«Elementary units» in Multimedia: Cinemagraphy in Mass Media and Blogs in the 2010s

The article studies peculiarities of cinemagraphies - special types of images that appeared due to the development of digital technologies in the early 2010s and combine features of photography and video/cinema. Cinemagraphies are positioned as elementary multimedia units, and perception of these is technologically dependent: the viewer actively perceives not only the depicted image, but also the image-generating technology. Cinemagraphic way of seeing is not peculiar to human vision, its a «machines view». The author suggests defining the properties of these units, namely, multimediality, multimodality, affectivity of technological items, segmentary actuality and segmentary iconicity, hybrid temporality, visual variability; soundlessness; and poetic character, orientation to sensory perception. The duration of one cycle of cinemagraphies, according to the analysis, falls within the interval of 4-10 seconds. The effect exerted on the viewer is largely determined by the percentage of the animated area: if 50 %, it is on static objects perceived as «anomalous» in the flow of life. The use of cinemagraphies in the media as illustrative material has a precedent character nowadays. The author managed to detect 151 such cases. The article analyzes in detail some examples of cinemagraphies, published in The Guardian, The New York Times and other media, as well as in blogs in the period 2011-2019. The author defines the following criteria for the analysis: substantive, genre, structural, visual characteristics, functions and distribution channel.