Dinos Are Not Dead

Narrative | 2 mins | Dec 2018

It sounded like a dinosaur,

As I was trying to remember the sound, I remembered that these sounds are made up. A small group of sound designers working for Steven Spielberg decided what dinosaurs sound like and their job was to make dinosaurs scary. [1]Rachel Funnell, “Exclusive: How Were The Dinosaur Noises in Jurassic Park Made, And Were They Accurate?” I Fucking Love Science, October 6, 2020, … Continue reading

In the Surplus Value of Images, W. J. T. Mitchell uses the example of the dinosaur to talk about how our collective images evolve using the example of the dinosaur. [2]W. J. T. Mitchell, “The Surplus Value of Images”, Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, Vol. 35, No. 3, September 2002, pp. 1–23, http://www.jstor.com/stable/44029949, … Continue reading Dinos are not dead is my video response to this text made as a class assignment. In the same way that our collective image of the dinosaur is speculation, so is the sound. In this film, I juxtapose images to sound, the known to speculation and the mythic to the ordinary. 

David Attenborough narrated in my mind as I creep towards the pigeons with my DSLR. The pigeons dislike my harassment as much as I dislike theirs. Every spring I am forced to engage in a sisyphean battle to keep nests off my balcony. My battle is not unique as pigeons have taken over most urban spaces across the globe with a population of 400 million. [3] Emma Bryce, “Why Are There So Many Pigeons?” Live Science, October 27, 2018, https://www.livescience.com/63923-why-cities-have-so-many-pigeons.html, accessed on April 19, 2021. They are an unexotic pest and citadin even though they do descend from the mythic dinosaurs. [4]University of California Museum of Paleontology, “Are Birds Really Dinosaurs?” Dinobuzz: current topics considering Dinosaurs, University of California, Berkeley, CA, January 22, 1998,  … Continue reading [5]Lowell Dingus and Timothy Rowe, “Chapter 12: The Evolutionary Map for Dinosaurs”, The Mistaken Extinction, New York, W. H. Freeman, 2018, … Continue reading 
I film balsamic vinegar in oil to create a digital mask which refers back to the psychedelic era of the 70s through the iconic work of the expanded cinema collective Joshua Light Show, best known for the live moving images during the shows of the likes of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. [6]Gregory Zinman “The Joshua Light Show: Concrete Practices and Ephemeral Effects”, American Art, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2008, pp. 17–21, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/591166, … Continue reading. This technique hides my manipulations in plain sight letting the viewer make connections and underpinning how we all participate in fooling ourselves.

References

References
1 Rachel Funnell, “Exclusive: How Were The Dinosaur Noises in Jurassic Park Made, And Were They Accurate?” I Fucking Love Science, October 6, 2020, https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/exclusive-how-were-the-dinosaur-noises-in-jurassic-park-made-and-were-they-accurate/, accessed on November 26, 2021.
2 W. J. T. Mitchell, “The Surplus Value of Images”, Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, Vol. 35, No. 3, September 2002, pp. 1–23, http://www.jstor.com/stable/44029949, accessed on December 3, 2020.
3 Emma Bryce, “Why Are There So Many Pigeons?” Live Science, October 27, 2018, https://www.livescience.com/63923-why-cities-have-so-many-pigeons.html, accessed on April 19, 2021.
4 University of California Museum of Paleontology, “Are Birds Really Dinosaurs?” Dinobuzz: current topics considering Dinosaurs, University of California, Berkeley, CA, January 22, 1998,  https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/avians.html, accessed on March 9, 2021.
5 Lowell Dingus and Timothy Rowe, “Chapter 12: The Evolutionary Map for Dinosaurs”, The Mistaken Extinction, New York, W. H. Freeman, 2018, http://www.geo.utexas.edu/courses/302d/Mistaken%20Extinction/Chapter%2012.pdf, accessed on March 9, 2021.
6 Gregory Zinman “The Joshua Light Show: Concrete Practices and Ephemeral Effects”, American Art, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2008, pp. 17–21, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/591166, accessed on November 26, 2021.