Constantly Streaming - by Zlatina Nikolova (Hardcover)

About the Book

An investigation of the core hardware and software that enable contemporary moving image spectatorship, extending its discussion to the technological, the artistic, and the social.

Book Synopsis

Constantly Streaming: Digital Platforms, Touchscreens and Moving Image Spectatorshipexplores some of the core hardware and software that enable contemporary moving image spectatorship, extending its discussion to the technological, the artistic, and the social.

Drawing on the histories of film spectatorship, affect theory, and the mechanical inception of recorded moving image, this book reflects on the ways our engagement with the medium has shifted following the advent of digital technologies, streaming, and handheld touchscreen devices. It asks questions around engagement, cinephilia and technophilia, loneliness and the social experience of cinema culture, taste, and algorithms, seeking to redefine our relationship to the moving image.

Mapping out the contexts of early film spectatorship and Western cinema cultures, this volume compares the historically social experience of the cinema and film spectatorship as a whole to the contemporary solitary activities encouraged by streaming and image and video-based social media. It demonstrates how these hardware and software innovations prompt new interactions and engagement, fuel problematic habits and excessive media consumption, and structure our viewing experience and expectations of film and TV, as well as social media. Moreover, it demonstrates that the notion of the moving image has become an inseparable part of contemporary culture and society, expanding its functions and applications and redefining its own ontology. As a result of its constant presence on devices, the moving image is now a continuous stream of information and entertainment that surrounds us, imbuing our existence with its constant digital flicker.

Review Quotes

In Constantly Streaming, Nikolova proposes a radical change to how we conceptualize media: when moving image texts - from films and games to adverts and social media posts - become the digital objects of streaming services, they completely transform their impact on the viewer. In the screen age, the viewer is turned into a new type of spectator, no longer facing the work of art as an engaged viewer who is part of a collective engaged audience, but as a single isolated subject who submits to the commodifying power of the screen. As art is flattened out into a constant individualized feed of content, we lose our capacity to think collectively and take up the previously powerful position of the spectator. This is a vital intervention by an emerging thinker which will be a key text for anyone interested in digital media, screen cultures and the future of film as an art form.
Alfie Bown, Head of Digital Humanities, King's College London, UK

One of the most original and enlightening reflections on the 21st-century experience of spectatorship in the digital age. Zlatina Nikolova excavates and articulates enlightening, intellectual, emotional and creative thinking when analysing our relationship with moving image technologies. Her elegant and illuminating writing means we retrace walking the Digital Arcade, binge-watching and the haptic touch through her chapters, and we have a deeper understanding of the role and implications of the algorithm.
Tim Crook, Professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

About the Author

Zlatina Nikolova is a lecturer in the Department of Communications, Drama and Film at the University of Exeter, UK, and has previously published on early film spectatorship and British film criticism. Her most recent research intersects the existing strands of her work with emerging technologies and the effects of the digital on audience's engagement with moving image. She is also a guest editor and contributor to the publications of the Open Library of Humanities.