The Clockwork Penguin

Daniel Binns is a media theorist and filmmaker tinkering with the weird edges of technology, storytelling, and screen culture. He is the author of Material Media-Making in the Digital Age and currently writes about posthuman poetics, glitchy machines, and speculative media worlds.



The Archives

  • Speed and politics

    Cinema is movement. Movement is change. Change is politics — politics regulates change. Movement in the frame is thus political. The addition of speed amplifies…

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  • Teaching film and media in a neoliberal bubble

    First point: I am a teacher. This is a role that bestows on me power and control over others. Second point: I am white, male,…

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  • Welles and the frame

    Suffice to say that Orson Welles taught me all I ever needed to know about framing*. Happy 100th, old friend. * for ‘framing’, read ‘all…

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  • The snake charmer

    Film theory via camera operators, this is amazing stuff from Anthony Bourdain’s man behind the lens. Transfixed on this future-past, the operator’s mind is split between…

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  • Writing

    I haven’t written for a very long time. That seems a strange thing to say, given that I bill myself as a ‘writer, producer, and…

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