"The Art of Scale" with Aymar Jean Christian
Join the Chicago Film Seminar on October 20th at 7:30 pm for " The Art of Scale: Production Value in Networked Television" with Aymar Jean Christian of Northwestern University. Neil Verma will serve as respondent. "Scale" dominates how technology and entertainment executives discuss their work today, and for them, scale almost always signifies "big" – whether as a noun to imply the size of capital available for production or as a verb to imply a process to facilitate capital accumulation while keeping costs low. Yet scale by definition is relational, a way to orient collective perspectives. A scale allows agents to approximate size in relation to other agents, projects, or objects so it is conceivable to collaborators and stakeholders. Scholars in media studies have for too long taken for granted the implicit bias toward "bigness" in television and new media, limiting our conception of television’s representational possibilities. The networked ...