Soft Cinema
With contributions by Andreas Angelidakis, Jason Danziger, Andreas Kratky, and Ruth M. Lorenz. Karlsruhe: ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, 2002.
This book presents the general concepts behind Soft Cinema project, documentation of the edition produced for the exhibition "Future Cinema. The Cine-matic Imaginary after Film (November 16, 2002 – March 30, 2003) at ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, and a number of architectural projects created for this edition. The book concludes with the short fictional story “Texas” which this edition uses as the text for the voice-over narration.
Soft(ware) Cinema is a dynamic computer-driven media installation. The viewers are presented with an infinite series of narrative films constructed on the fly by the custom software. Using the systems of rules defined by the author, the software decides what appears on the screen, where, and in which sequence; it also chooses music tracks. The elements are chosen from a media database which at present contains 4 hours of video and animation, 3 hours of voice over narration, and 5 hours of music. In short, Soft Cinema can be thought of as a semi-automatic VJ (Video Jockey)—or more precisely, as a FJ (Film Jockey).
The system is used to author editions in different styles, including “film essays,” fictional narratives, and non-narrative “music videos”. While the underlying software remains the same, each edition presents a different narrative and uses a different subset of the media database. In addition to the movies, the Soft Cinema project also includes architectural designs, print catalogs, and other manifestations in screen and physical spaces.