Bruce Naumen, Good Boy, Bad Boy

Bruce Naumen created a installation in the 'Tate' gallery, where he had two screens with one woman saying that everything is great, and the other screen had a man contradicting everything the woman said. The two videos are shot in the same way with Portrait close-ups. The video challenges the viewers to interact with the videos. The viewer is prompted to make a choice of which character they choose to follow or believe.
Lev Manovich talks about this new form of producing cinema in his book "Language Of New Media"*. Manovich talks alot about the evolution of technology, in particular the evolution of cinema, Manovich is trying to say that all technology is growing and cinema is trying to catch up, by developing new styles, new meanings and new perspectives, all to distribute data. He refers to a style of filming that i think relates to Naumen's video.

" a time-based mosaics of different shots — in the
end of the century it came with the technique to accomplish the similar result
without montage. In digital compositing, the elements are not juxtaposed but
blended, with their boundaries erased rather than foregrounded."

Here he's talking about taking different shots from within a film, or different angles and putting them together to create new meanings, changing the perspectives of the viewer. Manovich goes onto say

"we can better understand how this new key technique of
assembling moving images redefines our concepts of a moving image"

I think Manovich is trying to say how new forms of cinema are evolving to reach out and interact with the users, and this is what i think Bruce Naumen is trying to do. He has taken two different shots of two people contradicting each other and blended them so the viewer interacts with the cinema making their own assumptions and opinions based on the video they want to see.

*Lev Manovich Language of New Media, 2001, MIT Press
Quotes= Chapter 3 Composting, Compositing and New Types of Montage


Bruce Naumen, Good Boy, Bad Boy.
Video Is from 'Youtube' and is shot in the 'Tate' Gallery