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Dr Jenna Ng

Research

Research Specialisms

Digital media, especially digital cinema, mobile media, locative media, haptic devices, motion and virtual capture systems; Virtual worlds, augmented realities, virtual cinematography, machinima; Asian cinema (Chinese, Japanese, Singaporean), Chinese diaspora, cross culturality, transnational cinema, comparative film studies; Ontology and philosophy of film, cinephilia, cinema and time; Digital humanities, critical making

Previous Projects

No information available.

Current research

My research at CRASSH explores the notion of the self as expressed through image-making in digital media technologies. How might digital media affect presence, embodiment, sight, movement, space and time? For instance, an image registered by a smart phone camera using the StreetMuseum iPhone app layers past realities and temporalities over the present - how does this affect being in time and space? In this book project, tentatively titled Camera Present and Absent: space, bodies and movement in digital media, I consider these ideas in several media technologies, including digital video, mobile phone cameras, face recognition glasses, Google StreetView, webcams and virtual capture systems, including machinima, virtual worlds and virtual cinematography. As Tom Gunning writes, "technologies function not simply as convenient devices, but refashion our experience of space, time and human being filtering through our arts works, dreams and fantasies." I argue that digital media technologies today stand at a critical juncture in such refashioning of space, time and being: they are not only ubiquitous, but also unprecedentedly mobile and multi-modal by which one"s experiences of being may be re-conceived and the engagement of selves through time and space, which we call "communication", is made.

Publications

Books: Understanding Machinima: essays on filmmaking in virtual worlds, Jenna P-S. Ng (ed.), London; New York: Continuum Press (forthcoming in May 2012). Articles: "Fingers, Futures, Fates: Viewing Interactive Cinema from Kinoautomat to Sufferosa", Screening The Past (accepted for publication; forthcoming in November 2011); "Svensk synd och japansk oskuld? En jÃ¤mfÃ¶relse av syndiga filmer 1950-1980" (co-written with Jonas Danielsson), Kulturella Perspektiv, 2010:2, pp. 12-24 (in Swedish). "The Myth of Total Cinephilia", Cinema Journal, 49: 2, Winter 2010, pp. 146-151 (contribution invited by editor). "The Handheld Digital Camera Aesthetics of The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield (via Strange Days)", 16:9, No. 32, June 2009 http://www.16-9.dk/2009-06/pdf/16-9_juni2009_side11_inenglish.pdf (contribution invited by editor). "World of Grey: All About Lily Chou-Chou", Rouge, Vol. 13, March 2009, at http://www.rouge.com.au (contribution invited by editor). "Remembering History, Rewriting Memory: The Articulation of Platoon through Mediation, Subjectivity and Myth", Cinemascope, Cinema and the Puzzle of Memory, Pierre Sorlin (ed.), Issue 5, May-Aug 2006, at http://www.cinemascope.it/ (peer-reviewed); "Poetry of Squalor: Exploring the borgata in Pier Paolo Pasolini's Accattone", Opticon 1826, Vol. 1, Issue 2, Spring 2007 (peer-reviewed); "Cinephilia in Turin, Or, Passion in a Handful of Dust", Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 55, February 2007. Book chapters: "A Point of Light: Epiphanic Cinephilia in Mamoru Oshii's Avalon", Cinephilia in the Age of Digital Reproduction: Film, Pleasure and Digital Culture, Vol. 1, Jason Sperb and Scott Balcerzak (eds), London: Wallflower Press, 2009, pp. 71-88; "Virtual Cinematography and the Digital Real: (Dis)placing the Moving Image Between Reality and Simulacra", in Damian Sutton, Ray McKenzie and Sue Brind (eds.), The State of the Real: Essays on Aesthetics, I.B. Tauris, 2007; "Love in the Time of Transcultural Fusion: Cinephilia, Homage and Kill Bill" in Marijke de Valck and Malte Hagener (eds.), Cinephilia: Movies, Love and Memory, Amsterdam University Press, 2005. Various film reviews in online journals Scope and The Film Journal.

Other

I graduated in law at the National University of Singapore (winning the Singapore Academy of Law Prize, awarded to the top final-year student) and spent two years in private banking and finance practice at major law firms in Singapore and London before turning to film. Prizes won: my MA thesis, "Virtual Cinematography and the Digital Real", won third place in the 2004 SCMS Student Writing Awards; my short story, "The Photograph", was longlisted in the 2006 Bridport Writing Prize competition (50 out of 3,428 entries); also first and third prizes in various years' UCL Graduate School Review competitions. Other competitive prizes and honours: Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2011-present); Isaac Newton Trust Award (2011-present); Kempe Foundation Scholarship (2009-2011); UCL Graduate School Student Conference Fund Award (2008 and 2006); Overseas Research Scholarship (ORS) Award (2004-2007); UCL Graduate School Research Scholarship (2004-2007); UCL Graduate Open Scholarship (2002); Faculty of Law Talent Development Programme (1996-1997); Singapore Humanities Scholarship (PROMSCHO) (1994). I have presented at conferences in Germany (SchwÃ¤bisch Hall), Canada (Vancouver), China (Shanghai), Turkey (Istanbul), USA (Chicago), the Netherlands (Amsterdam) and the UK (London, Lancaster, Reading, Glasgow).

Email and website

Email: ng.jenna@gmail.com

Website

View the website

Primary institution

Position

Newton Trust/Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

Department

CRASSH

Faculty