From Optical Toys to Computer Imaging
In a strange way, the history of images between the still and the moving returns
to the very origins of cinema; in fact, even earlier. The viewing pleasure of pre-
cinematic optical toys such as the thaumatrope, the stroboscopic disc and the
phenakistiscope stems from the paradoxical difference between what they look
like before and after the toy is activated. It is a mind-blowing ride from stasis to
kinesis and back. Early film exhibitors also addressed this experience. They
were concerned with demonstrating the abilities of the new medium of theciné-
matographe, as the Lumière Brothers called their multipurpose machine. Time
and again, they would astonish their audiences with their special presentation
technique. Initially, the brothers Lumière presented the moving image as a pro-
jected still, before the projectionist brought the image to life by cranking up the
machine.
One hundred years later, one of the most striking features in contemporary
cinematic practices in movie theaters, art galleries, and new media platforms is
the frequent use of slow motion and other techniques of delay. It is as if the
moving image has become increasingly refashioned in the direction of demon-
strating its abilities to remain motionless, or to move in ways that are barely
visible. Several moving image artworks, particularly the ones in galleries and
museums, seem to excel in featuring indiscernible differences between motion
and stillness, in stops, still frames, freeze effects, slow-motion effects, and even
stuttering. According to art historian Boris Groys, the contemporary cinema of
delay and slow motion–fromThe MatrixtoHour Psycho–negotiates
with its other–immobility–as a way of understanding its relationship to both
earlier forms of representation and to the mediascape of the contemporary con-
sumer. As Groys writes,
In the course of its long history of antagonism between the media, film has earned the
right to act as the icon of secularizing modernism. Inversely, by being transferred into
the traditional realms of art, film itself has, in turn, increasingly become the subject of
iconoclastic gestures: by means of new technology such as video, computer, and
DVD, the motion of film has been halted midstream and dissected.In this way, cinema comes to reflect upon its destiny in a new media environ-
ment. The contemporary examples are many: from Bill Viola to Douglas Gor-
don, Sam Taylor-Wood, Sharon Lockhart and others. While some artists prefer
the latest media techniques like digital artist Jim Campbell, others hark back to
earlier techniques or combine new and old techniques like in the avant-garde
filmmaker Ken Jacobs’most recent works.
12 Eivind Røssaak