Transcript Document
The Moving Image and Digital Media
S.T.Renshaw
Trajan’s Column
113 AD, Rome
Marble band of figurtive carving spiraling up it’s shaft
Chronological from bottom to top
Narrative is Linear - storytelling with 150 episodes (frames) each merging into the next without any
vertical break to interrupt the flow of the composition and the sequence of events
Reader must walk around the spiral 23 times, eyes climbing upward
Optical Illusion employed: figures at the top are
larger than those at the bottom
Reality in real scale distorted in relief scale in
order to create the illusion of real scale
as seen from viewers perspective
As the scenes are stationary on the pole the viewer is
required to move around it
It is not a Moving Image, but a 3D image that both
depicts movement through time and space
and also requires movement from the
viewer thru time and space
Zoetrope
1834
George Homer
Animated images are arranged inside a cylinder
No longer must the viewer move but may remain stationary
Only they must spin the device
To create the moving image
Peeping through a slit they see the animation move on
The surface opposite the slit creating the illusion of
Movement
Space Limitations of cylindrical device
Requires content to be looped
Creating non-narrative, non-linear stories
Images developed by hand, frame by frame
Jeffery Shaw
“Place, a User’s Manuel”
Shaw uses similar cylindrical shape as that of the original zoetrope by using a cylinder with a
Slit - though scale and viewing experience differ greatly
Viewer effectively enters the zoetrope
Linear Zoetrope
Bill Brand (1980) installed linear zoetrope in an unused subway platform in Brooklyn New York
228 hand-painted panels seen as trains pass by
Linear form eliminated the need for images to be looped and also eliminated the problem of
Space and duration of movie sequence
Edison’s Kinetoscope
1888
“The Kinetoscope will do for the eye what the phonograph did for the ear.”
Inspired by Muybridge (who still drew his photographs by hand onto glass
slides for his zooprxiscope)
Captured movement in real-time
Still limited in space/length
50 ft of film = 20 sec of footage
Like early Quicktime movies, they were very small in scale
But long enough to construct linear narratives
Limitation: Only one person could view at a time
Lumiere Bros
Invented sprocket holes with their Cinematograph
The Cinematograph functioned as a camera, projector, and printer all in one
1st Public Screening = 10 short films, 20 min total
scenes of everyday life of Parisian citizens
“The Cinema is an invention without a future.” - Louis Lumiere
People were captivated by seeing themselves
represented in another time
A mirror of themselves - a kind of narcissistic delight
in viewing themselves
In “Body Movies: Relational Architecture” by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
The audience has a similar reaction
They are engaged with projected images of themselves
Seeing themselves on the screen is the source of their interest
Likewise was what Jim Cambell frustratingly said he experienced with early interactive piece
“Hallucination”
Viewers were not so interested in the content of his work as simply fascinated by seeing themselves
Modern Cinema
Emphasis on capturing reality
Special effects in the periphery
Jean Luc Godard: “Cinema is truth 24 frames per second”
Filmmakers step away from animated graphics and into cinematic photographic images
Animation considered a low art (ie. For pornography and cartoons, etc.)
Focus on Linear Narrative construction - processing of images in sequential order to depict time
passage
Digital Cinema
Return to emphasis on animation graphics and special effects - tools that were in the periphery of
modern cinema
Digital Media makes manual manipulation again a key element to the construction of the moving
image
Modern Cinema = linear narrative and passive viewer
Digital Cinema = nonlinear narrative and often active viewer
New Possibilities With Digital Cinema:
1.
New Sources available for final footage from live action to 3D computer animation
2.
Now that all images are pixels they are malleable
3.
New kind of realism - the photorealism of modern cinema can be created digitally though it is
not in fact reality depicted
4.
Editing and special effects, production and post-production merge
5.
Digital film= live action + material + painting + image processing + compositing + 2D
computer animation + 3D computer animation
History Swings Full Circle
Increasingly Digital Media techniques resemble methods used with pre-cinematic technologies
for creating moving images
Ie. = greater demand of active viewer participation
use of graphic animations to construct images
nonlinear narratives