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    3 vues30 pages

    Crary Part 1

    Transféré par

    Vanessa Chanice Magalhães
    Something about film theory

    Droits d'auteur :

    © All Rights Reserved
    Téléchargez comme PDF ou lisez en ligne sur Scribd
    Signaler comme contenu inapproprié
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    bh vision vreified petitive again to dernism form of ities, by » signifi lernism, ty of the agofthe 1 which adly as if ality, the tury and reasingly field not butinto dbe pro: hhniques y, painting ‘own teat 4 ‘Techniques of the Observer Our eye finds it more comfortable to respond to a given stinnulus by repro- ducing once more an image that it bas produced many times before, instead of registering what is different and new in an impression. —Friedrich Niewsche afterimage is perhaps the most important optical phenom- er on physiological colors in the Theory The reti enon discussed by Goethe in his cba the late eighteenth century, his Sub- of Colours. ‘Though preceded by others in treatment of the topic was by far the most thorough up to that momet jective visual phenomena such as afierimages had been recorded since tics and they were rel- ne early antiquity but only as events outside the dor appearance. But in cegated to the category of the “spectral” or m nineteenth century, particularly with Goethe, such experiences 1s of optical “truth.” They are no longer deceptions that obscure a “true perception; rather they begin to constitute an irreducible component of human vision, For Goethe and the physiologists who followed him there was earlier researchers, including Robert W. Darwin Jy naturalist Buffon (1707-1788). See The 10), p. 1-2. See also Boring, 102-104. Goethe identifies some of the (1766-1648), the father of Charles, and the Frend nbridge, Mass, 19 ory of Colours, tans. Charles'Eastake (C A Hisory of Expertmental Psschotogy (New York, 1950), P Techniques of the Observer no such thing as optical illusion: whatever the h ¥y corporal eye experi enced was in fact optical truth, ‘The implications of the new “objectivity” accorded to subjective phe nomena are several. First, as discussed in the previous chapter, the privileging of the afterimage allowed one to conceive of sensory percept on as cut from any necessary link with an external referent, The afterimage—the presence of sensation in the absence of a stimulus—and its subsequent modulations posed a theoretical ‘empirical demonstration of autonomous vision, of an optical experience that was produced by and within the subject. Second, and ‘equally important, is the introduction of temporality as an inescapable com ponent of observation. Mi ‘Theory of Colours inv 1 of the phenomena described by Goethe in the olve an unfolding over time: “The edge begins to be blue the blue gradually encroaches inward ... the image then becomes grad- ually fainter The virtual instantaneity of optical transmission (whether intromission or extromission) was an unquestioned foundation of classical optics and theories of perception from Aristotle to Locke. And the simultaneity of the cai mera obscura image with its exterior object was never questioned.’ Butas observation is increasingly tied to the body in the early nineteenth cen. tury, temporality and jon become inseparable. The shifting processes of one’s own subjectivity experienced in time became synonymous with the act of seeing, dissolving the Cartesian ideal of an observer completely focused on an object, But the problem of the afterimage and the temporality of subjective vision is lodged within larger epistemological issues in the nineteenth cen tury. On one hand the attention given to the aft Ps mage by Goethe and others allels contemporary philosophical discourses that describe perception and cognition as essentially tempora amalgamation processes dependent upon a dynamic ast and present. Schellin g, for example, describes a vision founded on just such a temporal overlapping 2. Goethe, Theory of Colows, pp. 16-17, Nineteenth century science suggested “the idea ofa reality which endures inwardly, which s duration tse,” Henti Bergson, Creative volution, wens. Arthur Mitchell (New York, 1944), p. 395. 3. On the instantaneity of perception see, for example, David C. Lindberg, Theories of ‘Kindi 10 Kepler (Chicago, 1976), pp. 93-94 tbe Observer Leye experi- jective phe- jing 2 as cut from presence of nodulations vision, ofan Second, and xpable com vethe in the istobeblue comes grad: a (whether of classical imultaneity uestioned> teenth cen. rocesses of with the act Focused on subjective and others perception a dynamic Theories of ‘Techniques of the Observer 99 We do not live in vision; our knowledge is piecework, th must be produced piece by piece in a fragmentary way, with divi sions and gradations. ... In the external world everyone sees more or less the same thing, and yet not everyone can express it. In order (o complete itself, each thing runs through certain mome Series of processes following one another, in which the later alweys involves the earlier, brings each thing to maturity.4 tarlier, in the preface to his Phenomenology (1807), Hegel makes as eeping repudiation of Lockean perception and situates perception within an unfold ing that is temporal and historical. While attacking the apparent certainty of sense perception, Hegel implicitly refutes the model of the camera obscura ‘It must be pointed out that truth is not like stamped coin issued ready from. the mint, and s can bet ken up and used.” Although referring to the Lockean notion of ideas “imprinting” themselves on passive minds, Hegel's remark has @ precocious applicability to photography, which, like coinage, offered another mechanically and mass-produced form of exchangeable “truth Hegel's dynamic, dialectical account of perception, in which appearance negates itself to become something other, finds an echo in Goethe's discus. sion of afterimages. The eye cannot for a moment remain in a particular state dete: nined by the object it looks upon. On the contrary, itis forced to 1 sort of opposition, which, in contrasting extreme with extreme, intermediate degree with intermediate degree, at the same time combines these opposite impressions, and thus ever tends to be whole, whether the impressions are successive or simultaneous and confined to one image 4 F-W.L Schelling, he Ages ofthe World {1815}, trans. Fredrick de Wolfe Bolman (New fork, 1942), pp. 88-89, Emphasis added G..W. F Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, tans J.B, Baillie (New York, 1957), P 6 Goethe, Meory of Colours, p.3 jues of the Observer Goethe and Hegel, each in his own way, pose observation as the play and inter action of forces and relations, rather than as the orderly contiguity of discrete stable sensations conceived by Locke or Condillac Other writers of the tim also delineated perception as a continuous Process, a flux of temporally dispersed contents. The physicist An e-Marie Ampere in his epistemological writings used the term concrétion to describe how any perception always blends with a preceding or r tion. The words mélange membered percep. and fusion occur frequently in his attack on classical notions of “pure” isolated sensations, Perception, as he wrote to his friend Maine de Biran, was fundamentally, “une suite de diffécences succe: The dynamics of the afterimage are also implied in the work of Johann Fried. rich Herbart, who uni f the earliest atemptsto quantify the move ment of cognitive experience. Although his ostensibl took one aim was to demonsirate and preserve Kant’s notion of the unity of the mind, Herbart's formulation of mathematical laws gove! ning mental experience in fact make him “a spiritual father of stimulus-response psychology.”* If Kant gave a positiy ant of the mind!’s capacity for synthesizing and ordering experience, Herbart Successor at Kénigsberg) detailed how the subject wards internal incoherence and disc (Kant’s oF and prevents inization. Consciousness, for Herbary, a a stream of potentially chaotic inpu begins from without. Ideas of things and events in the world were never copies of external realty but rather the out. Come of an interactional process within the subject in which ideas (Vorstel. Jungen) underwent operations of fusion, fa ing, inhibition, and blending 7. Itshould be noted, however, that Hegel, in an 1807 Goethe's color theory for being “restricted completely to th 4 Hegel, vol 1, ed. Karl Hegel (Le Mietzscher The Revolution in ‘York, 1964), p. 13, 8 André-Marie A Ampores, ed. Barthélen fewer to Schelling, criticized he empirical” Briefe vor und ipzig, 1884), p. 94. Cte in Karl Lowith, From Hegel 10 Nineteen Century Thought, trans, David B. Green (New ttre & Maine de Biran” [1809], in Pbosopbie des Devs ‘Sainc Hilaire (Paris, 1866), p. 236 Benjamin B. Wolman, The Historical Role of Johann Friedrich Meebart kal Roots of Contemporary Psycholog, ed. Benjamin B. Wolman (New York, 1968), p33, See also David B, Leary, “The Historical Foundations of Herbae's Mathematizatton oy be chology" Journal ofthe History ofthe Rebawtoral Sciences 16(1980) pp. 150-163, for ian bats influence on later art Percep valle ‘ectural in Histor ‘cory and aesthetics see Michael Podo, The Manifold in om Kant to Hildebrand (Oxford, 1972); and Arturo Quinta ephical Context of Riegls‘Stilfagen," in On dhe Methodology of Archi ‘tory, ed, Demetri Porphyrios (London, 1981), pp. 17-20, he Phil 5 of the Observer playandinter ity of discrete st André-Marie ‘onto describe ibered percep. ackon classical € to his friend Johann Fried: atify the move- demonstrate ‘ormulation of im “a spiritual accountofthe erbart (Kane's and prevents cerbart, begins of things and ather the out. deas (Vorstel- ind blending Hing, eticized Brigfe von und From Hegel 10 B. Groen (New phi des Devee van,” ta Histor , 1968), p. 33. {zation of Psy 1163, Fortter Manifold in Arturo Quinta ology of Archi ques of the Observer 101 sen) with other previous or simultaneously occurring ideas or 5 not reflect truth but rather extracts it from an n and merging of ideas, (Verschnetzunge ipresentations.” The mind do ‘ongoing process involving the collision series a, bc, d, be given by perception; then, from the First Let nd during its continuance movement of the perception an est from other concepts alr exposed toanarr partially sunken in consciousness, hen b came to it, This b a first In the meantime, 4, alr ne more and more obscured wl sinking a; then followed ¢ which ured, bec ‘unobscured, blended with th scured, fused with b, which was becoming obs ed with a, b, and¢, in different tis itself unob» ‘similarly followed d, to become fu: law for each of these concepts. by calculation the degree of strength de Two degrees, From this arises @ very important to determin must attain in order to be able to stand bes on the threshold of consciousnes concept or more stronger ones exactly ne described phenom in differential equa- the lending and opposition that Goeth All the processes of for Herbart statable ily in terms of the afterimage are specifically discusses color position and inhibition." Once the cognition become fundamentally measurable in cerms of duration and inter sity, itis thereby rendered both predictable and controllable Although Her- bart was philosophically opposed t empirical experimentation or =8y esearch, his convoluted attempts to 1 1e sensory work of Maller, Gustav Fech: 12 He was one of the first to recognize J by an autonomous tions and theorems. He: perception to describe operations of mental mechanisms of op physiological 1 athematize perception important for the later quantitative were ner, Ernst Weber, and Wilhelm Wundt sresentation implied the potential crisis of meaning and rep: -gimentation, Herbart clearly subjectivity, and to propose a framework for its e ygnition, but sas attempting a quantification of ¢0% co measure the magnitude of itnonetheless prepared the ground for attempts f sensations, and such mea: npt to Fotend the Set Herbar A Textbook in Psychology: Ar ter rs. Margaget K Smith cvience, Metaphysics annd Mathematics, 40, Johan Feiedric ence of Psychology on Expe New York, 1891), pp: 21-22 LL. See Herbart, Pobologie als For Herbart’s influence on Mille, see wisenschaft, vol. (Konigsberg, 1824), PP the laters Elements of Pysiotogg, vol. 2, PP. 1380-1385. Techniques of the Observer surements required sensory experience that was durational, The afterimage ‘was to become a crucial means by which observation could be quantified, by which the intensity and duration of retinal limulation could be measured. Also it is important to remember that Herbart’s work was not simply abstract epistemological speculation but was directly tied to his pedagogical theories, which were influential in Germany and elsewhere in Europe during the mid-nineteenth century. Herbart believed that his attempts to quantify Psychological processes held the possibility for controlling and determining the sequential input of ideas into young minds, and in particular had the Potential of instilling disciplinary and moral ideas, Obedience and attentive hess were central goals of Herbart’s pedagogy: Just as new forms of factor production demanded more precise knowledge of a worker's attention span, so the management of the | ssroom, another disciplinary institution, demanded similar information." In both cases the subject in question was measurable and regulated in time. By the 1820s the q ange of scientific research throughout Europe. W titative study of afterimages was occurring in a rking in Germany, the Czech Jan Purkinje continued Goethe's work on the persistence and mod- ulation of afterimages: how long they Ia ted, what changes they went through, and under what conditions.* His empirical research and Herbart’s mathe. ‘matical methods were to come together in the next generation of psycholo- gists and psychophysicists, when the threshold between the physiological and the mental became one of the primary objects of scientific practice. Instead of recording afterimages in terms of the li d time of the body as Goethe had generally done, Purkinje was the first to study them as part ofa comprehensive 13. ForHerbart’stheoric ‘in Educational Ghost Stor, of education, see Harold B. Dunkel, Herhart and Herbartism, (Chicago, 1970), esp. pp. 63-96, 14, See Nikolas Rose, “The Psychological Complex: Mental Measurement and Social Administration,” Ideology and Consciousness 5 (Spring 1979), pp. 5-70, and Didier Deleule and Francois Guéry, Le corps productif (Pats; 1973), pp. 72-88. 5 Purkinje wrote in Latin, which was translated by others into Czech, English ranslations, see "Visual Phenomena’ [1823], trans. H.R lan, History of relevant thn, in William S, Sabak *yebology” A Soturce Book tn Systematic Pychology (Wasa, Hl, 1968), pp. 101-108, and "Contributions to a Physiology of Vision," trans. Charles Wheatstone, fou ma! ofthe Royal Institution 1 (1830), pp. 101-117, reprinted in Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision, ed. Nicholas Wade (London, 1983), pp. 248-262. of the Observer he afierimage quantified, by ve measured. as not simply s pedagogical ‘urope during AS to quantify I determining cular had the and attentive. ms of factory tention 5 y institution, question was scurring in a in Germany, vce and mod: ‘ent through, Dart's mathe. of psycholo- ological and tice, Instead Goethe had aprehensive nary and tl kinje timed and contrac ‘ts. For Pur. oF statistical hanges hue > area oF vis on, and also OF dioptrics, eighteenth zn aeaaed a Why com , Thawumatropes. 1825 he notion isjunction hats Succession, and thus the duration involved in seeing allowed its modification and control. Hin quick One of the earliest was the thaumatrope (liter lly, “wonder-turner”), whch ne fest popularized in London by Dr.John Paris in 1825, Iwas a small circular cosa disc with a drawing on either side and strings attached so that it could be briny bwirled with a spin ofthe hand, The drawing, for example, ofa bird on one senuvely | side and a cage on the other would, when spun, produce the appearance of rounded the bird inthe cage. Another liad a portrait ofa bale-headed man on one side, beautiful ther, Paris deseribed the re a hairpiece on the ion between retinal after tea clas images and the operation of his device: human s f ‘An object was seen by the eye, in consequence of its image being ography je y T age being delineated on the retina or optic nerve, which is situated on the 106 Techniques of the Observer back part of the eye; and that it has been ascertained, by experi ment, that the impression which the mind thus receives, lasts for the Thaumatrope depends upon the same optical principle; the impression made on the retina by the image about the eighth part of second after the image is removed which is delineated on the opposite side is presented to the eye; and the consequence is that you see both sides at once.* (oN One side of the card, is not erased before that which is paint Similar phenomena had been observed in earlier centuries merely by spin hing a coin and seeing both sides at the same ti 'e, Dut this was the first time the phenomenon was given a scientific explanation and a device was pro. duced to be sold as a popular entertainment. The simplicity ofthis “philo sophical toy” made unequivocally clear both the fabricated and hallucinatory hhature of its image and the rupture between perception and its object Also in 1825, Peter Mark Roget, an ofthe first thesaurus, published an iglish mathematician and the author ‘count of his observations of railway train wheels seen through the vertical bars of a fence. Roget pointed out the ill sions that occurred under this circumstance—the spokes of the wheels seemed to be either motionless or to be turning backward, “The deception inthe appearance ofthe spokes must arise from the circumstances of separate Parts only of each spoke being seen at the same moment ... several portions of one and the same line, seen heough the intervals of the bars, form on the retina the images of so many different radii." Roger observations suggested to him how the location an observer in relation to an int ing screen could exploit the durational properties of retinal afterimas reate various Cffects of motion, The physicist Michael Faraday explored similar phenomena Particularly the experience of rapidly turning wheels that appeared to be ing slowly. In 1851, the year of his discovery of electromagnet Produced his own device, later called the Fa induction, he iday wheel, consisting of two 18. See John A. Paris, Philosophy in Sport Made Se ence in Farnest Being an Attempt to Tiatate te Bist Principles of Naural Philosophy bythe Aid of Popuar Toys nd oor london, 1827), vo. 3, pp. 13-15, 19. Peter Mark Roget, “Explanation of an optical deception in the appearance of the Spokes ofa wheel seen through vertical apertures," sopbical Transactions ofthe Royal Society, 115 (1825), p. 135. the Observer exper asts for 1...the le; the ineated painted quence vrely by spin: the first time ce was pro: f this “philo- hallucinatory + object. nd the author Frailway train out the illu- fF the wheels he deception es of separate veral portions 3, form on the ening screen create various rphenomena, ‘ed to be mov. induction, hi sisting of wo nga Attempt 10 ‘Toys and Sports ‘pearance of the tonsof the Royal 107 Techniques of the Observer use of phenakistiscope before a mirror spoked oF slotted wheels mounted on the same axis. By varying the relation between the spokes of the two wheels relative to the eye © further wheel could be modulated. Thus the expe: the viewer, the apparent motion of the of temporality itself is made susce} rience o pptible toa range of external techn manipulations, During the late 182 nducted 105 the Belgian scientist Joseph Plateau also con awide range of experiments with afterimages, some of which cost him his eye an for extended periods. By 1828 he had. sight due to staring direcily into the s ‘worked with a Newton color wheel, demonstrating that he duration and qual images varied with the intensity, color, time, and direction ity of retinal afte ‘calculation of the average time that such sen- of the stimulus. He also made ‘ons lasted~—about a third ofa second, What is more, his research seemed ions of Goethe and others that retinal after- to confirm the earlier speculat uniformly, He made one of the most influential for- images do not simply dissipate but go through a number of positive es before vanishing and negative sta ulations of the theory of "persistence of vision.” If several objects which differ sequentially in terms of form and after the othe position are presented one to the eye in very br “whe Observer Techniques of the Observer 109 Phenakesiscope intervals and sufficiently close together, the impressions they pro- together without confusion and one duce on the retina will bles will believe that a single object is gradually changing form and position In the early 1830s Plateau constructed the phenakistiscope (literally, “decep tive view"), which incorporated his own research and that of Roget, Faraday, and others. At its simplest it consisted of a single disc, divided into eight or b contained a small slitted opening and sixteen equal segments, each of whic a figure, representing one position in a sequence of movement. The side with figures drawn on it was faced toward a mirror while the viewer stayed immo: bile as the disc turned, When an opening passed in front ofthe eye, it allowed one to see the figure on the disc very briefly. The same effect occurs with each of the slits. Because of retinal persistence, a series of images results that appear to be in continuous motion before the eye. By 1833, commercial mod: 20, Joseph Plateau, Déssortation sur quelques proprités des impressions, thests submit ted at Ligge, May 1829. Quoted in Georges Sadoul, Histoire générale de cinéma. Vol. iwention du cinéma (Paris, 1948), p les of the Observer els were bein >id in London. By 1834 two similar devices appeared: the Stroboscope, invented by the German mathematician Stampfer, and the z00. trope or “wheel of life” of Willia 3, Horner. The latter was a turning cylinder around which several spectat could view simultaneously a simulated action, often sequ noes of dancers, jugglers, boxers, or aceobats, The details i background of these devices and inventors have been well documented elsewhere, but almost exclusively in the service ofa history inema.* Film studies position them as the init technological development leading to the emergence of a single dominant form at the end of the century. Their fundamental characteristic is that they hot yet cinema, thus nascent, imperfex y designed forms. Obviously there is ‘connection between cinema and these machines of the 1830s, but itis often * dialectical relation of inversion and opposition, in which features of these carlter devices were negated or concealed. At the same time there is a ten.

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