would be instead generally "diachronic", and in some cases "nostalgic" (Jameson 1992); in other cases "strengthened" or "multiple". The aim of this paper has been to explore and to define new forms of storytelling visualization, of space and time in contemporary postmodern cinema, supporting a prolific osmosis between "film theory" and "new media theory".

Works Cited

Augè, Marc. Non-lieux: introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1992; Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, Trans. by John Howe. London: Verso, 1995.

Baudrillard, Jean. "The Precession of Simulacra." Simulacra and Simulation (1981). Trans. Sheila Flaria Glaser. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1994:1-42.

Benedikt, Michael (ed. by). Cyberspace: First Steps. Cambridge-Massachussets-London: The MIT Press, 1991.

Bolter, Jay David, Grusin, Richard. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge-Mass: MIT Press, 1999.

Boorstin, J. Daniel. The Image. New York: Atheneum, 1962.

Bordwell, David, Staiger, Janet, Thompson, Kristin. The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

Branigan, Edward. Narrative Comprehension and Film. London-New York: Routledge, 1992.

Calabrese, Omar. L'età neobarocca. Bari: Laterza 1987; Neo-Baroque: A Sign of the Times. Trans. Charles Lambert. Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Casetti, Francesco. Communicative Negotiation in Cinema and Television. Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2002.

Frasca, Gonzalo. "Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology." The Video Game Theory Reader, Eds. Marck J. Wolf and Bernard Perron. New York and London: Routledge, 2003:221-236.

Friedberg, Anne. Window Shopping. Cinema and the Postmodern. Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California, 1993.

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Grodal, Torben. "Stories for Eye, Ear, and Muscles: Videogames, Media, and Embodied Experiences." The Video Game Theory Reader, Eds. Marc Wolf, Bernard Perron. New York and London: Routledge, 2003:129-156.

Maietti, Massimo. Semiotica dei videogiochi. Milano: Unicopli, 2004.

Mcluhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1964.

Metz, Christian. Essais sur la signification au cinéma. Paris: Klincksieck, 1968; Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema. Trans. M. Taylor. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England: The MIT Press, 2001.

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of the Late Capitalism. Durham N. C.: Duke University Press, 1991.

Jullier, Laurent. L'écran post-moderne. Un cinéma de l'allusion e du feu d'artifice. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1997.

Žižek, Slavoj. The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch's Lost Highway. Seattle: Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities University of Washington, 2000.

 

Notes

[1] For the concept of "remediation" see Bolter, Jay David, Grusin, Richard, Remediation: Understanding New Media, Cambridge-Mass: MIT Press, 1999. [^]

[2] I will call "postmodern film" every contemporary movie (from 1968 until now) that will show such characters of storytelling "fragmentation," similar to database or navigable space structures of new media. Postmodern film is also identified by other specific features, like a kind of "quotation," a particular use of the "sound" and some typical "camera tracks" that I will not examine in this study. To better analyse the notion of "postmodernism" applied to cinema see: Collins, Jim, Radner, Hilary and Preacher Collins, Ava (eds). Film Theory Goes to the Movies. New York, London: Routledge, 1993; Denzin, Norman. Images of Postmodern Society. Social theory and contemporary cinema. London, Newbury Park and New Delhi: Sage, 1991; Foster, Hal (ed. by). The Anti-aesthetic. Essays on postmodern culture. Port Townsend (Washington): Bay Press, 1983; Friedberg, Anne. Window Shopping. Cinema and the Postmodern. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1993; Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. An enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Cambridge, Mass., Oxford: Blackwell, 1990; Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism. London, New York: Routledge, 1989; Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of the Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991; Jullier, Laurent. L'ecran post-moderne: un cinéma de l'allusion et du feu d'artificie. Paris, Montreal: L'Harmattan, 1997; Lyotard, Jean-François. La condition postmoderne. Paris: Éditions des Minuit, 1979; The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984; Neale, Steve and Smith, Murray (eds). Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. London and New York: Routledge, 1998; Rose, A. Margaret. The Postmodern and the Postindustrial. A Critical Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991; Žižek, Slavoj. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT press, 1991. [^]

[3] Edward Branigan carries out a distinction of the different possible levels of "causality" in a narrative: (1)at the first level, the elements follow one another arbitrarily ("consecutive"); (2)at the second level, they follow one another temporarily ("chronological"); (3)at the third level, they are connected by "social practices" ("conventional consecution"); (4)at the fourth level, they use a "remote cause" failing "intervening causes"; (5)at the fifth level, one element is necessary to enable another one to appear("enabling cause"); (6)at the sixth level one element is enough for another one to appear ("direct cause", where more direct causes lead to the "over-determination" of the effect), and lastly (7)at the seventh level an element, referred to as sole cause, is both necessary and enough to enable another one to appear. According to such a classification, an event will be integrated into the narrative in a more relevant way, the more high its causality level will be. In postmodern cinema, these different levels of causality are less and less used for enhancing the "aggregative non-causal visual forms" as "database" and "navigable space" models. For more details about this topic in contemporary film see Branigan, Edward, Narrative Comprehension and Film, London-New York: Routledge, 1992. [^]

[4] As Manovich says: "The two separate historical trajectories finally meet. Media and computer – Daguerre's daguerreotype and Babbage's Analytical Engine, the Lumière Cinématographie and Hollerith's tabulator – merge into one. All existing media are translated into numerical data accessible for the computer. The result: graphics, moving images, sounds, shapes, spaces, and texts become computable, that is, simply sets of computer data. In short, media become new media" (Manovich 2001:25). [^]

[5] As Manovich explains, "In new media lingo, to "transcode" something is to translate it into another format. The computerization of culture gradually accomplishes similar transcoding in relation to all cultural categories and concepts. That is, cultural categories and concepts are substituted, on the level of meaning and/or language, by new ones that derive from the computer's ontology, epistemology, and pragmatics. New Media thus acts as a forerunner of this more general process of cultural reconceptualization" (Manovich 2001:47). [^]

[6] See Burch, Noël. Life to Those Shadows. Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990; Gaudreault, André, Gunning, Tom. Le cinéma des premiers temps, un défi à l'histoire du cinéma? in Histoire du cinéma: nouvelles approches. Eds. J. Aumont, A. Gaudreault, M. Marie, Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1989. [^]

[7] I consider the notion of "repetition" according to the definition by Omar Calabrese who defines the constants and main features of contemporary aesthetics defined as "neo-baroque", from a semiotic and sociologic point of view. The "aesthetics of the repetition" depends on the neo-baroque morphology which follows certain principles of configuration, among which "the organized variation". The database form would be relevant (or even identical) to this principle, meaning precisely a collection of different or identical data structured according various modes, not necessarily according to causal connections. See Calabrese, Omar. L'età neobaroccca. Bari: LaTerza 1987; Neo-Baroque: A Sign of the Times, Trans. Charles Lambert. Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992. [^]

[8] From this to the last level, there will be a chronological time in which the cause comes before the effect. After the "episode", there is the unfocused chain which is a series of episodes without a centre. The focused chain comes soon after and the last one is the simple narrative, a series of episodes causally connected to one another and at the same time connected to a centre. A simple narrative ends when the causal chain is completed that is when other consequences are not expected. See Jullier, Laurent. L'ecran post-moderne: un cinéma de l'allusion et du feu d'artificie. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1997; and Branigan, Edward. Narrative Comprehension and Film. London-New York: Routledge, 1992. Each one of this levels coming after the "episode" (the episode is included), will be considered in this survey as the evolution of a hybrid structure between database form and classical narrative form, which will be further characterized by the increasing importance and "causal" dependence of each one of the narrative events for the story consistency. The more consistent the story is from causal links that produce the main story meaning, the more it gets closer to the "simple narrative". As we will see later, this method of structuring the film narrative becomes less and less common in contemporary postmodern cinema. [^]

[9] The films interpreted by Bruce Willis (in John McClane's role) started at the end of 1980's with Die Hard (1988) by John McTiernan; went on with Die Hard 2 (1990) directed by Renny Harlin and Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995) by John McTiernan. The last one is Live Free or Die Hard (2007) by Len Wiseman which does not deny the previous requisites of the paradigm of "catalogue a". [^]

[10] And its sequels, 2 Fast and 2 Furious (2003) directed by John Singleton and The Fast and the Furious: Tokio Drift (2006), directed by Justin Lin. [^]

[11] Needless to remember that Jaws, which can be considered as the original matrix of every database-catalogue, given its blockbuster costs, originated soon a thick series of sequels which, in a memorable episode of Back to the Future Part II (1989, directed by Robert Zemeckis) got number 10, though as few as four have actually been produced: Jaws 2 (1978, directed by Jeannot Szwarc), Jaws 3-D (1983, by Joe Alves), Jaws: The Revenge (1987, by Joseph Sargent). All these are examples of the aesthetics of the repetition which sees the form of "organized variation," especially that mode of repeating identical things, as one of the first forms in the text production in postmodernism. See Omar Calabrese. L'età neobarocca. Bari: Laterza 1987. [^]

[12] Each episode is directed by a different film director: the first The Missing Ingredient is by Allison Anders, the second The Wrong Man by Alexandre Rockwell, the third The Misbehavers is by Robert Rodriguez, and lastly the fourth The Man from Hollywood is by Quentin Tarantino. [^]

[13] The first episode Tricks is directed by David Lynch and is set in 1969; the second one Getting Rid of Robert is by James Signorelli and is set in 1992, while the last one Blackout, once again by Lynch, is set in 1936. [^]

[14] This term is taken from the database model referred to as "hierarchical", which shows its likeness to the here-proposed "narrative-database" type. "In a hierarchical data model, data is organized according to a tree-like structure. The structure allows repeating information using parent/child relationships: each parent can have many children but each child has just one parent. All attributes of a specific record are listed under an entity type. In a database, an entity type is the equivalent of a table; each individual record is represented as a row and an attribute as a column. Entity types are related to each other using 1: N mapping, also known as one-to-many relationships." See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_model>. [^]

[15] The term is taken from the database model referred to as "relational", which shows its affinities with the "narrative-database" model here proposed. "The relational model for database management is a database model based on predicate logic and set theory. [...] The relational model of data permits the database designer to create a consistent, logical representation of information. Consistency is achieved by including declared constraints in the database design, which is usually referred to as the logical schema. The theory includes a process of database normalization whereby a design with certain desirable properties can be selected from a set of logically equivalent alternatives. The access plans and other implementation and operation details are handled by the DBMS engine, and are not reflected in the logical model. This contrasts with common practice for SQL DBMSs in which performance tuning often requires changes to the logical model. The basic relational building block is the domain or data type, usually abbreviated nowadays to type. A tuple is an unordered set of attribute values. An attribute is an ordered pair of attribute name and type name. An attribute value is a specific valid value for the type of the attribute. This can be either a scalar value or a more complex type.... The basic principle of the relational model is the Information Principle: all information is represented by data values in relations. In accordance with this Principle, a relational database is a set of relvars and the result of every query is presented as a relation. The consistency of a relational database is enforced, not by rules built into the applications that use it, but rather by constraints, declared as part of the logical schema and enforced by the DBMS for all applications" (See:<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_model>). The previous model which is placed between "hierarchical" and "relational", is the type referred to as "network model," wherein the essential difference with the next one lies in the fact it belongs to a low-level type. "Firstly, IBM chose to stick to the hierarchical model with semi-network extensions in their established products such as IMS and DL/I. Secondly, it was eventually displaced by the relational model, which offered a higher-level, more declarative interface. Until the early 1980s the performance benefits of the low-level navigational interfaces offered by hierarchical and network databases were persuasive for many large-scale applications, but as hardware became faster, the extra productivity and flexibility of the relational model replaced the network model in corporate enterprise usage" (See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_model>). It is clear how in the development of a chronological-causal narrative (though similar to the database), it's unusual to find this type of model. [^]

[16] For valuable introductions to different analysis perspectives of cyberspace category, see Benedikt, Michael (ed. by). Cyberspace: First Steps. Cambridge-Massachussets-London: The MIT Press, 1991. [^]

[17] This trilogy is composed of: The Matrix (1999), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), The Matrix Revolutions (2003) all directed by the brothers Andy and Larry Wachowski. [^]

[18] Still following parallel the notion of "repetition" in Calabrese's definition (1987), we had already remarked that the two repetitive formulas of the "catalogue" and of the "accumulation" in the database form fell under the general category of the organized variation, the first point in the aesthetics of the repetition existing in the "neo-baroque" cultural products. Similarly, consider the homology of the different categories inside the form of the navigable space, loop, hyperlink and network, with the principle of "polycentrism and regulated irregularity" mentioned by the same scholar as the second basic principle of said aesthetics. It is the identical form of textual structuring which, instead of "varying an identical form" or "homologate different ones," develops from the "loss of a unifying centre" regulating the textual process according to the principle of "elliptic shape" which gets back on itself or to the principle of "spiral shape" able to develop in an ever not predictable way. [^]

[19] The reading mentioned, wherewith I agree, is by Slavoj Žižek who states that Lynch's film wants to reflect the "duplicity" of the meaning in its "real" and "unreal" version. This model will be depicted by the representation of identity variations in the "loop form". The above-mentioned "unreal" version would reflect the Imaginary dimension, according to Lacan's thought (Lacan divided the Real from the Imaginary and the Symbolic, according to the well-known three-order system of language and communication of daily life). See Žižek, Slavoj. The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch's Lost Highway. Seattle: Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities University of Washington, 2000. See Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, New York: W. W. Norton, 1978. [^]

[20] See the definitions of "Hyperlink" or "Hypertextual link" connected to it: "A hyperlink, is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of the same document or to another document that may be on a different website. Hyperlinks are part of the foundation of the World Wide Web created by Tim Berners -Lee, but are not limited to HTML or the web. Hyperlinks may be used in almost any electronic media. There are a number of ways to format and present hyperlinks in hypermedia. What distinguishes the various formats of links are the various ways in which links are accessed. Most links are accessed via selecting (pointing and clicking) hypertext or a graphical user interface element (widget) such as a button" )See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink>). "Hypertext most often refers to text on a computer that will lead the user to other, related information on demand. Hypertext represents a relatively recent innovation to user interfaces, which overcomes some of the limitations of written text. Rather than remaining static like traditional text, hypertext makes possible a dynamic organization of information through links and connections (called hyperlinks). Hypertext can be designed to perform various tasks; for instance when a user "clicks" on it or "hovers" over it, a bubble with a word definition may appear, or a web page on a related subject may load, or a video clip may run, or an application may open" (See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext>). Manovich makes clear an essential aspect of the "hyperlink" and "network" forms: "Hypermedia, the other popular structure of new media, can also be seen as a particular case of the more general principal of variability. ... Because in new media individual media elements (images, pages of text, etc.) always retain their individual identity (the principle of modularity), they can be "wired" together into more than one object. Hyperlinking is a particular way of achieving this wiring. A hyperlink creates a connection between two elements, for example, between two words in two different pages or a sentence on one page and an image in another, or two different places within the same page. Elements connected through hyperlinks can exist on the same computer or on different computers connected o a network, as in the case of the World Wide Web. If in old media elements are "hardwired" into a unique structure and no longer maintain their separate identity, in hypermedia elements and structure are separate from each other" (Manovich 2001:40–41). [^]

[21] By putting together love and dog stories, Love's a Bitch could fall under the "catalogue-database" form (type "a") revealing an identical "thematic centre" for developing each single story. Nevertheless, this is not true to the extent that the loves and dogs in the title would not be the only reason that links the stories: each episode shows in fact the links which connect it to the following one and, in spite of this, still keeps its own semantic autonomy. There would rather be a series of hypertextual links linked by a homogeneous though unifying perspective. The resulting assumption takes into consideration the relation among the stories in the "catalogue-film" ruled by the principle of parallelism (lines which never meet), while in the "hyperlink-film" is ruled by the principle of tangency, based on the principle of contact (lines that meet always somewhere). [^]

[22] The "network" linked to the form of "navigable space" refers to the World Wide Web and the Internet structures. [^]

[23] See: Augè, Marc. Non-lieux: introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1992; Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. Trans. John Howe, London: Verso, 1995. [^]

[24] We have to refer to the notion of "aura" and "reproducibility of the artwork" in contemporary age conceived by Walter Benjamin. Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit. Schriften. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1936; The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Illuminations. Trans. Harry Zohn. Hannah Arendt Ed. New York: Schocken Books, 1969:217-251. [^]

[25] According to Manovich: "... The Graphical User Interface (GUI), popularized by Macintosh, remained true to the modernist values of clarity and functionality. The user's screen was ruled by straight lines and rectangular windows that contained smaller rectangles of individual files arranged in a grid. ... GUI vision came to influence many other areas of culture. This influence ranges from the purely graphical (for instance, the use of GUI elements by print and TV designers) to the more conceptual. In the 1990s, as the Internet progressively grew in popularity, the role of the digital computer shifted from being a particular technology (a calculator, symbol processor, image manipulator, etc.) to a filter for all culture, a form through which all kinds of cultural and artistic production were mediated. As the window of a Web browser replaced cinema and television screen, the art gallery wall, library and book, all at once, the new situation manifested itself: all culture, past and present, came to be filtered through a computer, with its particular human-computer interface. In semiotic terms, the computer interface acts as a code that carries cultural messages in a variety of media. When you use the Internet, everything you access – texts, music, video, navigable spaces - passes through the interface of the browser and then, in turn, the interface of the OS. ... The interface shapes how the computer user conceives of the computer itself. It also determines how users think of any media object accessed via a computer. Stripping different media of their original distinctions, the interface imposes its own logic on them. Finally, by organizing computer data in particular ways, the interface provides distinct models of the world. ... The interface comes to play a crucial role in the information society in yet another way. In this society work and leisure activities not only increasingly involve computer use, but they also converge around the same interfaces. Both "work" applications (word processors, spreadsheet programs, database programs) and "leisure" applications (computer games, informational DVD) use the same tools and metaphors of GUI" (Manovich 2001:63–64-65). When Manovich refers to "models of the world" universalized by the GUI, he entails the two main cultural forms of "database" and "navigable space". [^]

[26] Manovich talks about "Cultural Interface" (2001:69–72). If the "cultural interface" includes the representative modes of old media, this relation will hold also true to the opposite, to the extent that ancient media, the printed word, cinema and TV, takes on the computer interface data as their main visual and receptive form of representation. That is what is meant for "image-interface": a peculiar "spatialized image" comprising each one of the media used according to the strategies of their different interfaces. [^]

[27] As Manovich (2001) says: "Element by element, cinema is being poured into a computer: first, one-point linear perspective; next, the mobile camera and rectangular window; next, cinematography and editing conventions; and, of course, digital personas based on acting conventions borrowed from cinema, to be followed by make-up, set design, and the narrative structures themselves. Rather than being merely one cultural language among others, cinema is now becoming the cultural interface, a tool box for all cultural communication, overtaking the printed word" (86). The osmosis of "language" and "representation" between new media and cinema is now evident, which makes relevant every analysis based on the new visual and receptive forms generated by both of them and disseminated in the contemporary culture. [^]

[28] The here suggested analysis of the space will be based on an axial system of straight lines which will correspond to the "visualisation" of the representation space during each type of film analysed. In other words, the structural scheme I want to propose is the formal analysis of the visual space of the cinematic storytelling as a whole, considered as the aggregation of more spatial segments and stories. For the mention of "vertical" and "horizontal" directions of every scheme, there is an interesting connection with the concepts of "syntagm" and "paradigm" in Greimas's acceptation. See Greimas's quoted work (1966). [^]

[29] The term "isotopy" will be used according to Greimas' meaning as a homogeneous level of sense consisting of a set of semantic elements or significance figures which enables a uniform reading of the text. In this case, the associated spaces along the axis of the "isotopy of the space," will make some homogeneous meaning figures though represented, in several situations, by different elements. See, Greimas, Algirdas Julien. Sémantique structurale. Recherche de methode. Paris: Larousse, 1966; Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method, Trans.Daniele McDowell, Ronald Schleifer, and Alan Velie. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1983. [^]

[30] See Baudelaire, Charles. "The Painter of Modern Life." My Heart Laid Bare and Other Prose Writings. London: Soho Book Company, 1986. [^]

[31] See the interesting definition in Wikipedia: "The Möbius strip or Möbius band ... is a surface with only one side and only one boundary component. It has the mathematical property of being non-orientable. It is also a ruled surface. It was discovered independently by the German mathematicians August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict Listing in 1858. A model can easily be created by taking a paper strip and giving it a half-twist, and then joining the ends of the strip together to form a single strip. In Euclidean space there are in fact two types of Möbius strips depending on the direction of the half-twist: clockwise and counterclockwise. The Möbius strip is therefore chiral, which is to say that it is "handed". It is straightforward to find algebraic equations the solutions of which have the topology of a Möbius strip, but in general these equations do not describe the same geometric shape that one gets from the twisted paper model described above. In particular, the twisted paper model is a developable surface (it has zero Gaussian curvature). ... The Möbius strip has several curious properties. A model of a Möbius strip can be constructed by joining the ends of a strip of paper with a single half-twist. A line drawn starting from the seam down the middle will meet back at the seam but at the "other side." If continued the line will meet the starting point and will be double the length of the original strip of paper. This single continuous curve demonstrates that the Möbius strip has only one boundary" (See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip>). [^]

[32] For more details about "labyrinth" see: Barthes, Roland (1973). S/Z. Trans. R. Miller. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990; Cipolla, Gaetano. Labyrinth: Studies on an Archetype. New York: Laegas, 1987; Kern, Hermann (1982). Through the Labyrinth: Designs and Meanings over 5000 Years. Ed. Robert Ferré and Jeff Saward. Münich, London: Prestel, 2000. For more details about connections between "hypertext" and "labyrith," see: Snyder, I. Hypertext: The Electronic Labyrinth. New York: New York University Press, 1997. For deeper studies about the links between "labyrinth" and "narrative techniques" see: Faris, W. B. Labyrinths of Language: Symbolic Landscape and Narrative Design in Modern Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988; Ulmer, G. L. "Grammatology (in the Stacks) of Hypermedia, a Simulation: Or, when does a pile become a heap?" Literacy Online: the Promise (and Peril) of Reading and Writing with Computers, Eds. Tuman, Myron C. Pittsburgh and London: University of Pittsburgh Press,1992:139–158. [^]

[33] By the term "rhizome" (rizhôme), Deleuze and Guattari meant a significance model opposed to the "tree-shaped" pattern. While the "tree-shaped" model is provided with a hierarchical structure, a centre and a definite significance order, the rhizome connects any point to another one and involves very different systems of signs and also of non-signs. Unlike centric (also polycentric), hierarchical communication and pre-established connection systems, rhizome is an "a-centric," "non hierarchical" and "non-significant" system. See, Deleuze, Gilles, Guattari, Félix. Mille plateaux. Capitalisme et schizophrénie. Paris: Les éditions de Minuit, 1980; A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizofrenia, Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. [^]

[34] Pierre Rosenstiehl, whose studies about the "labyrinth" form are so far unsurpassed, recreated of them an accurate schematic type: (1)unicursal type, corresponding to the classical labyrinth with a single spiral winding aisle free of any forks; (2)the tree-shaped type, corresponding to the mannerist labyrinth with different aisles starting from crossroads whose solution to get the centre is still only one; and lastly the so-called (3)rhizome type corresponding to the contemporary labyrinth wherein the aisles, as in a "hyperlink" or in a "network" are all potentially connected inside a net of non-univocal relations of the pathway, but supposed to be multiple. The labyrinth is seen as a pathway wherein the traveller himself "creates its own labyrinth" which implies an always internal and subjectively different gaze. Rosenstiehl, Pierre. "Labirinto". Enciclopedia. Vol. VIII, Einaudi, Torino 1979:3-30. It is clear that the labyrinth shape of the "hyperlink" and of the "network," theoretically reflecting the development of the "rhizome", keeps on appearing like a "spiral-shaped path" given the boundaries of the film text. [^]

[35] Manovich (2001) explains the history of the first flight simulators in the military field connected to the film history: "As the same time as Vertov was working on his film, young American engineer E. A. Link, Jr. developed the first commercial flight simulator. Significantly, Link's patent for his simulator filed in 1930 refers to it as a 'Combination Training Device for Student Aviators and Entertainment Apparatus.' Thus, rather than being an afterthought, the adaptation of flight simulator technology to consumer entertainment that took place in the 1990s was already envisioned by its inventor. Link's design was a simulation of a pilot's cockpit with all the controls, but, in contrast to a modern simulator, it had no visuals. In short, it was a motion ride without a movie. In the 1960s, visuals were added by using new video technology. A video camera was mounted on a movable arm positioned over a room-size model of an airport. The movement of the camera was synchronized with the simulator controls; its image was transmitted to a video monitor in the cockpit"(276). For more details about the connections between military culture (where the simulators comes from) and film culture, refer to Virilio, Paul, War and Cinema, London: Verso, 1989. [^]

[36]  Frasca, Gonzalo. "Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology". The Video Game Theory Reader, Eds. Mark Wolf, Bernard Perron. New York and London: Routledge, 2003: 221-236. The essay to which Frasca refers is Aarseth, Espen. Cybertext. Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1997. [^]

[37] This is Frasca's definition about the notion of simulation: "Therefore: 'to simulate is to model a (source) system through a different system which maintains (for somebody) some of the behaviors of the original system.' ... Simulation does not simply retain the – generally audiovisual – characteristics of the object but it also includes a model of its behaviors. This model reacts to certain stimuli (input data, pushing buttons, joystick movements), according to a set of conditions" (Frasca 2003:223). As we can see, the stress is still placed on the "behavioural aspects" involved in the "simulation system". [^]

[38] Grodal, Torben. "Stories for Eye, Ear, and Muscles: Videogames, Media, and Embodied Experiences". The Video Game Theory Reader, Eds. Marc Wolf, Bernard Perron. New York and London: Routledge, 2003:129-156. [^]

[39] Manovich talks about the importance of "density" of the contemporary film image: "Just as painting before it, cinema presents us with familiar images of visible reality – interiors, landscapes, human characters – arranged within a rectangular frame. The aesthetics of these arrangements ranges from extreme scarcity to extreme density. ... It would take only a small leap to relate this density of 'pictorial displays' to the density of contemporary information displays such as Web portals, which may contain a few dozen hyperlinked elements, or the interfaces of popular software packages, which similarly present the user with dozens of commands at once. ... This new cinematic aesthetics of density seems to be highly appropriate for our age. If we are surrounded by highly dense information surfaces, from city streets to Web pages, it is appropriate to expect from cinema a similar logic. In similar fashion, we may think of spatial montage as reflecting another contemporary daily experience – working with a number of different applications on a computer at once. If we are now used to switching our attention rapidly from one program to another, from one set of windows and commands to another, we may find multiple streams of audio-visual information presented simultaneously more satisfying than the single stream of traditional cinema" (2001:327,328). [^]

[40] Maietti, Massimo. Semiotica dei videogiochi. Milano: Unicopli, 2004. [^]

[41] The debate about "simulation system" of videogames is still open. I will support the theory of the scholar of new media, Gonzalo Frasca who deems videogame is a media product whose logics is related to "simulation": "Video games imply an enormous paradigm shift for our culture because they represent the first complex simulational media for the masses. It will probably take several generations for us to fully understand the cultural potential of simulation, but it is currently encouraged from different fields, such as the constructionist school of education and Boalian drama. One of the most interesting cognitive consequences of simulation it is encouragement for decentralized thinking, which may in the long-term contest Mark Turner's claim of a 'literary mind' by introducing the possibility of an alternative 'simulational' way of thinking." Gonzalo Frasca. "Simulation versus Narrative..."(2003:224). [^]

[42] Refer to Manovich's definition of cinema "interactivity" in the section referred to as "The Myth of Interactivity" (Manovich 2001: 55-61). It seems clear that the notion of "interactivity" is already completely included in the film medium and as such, looks even more truthful in its aggregative structural forms of "navigable space", "loop", "hyperlink" and "network," that are postmodern cinema trends based on the form of network and of new media. [^]

[43] The use of "high-angle shot" in contemporary cinema shows its analogy with the shot and point of view used in the most recent videogames. The POV used in "first-person shooter" videogames (such as in "Castle Wolfenstein", "Doom" and similar), which used to limit the view to what the character could see in front of him, is followed by a frequent use of "high-angle long shot" POV in the latest videogames. Just think about videogames such as "Silent Hill," wherein the "suspense effect" is due exactly to the opportunity of the player of seeing by the eyes of his/her digital surrogate, but also of adding a second enlarged view, the external view of his/her real eye enabling an enlarged point of view encompassing the self-character. To this regard, see Jay McRoy's article: "The Horror is alive: Immersion, Spectatorship and the Cinematics of Fear in the Survival Horror Genre," "Reconstruction 6.1" (Winter 2006) (See: <http://reconstruction.eserver.org/061/mcroy.shtml>). The notion of "seeing oneself being seen" is confirmed in the "simulative gaze", which is valid both for videogame aesthetics and for some postmodern films. [^]

[44] An essential effect in Requiem for a Dream, is the coming of reactions of "tactile sensitivity," such as anxiety, panic attacks, sweating increase just as if the spectator was "experimenting" the "simulation of the desperate rush" of the character. The sequence taken as an example, wherein the main character runs to escape his enemies, thanks to a particular use of the shot, gives rise to effects of excessive sweating, tachycardia and spastic movements of the limbs. These are "haptic effects" which do not depend on the exclusive use of this gaze. "Sound" is, in this case as it is often in postmodern cinema, essential and aims at exacerbating "the environment perceptive density" and make the recipient-spectator immerse further into the "simulative audio-vision". [^]

[45] Frequent examples would be some "database film" such as Die Hard or Jurassic Park which, though activating "cyber-flâneur" gazes, they will also show camera movements wherein the spectator's attention is drawn to real "simulations of the gaze" (the very close shots of dinosaurs are a good example of it). [^]

 

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