Universiteit van Amsterdam November 13, 2019

Media Culture in Transformation:

Still – Moving

Lecture

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 Outline

1. Recap from last week

2. Still: Photography
3. Stilling Movement and Moving Stills: Precursors of Cinema
4. Moving: The Invention of Cinema and Early Nonfiction Films
5. Still – Moving today: Experimental film, GIFs & Co., frame
rates, freeze frames
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 Recap from last week

Speech – Print
• from acoustic to visual culture

Proximity – Distance
• modern space and time
• sense of linear, synchronous, divisible time
• mastery of the vastness of space
• mastery of infinitely small space

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Recap from last week

Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936) 4

 Recap from last week

From the Realm of Crystals Powers of Ten (Eames Brothers, 1977)

(J.C. Mol, 1927)

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 Recap from last week

Steamboy (Katsuhiro Otomo, 2004)

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See Thomas Lamarre, The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation, Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2009, p. 3-4.
 Recap from last week
How does this artwork
“work”? How does it
use the train as a
technology to animate
images?

Why does one person

at one point say “Awww,
the train f*cked it up!”?

Discuss for 2 minutes.

Masstransiscope (Bill Brand, 1980)

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Still: Photography

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Still: Photography

camera obscura (lat. = dark room)

or pinhole camera

Magic Lantern

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 Still: Photography

• photos, gr. = light, graphein, gr. = to write

• based on the reaction of chemicals (silver

nitrates) to light
➝ ‘indexicality’ of photography
➝ “Pencil of Nature” (W.H.F. Talbot)

“Point de vue du Gras” (Niépce, ca. 1827)

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 Still: Photography

• Daguerrotype, invented in 1838,

named after Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre
(1787-1851)

• negative photograph, development, fixation

“huit heures du matin” (Daguerre, 1838)

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 Still: Photography
These are two famous examples from the genre of war photography, with roughly 70
years between them. What differences do you notice and how might these differences be
related to the technology of photography? Discuss for 2 minutes with your neighbour(s).

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Matthew Brady, ca. 1860-1865 Robert Capa,1936
Still: Photography

• photograph as a document

• photography as a fixing of time

• photograph as improved access to the world

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Still: Photography

• photograph as a commodity

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 Still: Photography
Photography in the management of growing societies

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Stilling Movement: Precursors
Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904)
“Like the automobile in our contemporary world, the horse in the
nineteenth century was key to some of the most significant
economic functions of society: transportation, travel, status,
recreation, and war. Curiosity about the animal and its movement
was consequently universal. Everyone shared – to varying degrees
into varying ends – an interest in equine anatomy and locomotion.
but the movements of the horse were too rapid and too complex
ever to be interpreted by the unaided eye; the impossibility of
following four legs at once meant that contradictory theories
abounded as to how the animal actually moved. The exact sequence
of movements of each of the four legs in each gait, the movements
that marked transitions from one gait to another, and the effects of
different kinds of harness on the animal's paces were all open to
question.”

Braun, Martha. Picturing Time: The Work of Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-

1904). Chicago:The University of Chicago Press, 1992, p. 4216
Stilling Movement: Precursors

Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904)

• invented the zoopraxiscope 17
 Stilling Movement: Precursors

Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904)

• developed the photographic gun (1882) and
chronophotography to analyse movement
(after meeting Muybridge) 18
Stilling Movement: Precursors

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Stilling Movement: Precursors

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Moving Stills: Precursors

Zoetrope
• zoe, gr. = life, tropos, gr. turning
→ ‘Wheel of life’

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 Moving Stills: Precursors

Zoetrope at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne
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Moving Stills: Preconditions

Celluloid

• 1889: transparent, flexible celluloid roll film

➝ allowed for a large number of images to be
run through a projector

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 Moving: The Invention of Cinema

International process of invention

• Kinetoscope (Edison, USA)
• Cinématographe (Lumière, France)
• Bioscop (Skladanowsky, Germany)
• Phantoscope (Jenkins & Armat, later called Edison’s Vitascope, USA)
• Mutoscope (Casler, USA)

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Moving: The Invention of Cinema

Thomas Edison
• credited as inventor of the Kinetoscope,
(1891), ‘assisted’ by W.K.L. Dickson 25
Moving: The Invention of Cinema

“Underage Peter”, Family Guy (s14e14) 26

Moving: The Invention of Cinema

“Not Well At All” [S02E08], The Knick (Cinemax, 2015) 27

Moving: The Invention of Cinema

Lumière Brothers
• inventors of the cinematograph
• functions as a camera, printer, and part of
the projector
• projection at Grand Café in December
1895
• made many scenics and topicals but also
staged films of comedic scenes

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Moving: Early Cinema
Genres
• scenics
• topicals
• fiction films
• phantom ride

Aesthetic features
• short single shot-films
• musical accompaniment, sometimes
with synchronized noises
• lecturer/exhibitor comments
• animation effects (stop-motion, etc.)
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 Moving: Early Nonfiction Film

The “view”

• Urform (= original form) of early nonfiction

• focus on visual presentation, capturing and preserving a vantage point

➝ camera as a (encyclopedic) spectator or tourist
➝ ideological implications (dominance, objectification, inferiorization)

• filmed subjects respond to camera

➝ the novelty of filming is exposed in the films themselves
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 Moving: Early Nonfiction Film

A Hard Wash (Mutoscope, 1896)

Phenakistoscope 31
 Moving: Early Nonfiction Film
• John Grierson (1898-1972) defined documentary as
“creative treatment of actuality”
§ “descriptive” early nonfiction
vs. “interpretive” documentary with an argument

• generally slow development of nonfiction from 1903 to

1917 (as opposed to the fast development in fiction film)

• technical refinements around 1905:

§ introduction of cuts to different shots
John Grierson
§ introduction of intertitles
(due to gradual abandonment of the lecturer)
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 Moving: Early Nonfiction Film
The “place films” or travelogues

• edit together several shots to create a rich

sense of locale;

• articulate modern space and the tourist gaze

(bringing far-away places close to the viewer).

• Later “phantom rides” are more

Burnham Beeches (1909)
contemplative
➝ create a calm, reflective relation to nature
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 Moving: Early Nonfiction Film

The “process films”

• detail the stages of a process in a

(chrono)logical order;

• are often about the transformation of a raw

material into consumable goods
➝ basic narrative of industrial capitalism

Making Christmas Crackers (1910)

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 Still – Moving: Experimental film

At One View (Paul de Nooijer, 1989) La jetée (Chris Marker, 1963)

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Still – Moving: GIFs & Co.

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 Still – Moving: GIFs & Co.

• foregrounding of minimal movement

• enlivening (or animation) of one’s social media presence

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 Still – Moving: Frame Rates

• ongoing discussions about frame rate

§ Ang Lee’s Billy Lynn: shot at 120 fps
§ James Cameron’s push for higher frame rates in 3D
cinema (for the Avatar sequels)
§ videogaming: 30 fps (consoles) vs. 60 fps (PC gaming)

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 Still – Moving: Loss of the Index

• loss of the index through computer-generated images (CGI)

• crisis of representation?

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 Still – Moving: Freeze Frame

• Rodney King beating: https://youtu.be/rbsk7upx7s0

• Important media-related question in relation to police

violence today (BLM):
Why does the photographic material not count as a
document?

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Universiteit van Amsterdam November 15, 2019

Media Culture in Transformation:

Still – Moving

Response Class

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 Announcement

• GameLab this afternoon, 2pm at BG1, room 0.16

• https://chat.whatsapp.com/7oknmEVPpXI5HYGvMVtj1Y

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 Outline
1. Conclusion of Wednesday lecture
2. Experiment: Indexicality in action
3. Development of media (question 2 in Weekly Schedule)
4. Kahoot
5. Your questions
6. Exam preparation (open questions)
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 Indexicality in action
Make small groups (2-3 people).
Take on sheet of photosensitive paper per group.
Place objects on top of the photo paper.
Now wait…
Explain to each other what exactly happened on your
photopaper. How does this experiment demonstrate that
photographic images are indexes or indices? 44
 Steps in the development of media
Furthermore, it is relevant to consider this path as a gradated process, specifically a gradated
process of three moments. These moments we will identify here by three terms from the same
semantic field, but to which we will assign a co-efficient that is specific to each. These terms are
appearance, emergence and constitution.
Thus the history of early cinema leads us, successively, from the appearance of a technological
process – that of the apparatus that records moving images – to the emergence of ‘moving
pictures’, or the establishment of diverse procedures which endow the process with the status of
an apparatus, to the constitution of an established medium that transcends and in some way
sublimates the apparatus.Thus the idea of the cinema’s second birth suggests the following schema:
• the appearance of a technological process;
• the emergence of an apparatus, through the establishment of procedures; and
• the constitution of a media institution.

Gaudreault, André and Philippe Marion. "A Medium is Always Born Twice." Early Popular Visual
Culture 3.1 (2005), p. 5.
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You can find all our Kahoot quizzes by logging into
Kahoot and searching for “mcit.” 46
 Your questions
I can imagine that you have many different questions. To make this productive, let’s
order our questions a bit.

1) precursors of photography: camera obscura and magic lantern

2) invention of photography
3) indexicality of the photographic image
4) cultural uses of photography and their importance
5) precursors of cinema: Muybridge, Marey, zoetrope
6) invention of cinema: Edison (Kinetoscope), Lumière brothers (cinematograph)
7) early nonfiction: the ‘view’ aesthetic and its subgenres: place films and process films
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 Exam preparation
• The In-class test is a test-run for the final exam (30% of final grade).

• The In-class Test covers weeks 1-4.

• It contains 2 open questions and 5 multiple choice questions.

• Your answers should be max. one handwritten A4 page per open question.

• ca. 10 minutes per open question (but we give you 45 minutes in total)

• Next week we’ll begin with all your questions (ca. 10:00-10:45).
Then, after the break, we’ll do the In-class test (ca. 11:00-11:45).
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 Exam preparation
Before the exam:
§ Reserve time to study. I would say at least 5 sessions of 3 hours before
the final exam.
§ Make a study group. Quiz each other.
§ Memorize things. Make sure you understand them.
But: Don’t just learn facts. Learn the connections and relations between
facts, concepts, etc.
§ Be aware of the difference between key ideas/concepts and examples.
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 Exam preparation
During the exam:
§ Read the question properly. Check how many points you can get
for each question.
§ Make a plan for your answers (bullet points or mind map).
Know what you are going to write before you start writing.
§ Don’t repeat the same point over and over in slightly varied ways
to ‘catch’ points.
§ Re-read your answers before you submit them.

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 Exam preparation
Cinema, as we know it, is the projection of photographic images in rapid,
intermittent succession.

Name three devices or technologies that can count as (intentional or

unintentional) precursors of cinema, one for each of the three above-
mentioned elements of cinema.
For each precursor, explain in one or two sentences how it prepares the
emergence of cinema.
(6 points)

• 5 minutes 51
 Exam preparation
projection:
• Magic Lantern projects still drawing by means of a light source and lenses.
• Reynaud’s Praxinoscope used rear projection and a system of light and mirrors to
project cartoons.

photographic images
• Niépce made made the first photograph in 1826 by using photosensitive chemicals that
register the trace of light. These are a necessary precursor to the use of photographic images.
• Daguerre developed a photographic technology that allowed for the reduction of exposure
times to a few minutes. Even though that was still not fast enough to make cinema possible, he
participates in the development of shorter exposure times, which is an important prerequisite
for cinema.

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 Exam preparation
rapid, intermittent succession
• The sewing machine relied on a mechanism that stitches into a fabric that is intermittently
sent/pulled through the machine. A similar mechanism is used in the film camera and projector.
• The Zoetrope is an optical toy which makes you look at a rapidly rotating series of drawing
through small slots. The blocked out space between slots intermittently cuts into perception
and, in this way, creates the illusion of movement.
• Muybridge developed the zoopraxiscope, a setup of cameras placed next to each other
and that were perfectly timed to take images in regular and rapid succession. Even though
Muybridge was more interested in analyzing movement than recreating it, the rapid succession
of photographs in his setup inspired later inventors of cinema.
• Marey developed the photographic gun which contained a magazine of photographic plates
that made it possible to take several (12) pictures per second. Even though Marey was more
interested in analyzing movement than recreating it, the rapid succession of photographs in one
magazine inspired later inventors of cinema.
• Celluloid is a flexible material (as opposed to glass). This flexibility of the celluloid was later
used to make film strips that run through a projector. 53
 Exam preparation
When discussing the conceptual pair “still – moving,” we focused on the
photographic index as a key aspect of photography.

A. What is the photographic index and what is its general cultural

significance for the medium of photography? (3 points)

B. The indexical nature of photography supported multiple uses of the

medium in culture at large. Name and explain two concrete examples of
how indexicality supports a specific cultural use of photography.
(4 points)
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In week 2, we discussed the different ways in which the telegraph was
implemented in Europe and the United States.
A. Explain two ways in which the telegraph was implemented differently in
the US and in Europe. (2 pts)
B. What do these differences tell us about media’s “paths of development”
more generally? (2pts)
Europe, especially UK United States
regulated by the state private business
includes private individuals as customers concentrates on business clients
investors are generally more cautious, generally stronger investment in
slower developments research & innovation
establishes international
focuses on national communication
communications network 55
 For next week

• Read the texts by Tom Gunning and David A. Cook.

• Study for the In-class test.

Bring all your content questions next Friday.
We’ll have time to address them in the first half of class.

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