Moving Images : From Edison to the Webcam

by Fullerton, John

• ISBN13: 9781864620542
• ISBN10: 1864620544
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-06-01
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

In 1888, Thomas Edison announced that he was experimenting on "an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear, which is the recording and reproduction of things in motion." Just as Edison's investigations were framed in terms of the known technologies of the phonograph and the microscope, the essays in this collection address the contexts of innovation and reception that have framed the development of moving images in the last 100 years. Three concerns are of particular interest: the contexts of innovation and reception for moving image technologies; the role of the observer, whose vision and cognitive processes define some of the limits of inquiry and epistemological insight; and the role of new media, which, engaging with the domestic sphere as cultural interface, are transforming our understanding of public and private spheres.The 17 previously unpublished essays in Moving Images represent the best of current research in the history of this field. They make a timely and stimulating contribution to debates concerning the impact of new media on the history of cinema.Contributors include: William Boddy, Carlos Bustamante, Warren Buckland, Valeria Camporesi, Bent Fausing, Oliver Gaycken, Alison Griffiths, Christopher Hales, Jan Holmberg, Solveig Jülich, Frank Kessler, Jay Moman, Sheila C. Murphy, Pelle Snickars, Paul C. Spehr, Björn Thuresson, and Ake Walldius.

Author Biography

John Fullerton is an Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies, Stockholm University, and has published widely on early Swedish film. With Jan Olsson, he is editor of the Stockholm Studies in Cinema series, and edited Celebrating 1895: The Centenary of Cinema for John Libbey in 1998. He has also recently co-edited Moving Images: From Edison to the Webcam the second publication in the Stockholm Studies in Cinema series.

Astrid S+¦derbergh Widding is an Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies, Stockholm University and is the author of a number of monographs on cinema. Her most recent book is Stumfilm I brytningstid: Stil och Ber+ñttande I Georg at Klerchers filmer.

Table of Contents

Foreword	vii
Acknowledgements	viii
Notes on the Contributors	ix
Introduction	xi
The Apparatus
Unaltered to Date: Developing 35mm Film	3	(26)
Paul C. Spehr
Seeing Seeing: Hermann von Helmholtz and the Invention of the Ophthalmoscope	29	(10)
Olvier Gaycken
On Fairies and Technologies	39	(8)
Frank Kessler
Seeing in the Dark: Early X-ray Imaging and Cinema	47	(12)
Solveig Julich
The Bolex Motion Picture Camera	59	(10)
Carols Bustamante
The Observer
Sore Society: The Dissolution of the Image and the Assimilation of the Trauma	69	(14)
Bent Fausing
Closing In: Telescopes, Early Cinema, and the Technologies Conditions of De-distancing	83	(8)
Jan Holmberg
``We Partake, as it Were, of His Life': The Status of the Visual in Early Ethnographic Film	91	(20)
Alison Griffiths
Architectonics of Seeing: Architecture as Moving Images	111	(10)
Pelle Snickars
Submerged Landscapes of the Postmodern Body: Surface, Text, Commodity	121	(12)
Jay Moman
The Domestic Sphere
Weather Porn and the Battle for Eyeballs: Promoting Digital Television in the USA and UK	133	(16)
William Boddy
Stereotyping a Competitor: Images of Television in Spanish Cinema in the 1960s	149	(10)
Valeria Camporesi
Video Pleasure and Narrative Cinema: Luc Besson's The Fifth Element and Video Game Logic	159	(6)
Warren Buckland
Space and Character Representation in Interactive Narratives	165	(8)
Bjorn Thuresson
Lurking and Looking: Webcams and the Construction of Cybervisuality	173	(8)
Sheila C. Murphy
Visual Diaries: Revival of a Documentary Form in Digital Culture	181	(6)
Ake Walldius
The Interactive Filmmaker's Challenge	187	(6)
Christopher Hales
Index	193