CONTENTS

 
   about
   MICHAEL BETANCOURT NEWS
   movies: AESTHETICS
   movies: NEWS & REVIEWS
   movies: SHOWS & SCREENINGS
   random art notes
   random how-tos
   research: AVANT-GARDE MOVIES
   research: MOTION GRAPHICS
   research: VISUAL MUSIC
   theory: CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS
   theory: DIGITAL CAPITALISM
   theory: GLITCH & POSTDIGITAL
   theory: working notes

 

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archives begin in 1996

  

Stuck in the Past

story © Michael Betancourt | published November 14, 2009 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



theory: CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS

Lately it seems like we, collectively, are stuck in the past, the 1980s to be accurate. I don't know what happened to the present (nevermind about the future, that was always already an imaginary)? I increasingly get the feeling that we aren't going to be getting anything of or from the present for a while at least. Instead, we have this strange obsession with revisiting the past artifacts of our culture and redoing/remaking/recreating them at a higher resolution and with more detail, but without anything that we haven't already seen.




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Fashion Video Cameras!

story © Michael Betancourt | published January 3, 2008 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



theory: CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS

This Stainless Steel Camera is a sign of the future: the divide between professional and consumer, instead of gradually going away, is going to become ever wider and more obvious. The professional equipment will record high-quality, ready-to-edit footage, and consumer devices will be more concerned with their fashion-sense than with the ability to control the quality or do much with the finished footage. I'm not surprised by this development: it makes sense if you want to gradually eliminate the consumer-as-producer, just gradually do away with consumer tools that are as good as the professional ones.






 
On The Death of VHS & Analog Media

story © Michael Betancourt | published November 30, 2006 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



theory: CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS

VHS tapes were the first genuinely popular, available to the masses media format. So much happened with VHS (and BETA, too) that it is easy to misunderstand what its death means for us: the replacement of VHS with digital alternativesalternatives that change the balance from what the people using the tapes want to do with their technology to that they are allowed to do with it.




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Be The Decider!

story © Michael Betancourt | published June 4, 2006 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



theory: CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS

Show the world who's really in charge here: Be the Decider! This t-shirt was inspired by the (continued) popularity of my short movie from 2004, W.






 
Novelty TVs

story © Michael Betancourt | published December 30, 2005 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



theory: CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS

The idea of TV as sculpture isn't a new one, and if you go looking at department stores, chances are you will see a few novelty sets. Hannspree is a company devoted to LCD TVs are sculptural fashion accessories. It was inevitable, I guess.