Chapter 3
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Be(ing)Dazzled: Living in machinima |
Authors
Abstract
As arguably the most contemporary manifestation of the cinematic, machinima may be usefully understood as a variegating agent for cinema. It expresses our agency in a post-cinematic world as a traversal of coded spaces. In the late 20th century, we saw this as our condition, but the method of machinima has given us the means to enact this. I create works of art that move between modes of cinema, games and media environments. Characterizing this interstitial space as machinimatic is a productive approach to acknowledging the artworks dependency on antecedent forms. However, they undertake a contemporary mode that requires a different analytical stance regarding the self, authorship, spectacle and agency. The logic of this space is not of narrative, but of response. As "dazzle" has been periodically used as method of camouflage by confusion, perhaps machinima is the manner by which we can negotiate the reality of the virtual.