Re-imagining the screen space

© 2016 Corinna BerndtThis investigation explores the different ways in which the image space of digital video can be articulated through the body, materials and blue screen technology. My practice-led research explores possibilities of presenting multiple relationships of the imagination and emergent potential for the human body in its interaction with video, digital technologies and tangible objects. Through a process based and speculative approach I create improvised performances with objects, which I further explore with the digital medium. In my written dissertation, I investigate the image space and blue screen technology through an embodied and phenomenological approach. Building on the theories of Maurice Merleau-­Ponty, Erin Manning, Gilles Deleuze and Laura Marks, I argue that methods of digital compositing have the potential to create a haptic and tactile understanding of the moving image, drawing attention to the materiality of digital video and to the body, while offering new possibilities for interacting with blue screen technology through play and poetic strategies. My thesis accompanies five video works, presented as an immersive video installation. The works document my improvised performances in the blue screen studio and give tangible form to my interactions with the technology. My video performances articulate the image space through the human body and explore to what extend tangible and virtual experiences of materiality, the body and media specific processes can be represented in video performance