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Graduate Program in Communication & Culture

Faculty Profiles

R. Bruce Elder

Technology in Practice

University   Ryerson University
E-Mail Address   belder@ryerson.ca
Phone Number   (416) 979-5000, ext. 6859
Office Location   VIC-825
Office Hours   TBA


Education

B.A. (McMaster); B.A.A. (Ryerson); M.A. (Toronto)

Biography

R. Bruce Elder is a filmmaker, critic, and teacher of Film Studies at Ryerson University. He is considered as one of Canada's foremost avant-garde filmmakers. Retrospectives of Prof. Elder's work have been mounted by The Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), the Cinematheque Quebecoise (Montreal), Senzatitolo (Trento, Italy) and Anthology Film Archives (New York) and he has exhibitions at New York's Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles Film Forum, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Kino Arsenal in Berlin, and many other centres. Prof. Elder also has a background in applied mathematics and computer science, and has a strong interest in digital image processing. With the support of the Canada Council, SSHRC, NSERC, and Ryerson University, he and team from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Departments are working on a project to develop software tools for applying Cagean ideas to processing film sequences. Besides teaching at Ryerson and making his own films, Bruce Elder has been a guest lecturer at institutions across the continent and in Europe. He has written books and articles on film, music, poetry and the visual arts. He has curated a number of film festivals and exhibitions and been involved with organizations such as the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Center, the Film Studies Association of Canada and The Funnel Experimental Film Theatre.

Research Interests

History and theory of avant-garde; Canadian cultural studies; modernisms and modernity; avant-garde movements in art and literature of the twentieth century; the development of digital signal processing methods and their application to film sequences; the creative application of artificial intelligence.

Selected Publications

"The Foreignness of the Intimate, Or the Violence and Charity of Perception" in Atom Egoyan and Ian Balfour, eds. Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Film. (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 2004), pp. 439-487.

The Films of Stan Brakhage in the American Tradition of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and Charles Olson. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1998.

A Body of Vision: The Image of the Body in Recent Film and Poetry. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1997.

Image and Identity: Reflections on Canadian Film and Culture. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1989.

The Body in Film. Toronto : Art Gallery of Ontario, 1989.

 

 

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Harold [Innis] taught us how to use the bias of culture and communication as an instrument of research. By directing attention to the bias, or distorting power of the dominant imagery and technology of any culture, he showed us how to understand cultures.
~ Marshall McLuhan