CFP: Virtual worlds in early cinema: devices, aesthetics and audiences
CFP: Virtual worlds in early cinema: devices, aesthetics and audiences
13th International Seminar on the Origins and History of Cinema: Virtual worlds in early cinema: devices, aesthetics and audiences
ONLINE EDITION October 20th - 22nd 2021
UNIVERSITAT DE GIRONA & MUSEU DEL CINEMA
Call for Papers
The seminar Virtual worlds in early cinema: devices, aesthetics and audiences comesfrom an obvious desire for articulating a clear relationship among cinemas past andcontemporary audiovisuals present. The nodal point of the project is the concept ofvirtual worlds. As Pierre Lévy states, we assist nowadays before a general movementof virtualization has begun to affect not only the fields of information and communicationbut also our physical presence and economic activities, as well as the collectiveframework of sensibility and the exercise of intelligence. The process of virtualizationhas even affected our modalities of being together, the constitution of a collective “we”in the form of virtual communities, virtual corporations, virtual democracy….
At the present time, an essential debate in the study of early cinema consists in thepossibility of thinking in which way cultural series pre-exist. If the goal of early cinemastudies was no other than trying to analyze the cultural, aesthetics, economical andsocial conditions which had accompanied the birth of a new way of expression, currentlythe debate has been moving into the possibility of creating and establishing bondsamong past and present. In order to understand the emergency of virtual worlds, wehave to consider why dioramas or panoramas proposed to 19th century audiences waysof immersion in a universe built by images. In order to understand how new depth of fieldthree-dimensional forms are generated it is necessary to know how from the beginningof photography stereoscopic images arose and how these were already present underthe model of relief cinema in 1910. It is also necessary to know that despite sound film official institutionalization in 1927, a series of tests oriented to the search of systems forsound synchronization were already carried between 1907 and 1908. Cinema was bornto expand itself beyond cinema itself because, ultimately, the notion or idea of virtualitywas already present in many of the visual devices which were created between theending of 19th century and the beginning of 20th century. It is for this reason that in orderto study how the virtual universes of early cinema were generated, it is necessary toknow the devices that originated them and the places where they were produced. At thesame time it is also key to know which were the aesthetic challenges that cinemaundertook beyond the moving images projection onto a screen. From the beginningthere were created spectacles such as the Hales Tours that simulated the movement ina mean of transportation while the images were being projected or Mareoramas thatrecreated boat travels, with the purpose of creating immersive type experiences. Allthese elements proposed aesthetic proposals for which cinema was not unrelated andthat went through a desire of the virtualization of the experience, but also producedcertain audience models which seek to find a correlate between virtual experienceoffered by the spectacles, with the new perceptive experiences originated in real life in achanging moment caused by the modernity.
Paper Submission Guidelines
Topic A: Virtual worlds in early cinema: devices, aesthetics and audiences
- Media archeology. The archeological study of the devices previous orcontemporary to the cinematograph might be helpful to introduce the Historyof cinema inside a much broader process, focused on the evolution of visualdevices, screens and projection/audition systems.
- The viewer experience in the face of the visual spectacles. In order tocomprehend the devices impact. It is fundamental to know which was theaudience experience in front of the images.
- Virtual experiences on early films. Another research path might draw from theperiod existing films, in order to check how new sensorial ways are glimpsedin them. The idea of considering early cinema films as spaces to the visualattraction can lead us to consider the realist simulation effects that they gather.
- Immersive spectacles and virtualization. The study of leisure spaces from thepast reflects the existence of hybrid spectacle systems, between cinema,theater, magic lantern which proposed specific forms of exhibition andenhanced the viewer immersion in possible worlds.
- Bridges between the past and the development of virtual technology in thepresent. It is possible to establish a thinking that carries out a revision of thepast through a double logic based on the analysis of the re-use by the newtechnologies of preexisting techniques and other based on the aestheticreflection around virtuality modes in the present and its connection with otheraesthetic achievements that were developed in a moment of transformationand reuse of the means of communication.
Topic B: pre-cinema and early cinema
- Presentation of works in progress on pre-cinema or cinema until 1915.
Extension: Abstract of the communication in 60 lines maximum where itappears the state of the question that is posed, bibliographical references, primary,secondary or unpublished research documentary references and the novelty of thecontribution.
Deadline for abstracts: May 5th 2021
E-mail to:institutestudis@museudelcinema.cat
Call For Papers:
https://museudelcinema.girona.cat/eng/institut_seminari_2021.php