1 Week 1 Visual Culture in the Western World Th.docx

1 Week 1 Visual Culture in the Western World Th.docx

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  1 Week 1 Visual Culturein the Western World The Idea of Cinema -Fascination with images can be traced back to Plato (The Republic) in the parable of “The Cave” Plato raises the danger of being complacent with the illusion of the image The dangers of an uncritical understanding of the image -The period of Enlightenment: scientific studies and machinations are developed to “capture, project and record images. -17th century: Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680) developed the “catoptric lamp.” German-born Jesuit priest and scientist whose book Ars magna lucis et umbrae diagramed the outlines for his reflecting optic machine. Did not invent the “magic lantern” He projected and reflected images on the wall Encouraged scientific explanation to his spectators
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  so as todemythify images as some sort of magic or ghostly apparition. He emphasised that these images were not magic, but “art.” The Magic Lantern—17th Century 2 1659—Christiaan Huygens develops the “lanterne magique” 1664—Thomas Walgensten developed a similar apparatus in Paris Unlike Kircher who used sunlight to reflect the image Huygens and Walgensten used an artificial light source Walgensten traveled through Europe with the “lanterne magique” (Lyons, Rome, and Copenhagen) The people who saw the lanterne magique were initially royalty in these cities By the end of the century the lantern shows were exhibited in more popular culture venues such as fairs and carnivals
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  18th and 19thCENTURIES 1740— X. Theodore Barber demonstrates the “Magick Lanthorn” in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. Venues such as private homes and coffee houses were the favored sites for these exhibitions. France, however, was where these lantern shows first gained commercial popularity at the beginning of the 19th century. 3 Etienne Gaspars Robertson “Fantasmagorie” capitalized on superstitions and religious fears Invoked the “spirits” of Rousseau and Voltaire It was a theater of apparitions. Unlike Kirhcer, Robertson did not tell his audiences that the “Fantasmagorie” was a technological spectacle Like contemporary theater and film, Robertson maintained the illusion of the image
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  -It was anextremely complicated production to put on - images size and intensity of light had to be continuously managed The Fantasmagorie was internationally popular. Each traveling show was uniquely packaged usually attended by an adult urban middle-class audience. 1803—Barber presented the French Fantasmagoria in New York 1803—Showmen Bologna and Thomlinson exhibited the Fantasmagoria in London Americans saw the ghost of Benjamin Franklin and exotic figures like the “Egyptian Pygmy Doll” 4 There was sound with these presentations— ghost’s voices, music Ticket prices were approximately US$1. 1830 Photography and the Stereopticon The difference between the image making of photography and cinema is image projection.
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  But the cinemarelied upon the technological advancements of photography. Two key Photographic Inventions: Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1789-1851, France) The daguerrotypes—positive pictures that could not be reproduced William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877, England) The talbotypes—first negative image on paper— Images could be reproduced The “realistic” recording of the image was said to have a “mirror effect.” For many, painting was declared dead at this time (1840) Photographic images are now used in the lantern shows—slides are developed 5 1830 the stereoscope appears. Created on the principles of binocular vision (each eye sees differently)
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  The fusion oftwo images—side by side— allowed for the different perceptions of the brain to decode differences between objects in the image giving an illusion of depth. 1851 Sir David Brewster (inventor of the kaleidoscope) displays the Stereopticon at the Crystal Palace Exhibition. Huge commercial and international success; marketed by the London Stereoscopic Company. There motto: “No home without a stereoscope” Entertainment or Science? Science and art intersect with the mechanically reproduced image in the 19th century Because of its accuracy, the sciences were very interested examining the body It was thought that photographed images revealed some sort of true self Phrenologists, criminologists and psychologists used photographed images to determine “normal” bodies from “abnormal” bodies 6
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  Landscape photography waseasily applied to the sciences of land survey Most successful were the images of wars—a photographic document. In the US, the Civil War (1861-1865) was the first major war to be photographically documented. An enormous demand was made for these views or scenes of battles. This notion of “being there” and “being newsworthy” through the photographic image begins here. Lectures/magic lantern series also became very popular during the War. Travelogue lecture/lantern shows also appear at this time Lecture series were big business. Most of the lecturers had agents who booked them in high society venues where people heard about far-off exotic places. Churches also found these lectures useful for their work (telling Biblical stories) An important development: Lecturers begin organize and juxtapose their images in a continuous manner or subject.
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  7 In this way,the lecturer would include shots with coherent spatial relations Introduced: cut-ins exterior/interior perspectives point of view shots shot/counter shot During this time the spectator and the exhibitor established their cultural relationship for the arrangement of images in narratological sense (See Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs, 100-107). 1894—Alexander Black creates a fiction lecture series where he put together a narrative through an aesthetic of “seamless realism.” His full length “picture play” was entitled, Miss Jerry. Movement As early as 1848 Benjamin Pike’s Catalogue of Optical Goods tells their patrons that their new optical machines can “give motion effect to the images” Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904)
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  One of thefirst to successfully record movement through a series of consecutive images English born photographer who moved to the American West in the 1860s 8 Extensive traveling for commissioned lectures/lantern shows on his trips to San Francisco, Yosemite Valley, Alaska, and Central America 1872—approached by Leland Stanford who wanted to prove that at one point in a horses stride all four hoofs were off the ground. He began work on this, but was briefly interrupted by a murder trial—his. He murdered his wife’s lover. He lived in exile in Central America for two years. In 1877 he resumed work. He developed an elaborate electromagnetic shutter that was triggered when the horse broke a thread that was stretched across the track in its path and the magnets were connected.
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  Muybridge showed thatall four hoofs of the horse were off the ground 1878-1879 Muybridge developed the zoopraxiscope. This device projected images on a constantly turning glass wheel. Between 1884 and 1885 Muybridge, while at the University of Pennsylvania, took more than 9 200,000 images for scientific purposes - humans, animals, movement. In 1887 he published 20,000 of these images in his Animal Locomotion. The inventions for creating an “image-movement machine” were a world-wide endeavor. Etienne-Jules Marey 1830-1904, France Marey started his career as an assistant surgeon in 1855, and specialized in human and animal physiology. In 1867 he became Professor of Natural
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  History. Inventor of the"chronophotograph" (1887) from which modern cinematography was developed. Whereas Muybridge (with whom Marey was frequently in contact) had used a number of cameras to study movement, Marey used only one—the movements being recorded on one photographic plate. Like Muybridge, he studied the human in motion The subjects wore black suits with metal strips or white lines as they passed in front of black backdrops. 10 (a chronophotograph project—Muybridge, Marey, Eakins) In America, Thomas Alva Edison was working on a lot of different “inventions” - moving images was but one.