‘If cinema does not give us the presence of the body and cannot give it to us, this is perhaps also because it sets itself a different objective: it spreads an “experimental night” or a white space over us; it works with “dancing seeds’ and a “luminous dust”; it affects the visible with a fundamental disturbance, and the world with a suspension, which contradicts all natural perception. What it...

Cinema, a vehicle of social transformation sheds light on different aspects of mental illness. Due to its dramatic and stigmatising depictions, it often spreads a negative aspect of psychiatric disorders and the patients who are suffering from them. Though it brings out a few positive and inspiring stories, they are sparse in comparison to its negative views. Here, we are going to describe the ...

This paper is meant to be an introduction both to the short story Nebulous Mechanisms as well as the concept of science fiction prototypes. In the tradition of the legendary Isaac Asimov, we jump into the long and symbiotic history of science fact and science fiction. Briskly we move through current work in the field and delve into the particulars of the craft of combining current scientific re...

The commercial Hindi cinema has been subjected to domestic and foreign criticism for its exceptionally formulaic and stereotypical feature productions. These productions, however, have their sources in the oral and written epics and the popular dramatic genres of traditional Indian culture. Content borrowed from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and other pan-Indian tales frequently enlarges and r...

hrough the study of two models, the video games Metroid Prime 3 and Bioshock, the present article explores the relations between the game-play experience related to interactive fiction and the kind of narrative construction typical of two of the key science fiction genres: intergalactic conflict and the distopic city. By means of identifying two complementary dimensions that shape gaming experi...

In this article, we challenge the hegemony of western science fiction, arguing that western science fiction is particular even as it claims universality. Its view remains based on ideas of the future as forward time. In contrast, in non-western science fiction the future is seen outside linear terms: as cyclical or spiral, or in terms of ancestors. In addition, western science fiction has focus...

Making a theoretical case linking genre trajectory with artistic legitimation struggles, this paper seeks to explain the development of the American science fiction magazine. Across the fifty-plus years analyzed, science fiction emerged from its lowbrow pulp fiction origins into a highly successful, critically acclaimed genre across multiple mediums. This empirical trend is then modeled using p...

This article discusses the potentials of 3D virtual worlds as tool for science fiction prototyping in education. Science fiction prototyping has become an important resource for creating, discussing, and assessing the impact of future scenarios. Introducing this creative process into education and training can help students understand societal and contextual implications of future technologies,...

Cinema industry has chosen Digital Cinema Package (DCP) as encoding format for the distribution of digital films. DCP uses JPEG2000 for video compression. An efficient implementation of coding and decoding for this format is complex, however. Currently deployed equipment is expensive and has high maintenance costs, preventing art-house cinema theaters from acquiring it. Therefore, we conduct th...

An effort is underway to enable digital cinema distribution with new products and new standards covering a wide range of technology. Exhibitors, studios, equipment manufacturers, and others involved in this effort require a universal, long-term digital cinema standard. Complicating the drive toward a single standard, however, are two issues: 1) not all players have the same priorities in specif...