Sync: Stylistics of Hieroglyphic Time

In Sync, James Tobias examines the development of musical sound and image in cinema and media art, indicating how these elements define the nature and experience of reception. Placing musicality at the center of understanding streaming media, Tobias presents six interwoven stories about synchronized audiovisual media--from filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky to today's contemporary digital art and computer games--to show how these effects are never merely "musical" in the literal sense of organized sound. Tobias' presentation of music and gesture in time-based media and in audience's engagement with media illustrates how streaming media devices are "timepieces" that don't tell time, but diagram it as affective labor. Their musical, gestural effects challenge us to describe time-based media in terms of synchronization and temporality, rather than as either sound or image. The case studies of different media in Sync show how musicality not only drives narrative, but is also a "mode of reception." Once viewers grasp synchronized media as temporal, they can relate the resulting meanings to larger historical contexts and transformations.