Guest editor: Veronika Hanáková

Read the issue (open access) here: https://iluminace.cz/en/magno/ilu/2024/mn2.php 

The central question of this special issue of Iluminace (2/2024) is: What if we shifted our perspective, asking not how computers have transformed moving images, but rather how audiovisual media represents the imagery and iconography of computers themselves? This issue delves into the complex and often contradictory portrayals of "computer labor"—work facilitated by information technologies, whether executed by humans, machines, or through human-machine collaboration—in film and television.

The concept of computer labor serves as a lens to examine how computing technologies shape representations of work. This approach allows for an analysis that moves from depictions of specific moments of the machine or human at work (or both) to broader inquiries into how productivity, value, and even rest are defined within digital frameworks. Tracing the iconography of computer labor in audiovisual media also uncovers the roles of geographical, cultural, social, and economic influences, revealing how technological labor is produced and understood within varying contexts.

By following these representations, this issue underscores the transformative impact of digital labor and highlights the significance of its localized expressions and historical contingencies, encouraging readers to consider how audiovisual representation of digital work shapes and reflects our broader social and cultural landscapes.

This issue features both written papers and audiovisual essays. The lineup includes: 

• Veronika Hanáková: Configuring Computer Labor in Film and Audiovisual Media: An Introduction to a Special Issue
• Steve F. Anderson: Envisioning the Interface
• Daniel O’Brien: The Allure and Threat of the Cine-Computer: A Supercut of Onscreen Computers in Speculative Screen Fiction
  
• Occitane Lacurie: Ordinatrices: About the Negative Spaces of Early Computing
  
• Simone Dotto: Do Corporate Films Dream of Cybernetic Governance? Computers (as Metaphors of) Industrial Labor and Society in Olivetti-Sponsored Films
  
• Matěj Pavlík: Techniques and Technologies to Compensate for Powerlessness
  
• Tibor Vocásek: Who Is Awful? Black Mirror and the Dystopian Imaginary of AI Labor
  
• David Álvarez: Nostalgia Isn’t What it Used to Be: On Vaporwave’s Glitched, Aspirational Aesthetics 

And book reviews: 

• Ondřej Zach: Karlovarský festival jako platforma kulturní výměny i zbraň hybridní války (Jindřiška Bláhová, ed., Proplétání světů: Mezinárodní filmový festival Karlovy Vary v období studené války) 
• Veronika Hanáková: Seriously Unserious: Theoretical Implications of the Gimmick for Film and Media Studies (on Sianne Ngai, Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form)

More:

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