This collection of essays is driven by the question of how we know what we know, and in particula... more This collection of essays is driven by the question of how we know what we know, and in particular how we can be certain about something even when we know it is an illusion. The contention of the book is that this age-old question has acquired a new urgency as certain trends in science, technology and ideas have taken the discussion of consciousness out of the philosophy department and deposited it in the world at large. As a consequence, a body of literature from many fields has produced its own sets of concerns and methods under the rubric of Consciousness Studies. Each contribution in this collection deals with issues and questions that lots of people have been thinking about for many years in many different contexts, things such as the nature of film, cinema, world, mind and so on. Those of us fascinated by these diverse yet related issues may have often felt we were working in a disciplinary no-man's-land. Now suddenly, it seems with Consciousness Studies we have a coherent intellectual home - albeit one that is self-consciously eclectic. The essays included in Screen Consciousness: Cinema, Mind and World are from a range of disciplines - art, philosophy, film theory, anthropology and technology studies - each represented by significant international figures, and each concerned with how their field is being transformed by the new discipline of Consciousness Studies. Together they attempt to reconcile the oncoming rush of new data from science and technology about how we know what we know, with the insights gained from the long view of history, philosophy and art. Each of the contributions seeks to interpose Consciousness Studies between film and mind, where for cultural theorists psychoanalysis had traditionally stood. This is more than simply updating Film Studies or nodding in the direction of cognitive film theory. Film, with all its sentient, sensuous and social qualities, is a common reference point between all these forces, and Consciousness Studies provides the intellectual impetus for this book to revisit familiar problems with fresh insight.
Anyone who has heard Siegfried Zielin- ski speak at one of the many confer- ences in the last dec... more Anyone who has heard Siegfried Zielin- ski speak at one of the many confer- ences in the last decade devoted to “new media” will not be surprised by the quality of the research, the concep- tual coherence and the literary elo- quence of this book. What is always so ...
... It concludes by proposing that the type of historical method we use is important in explainin... more ... It concludes by proposing that the type of historical method we use is important in explaining technology, and ... Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) make it unneces-sary for us to do more than decode the occasional acronym ... computer as a personal (rather than corporate) machine. ...
The kinetograph and the cinématograph were not the works of individual genius, but emerged from t... more The kinetograph and the cinématograph were not the works of individual genius, but emerged from the popular imagination that converged on a raft of concerns, ranging from the deeply philosophical to the outright flippant, that gave a particular meaning to hundreds of little pre-cinematic devices both invented and rediscovered in the nineteenth century. From what we know of it, that imagination has once again found a dynamic moment in the disorganized turbulence of an ill-defined and confused apparatus-gathered together under the rubric of electronic digital media-ranging from the networked home computer to microwave telephone technology, and "Bluetooth" interspecie communication. Yet, as digital media reaches for infinity and beyond (to quote Buzz Light Year) the cinematic imagination of the twentieth century shows no sign of running out of economic steam in the twentieth-first as, for example, the first Lord of the Rings film grossed £560 million plus, and the franchise is expected to generate around £3 billion in twenty years. The cinema, the flagship of the analogue era, has not simply survived, it has prospered in the digital revolution and, arguably, even set the economic and aesthetic agenda for how that technology is exploited as entertainment. So far, so good for cinephiles, but what of the cinema history? Worrying about the archive may seem a dull preoccupation when the barricades appear to be crumbling, but if we avoid the question, it is possible that, in the not too distant future, understanding the latest turns in film and cinema history will be incomplete if we do not preserve evidence of the technological trace of the imagination that has helped shape the reinvented cinema of today. If the intrusion into history of digital cinema has done anything, it has forced a consideration that the emphasis of the archive has shifted from the films themselves to the cinematic imagination in all its manifestations.
... For example, it is apparent that rather than dominant inventors the Lumières and Thomas Ed... more ... For example, it is apparent that rather than dominant inventors the Lumières and Thomas Edison competing for priority, there were many other peoplee working independently on similar, if not identical, devices in quite geographically dispersedd locations. ...
This collection of essays is driven by the question of how we know what we know, and in particula... more This collection of essays is driven by the question of how we know what we know, and in particular how we can be certain about something even when we know it is an illusion. The contention of the book is that this age-old question has acquired a new urgency as certain trends in science, technology and ideas have taken the discussion of consciousness out of the philosophy department and deposited it in the world at large. As a consequence, a body of literature from many fields has produced its own sets of concerns and methods under the rubric of Consciousness Studies. Each contribution in this collection deals with issues and questions that lots of people have been thinking about for many years in many different contexts, things such as the nature of film, cinema, world, mind and so on. Those of us fascinated by these diverse yet related issues may have often felt we were working in a disciplinary no-man's-land. Now suddenly, it seems with Consciousness Studies we have a coherent intellectual home - albeit one that is self-consciously eclectic. The essays included in Screen Consciousness: Cinema, Mind and World are from a range of disciplines - art, philosophy, film theory, anthropology and technology studies - each represented by significant international figures, and each concerned with how their field is being transformed by the new discipline of Consciousness Studies. Together they attempt to reconcile the oncoming rush of new data from science and technology about how we know what we know, with the insights gained from the long view of history, philosophy and art. Each of the contributions seeks to interpose Consciousness Studies between film and mind, where for cultural theorists psychoanalysis had traditionally stood. This is more than simply updating Film Studies or nodding in the direction of cognitive film theory. Film, with all its sentient, sensuous and social qualities, is a common reference point between all these forces, and Consciousness Studies provides the intellectual impetus for this book to revisit familiar problems with fresh insight.
Anyone who has heard Siegfried Zielin- ski speak at one of the many confer- ences in the last dec... more Anyone who has heard Siegfried Zielin- ski speak at one of the many confer- ences in the last decade devoted to “new media” will not be surprised by the quality of the research, the concep- tual coherence and the literary elo- quence of this book. What is always so ...
... It concludes by proposing that the type of historical method we use is important in explainin... more ... It concludes by proposing that the type of historical method we use is important in explaining technology, and ... Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) make it unneces-sary for us to do more than decode the occasional acronym ... computer as a personal (rather than corporate) machine. ...
The kinetograph and the cinématograph were not the works of individual genius, but emerged from t... more The kinetograph and the cinématograph were not the works of individual genius, but emerged from the popular imagination that converged on a raft of concerns, ranging from the deeply philosophical to the outright flippant, that gave a particular meaning to hundreds of little pre-cinematic devices both invented and rediscovered in the nineteenth century. From what we know of it, that imagination has once again found a dynamic moment in the disorganized turbulence of an ill-defined and confused apparatus-gathered together under the rubric of electronic digital media-ranging from the networked home computer to microwave telephone technology, and "Bluetooth" interspecie communication. Yet, as digital media reaches for infinity and beyond (to quote Buzz Light Year) the cinematic imagination of the twentieth century shows no sign of running out of economic steam in the twentieth-first as, for example, the first Lord of the Rings film grossed £560 million plus, and the franchise is expected to generate around £3 billion in twenty years. The cinema, the flagship of the analogue era, has not simply survived, it has prospered in the digital revolution and, arguably, even set the economic and aesthetic agenda for how that technology is exploited as entertainment. So far, so good for cinephiles, but what of the cinema history? Worrying about the archive may seem a dull preoccupation when the barricades appear to be crumbling, but if we avoid the question, it is possible that, in the not too distant future, understanding the latest turns in film and cinema history will be incomplete if we do not preserve evidence of the technological trace of the imagination that has helped shape the reinvented cinema of today. If the intrusion into history of digital cinema has done anything, it has forced a consideration that the emphasis of the archive has shifted from the films themselves to the cinematic imagination in all its manifestations.
... For example, it is apparent that rather than dominant inventors the Lumières and Thomas Ed... more ... For example, it is apparent that rather than dominant inventors the Lumières and Thomas Edison competing for priority, there were many other peoplee working independently on similar, if not identical, devices in quite geographically dispersedd locations. ...
Uploads
Books by Michael Punt
Papers by Michael Punt