Cine-Machine as Method: Conclusion

As the kaleidoscope initially showed, the built-in algorithms of filmmakers mean that there are certain appearances that are used to show the world, while there are others that are hidden. Their possibilities of appearance may seem endless and seductive, but we must keep in mind that the expansion of reality that these motives offer us is at the same time obscuring the limitations of the single machine. For example. when Beck's DVS amazes us with water-like beauty but can't draw a circle (Later note: I'm not sure that this is correct!!). Or when Whitney's Arabesque program can calculate 360 ​​points in a split second, but is bound by geometric laws.

However, motifs alone cannot delineate a cine-machine, because as we saw in the analysis of the motifs, cine-machines can also imitate each other, and thus a sign is not necessarily exclusive to one practice. In contrast, with the algorithm model we can consider the cine-machine not just as the sum of some motifs, but also as the union of motifs in movement. In the algorithm, they are systematized by virtue of their causal inputs and parameters, and this means that the algorithm is not only producing images but also latently animating them as it dictates the kinetic behavior of an appearance, e.g. in the form of movement, transformation and variation possibilities.

The algorithm in 5 film machines

One of the interesting results of my investigation in the concept of algorithm is that by identifying a filmmaker's algorithm, it can build an isomorphic relation with the other filmmakers. It is obvious to apply the I/O model to geometric equations such as Whitney's Arabesque, but even in less obvious practices the difference between input, parameter and output contributes to a new paradigm. Gasparcolor's three strips can be understood as inputs, and assuming this premise Rainbow Dance is an algorithmic exploration of the technique. The optical printer has also provided inputs in the form of the film strips that are copied, but here the parameter concept makes us distinguish sharply between the parameter-like appearances (wipes, multi-exposure, split screen, slow-motion, etc.) from the actual parameters that are, so to speak, the "buttons" on the machine, ie matte, exposure, sequencer, etc.

The application of the model to the projector-and-strip machine in direct film requires a more abstract interpretation of the concept, since the parameters here may be the optical predicates that the animating substance (e.g. paint) is utilized to resemble. Here, the rapid pace of the projector accentuates the viewer's primary perception on the predicates and not their carrying objects, and it opened to an algorithmic interpretation of Lye's A Color Box, where he varies the basic technical motifs by crossing and merging their predicative association chains.

Finally, the model was also used on Beck's Direct Video Synthesizer, although this complex film machine is poorly represented through a general I/O mode. For example, it does not take into account the possible patches or the more precise interaction between the modules. However, we can see how both VtP's tendency towards symmetry and Beck's oscillator inputs have afforded motifs and movement patterns in the work. The mixer has lead to additive as well as parametric-programmed color mixing, which also contributes to new movement patterns, e.g. in the form of the yin-yang motif. Finally, the video feedback allowed the dots to transform through it's cybernetic system.

The 6 leitmotifs

The application of the algorithm model to compare and map the cine-machines of this study has also given some clarity on how cine-machines imitate each other and how to examine this genealogy. The most important points here are to distinguish between input and parameter, to distinguish between parameter and appearance, and between the appearance itself and it's function in the work.

This genealogical approach to the cine-machines can be seen as a systematization of the observations brought about by the study of the six leitmotifs. Common to these motifs is that all of them can be observed in two or more of the film machines examined here. We can even prove that their presence in these specific works is a trace of the underlying cine-machines, either as a symbol, an affordance or an algorithmic necessity. On the other hand, they pose an art-historical problem because they also occur across cine-machines and environments. So how can we determine whether they are motivated by the cine-machine used (similar to a material-technological approach) or by film history (a hermeneutic-iconographic approach).

We found the dot in three environments. In all cases, it had a symbolic character feature, referring to the digital pixel in Arabesque, the emulsion film's perforation in A Color Box, and the TV screen's grid lines in Illuminated Music. In this way, the same phenomenon is charged with different meanings depending on the context of the environment. In A Color Box it is not the actual strip perforation we see, and the appearance is thus symbolic. In Arabesque, the dot, in contrast, is the pixel of the computer screen, which reflects that Whitney's algorithm generates the screen in geometric points. Here the dot is the computer's discrete unit that let's the circle pixelate and dissolve into Arabesque's running points. Finally, Beck's dot appears as a unit that is both a building block like a single TV flicker, but which also in itself contains an ocean of flicker underneath. It shows a reality which is not the digital discrete, but the analog video signal's continuous divisibility and it's underlying oscillating voltages.

We found the gap from symmetry in Beck, but it was also previously made by optical printers, e.g. in Pat O'Neill's 7362. In DVS, this motif is caused by the center reference signal of the VtP module, which is fundamental to the operation of this synthesizer. The motif is found in Illuminated Music, e.g. when it divides the screen into bilateral symmetry. Beck, however, chooses to let these occur alongside false imitations of the gap, which seek to camouflage the distinction between natural and unnatural occurrences. His use differs from O'Neill's use of symmetry as an abstraction strategy. In 7362, O'Neill's abstractions seem motivated by the optical printer because he uses the effect in interaction with other of the printer's abstracting features, notably multi-exposure and colorful solarization. In contrast Beck goes against the machine and seeks to hide the symmetry as a constituent feature. Later, in the digital environment, the gap has also found a popular culture, e.g. in the form of "mirror effect" in Apple's PhotoBooth software.

The wave is a central motif, both in Lye's A Color Box and in Beck. In Lye's, the motif is a variation of the "running strip" (strimmelløb), an effect often used in direct film to vitalize the film material and confronts the viewer with the reality of the strip as it runs vertically through the projector. As Lye deflects the continuous line to make it into a wave, he revitalizes another aspect of the projector, namely that it cuts the continuous film strip into successive frames. At the same time, the wave creates a new appearance where the line appears to vibrate on the spot. As a result, the arrangement of paint on the strip is not only based on static optical predicates, but also creates new forms of motion. In comparison, the wave at Beck is almost opposite to Lye's frantic fragmentation. Beck's waves are calm and stable in the image, and they serve as demonstrations of the VtP module's ability to translate the oscillator signal from scrolling, horizontal lines to graphical waves reminiscent of the oscilloscope's screen. Their tendency to wave only in the vertical direction is due to the horizontal loading principle of the environment. Thus, a possible genealogy from the chemical-mechanical environment is not Lye's direct films, but the slit scan photography, where the wave effect is horizontally oriented, due to the vertical loading principle of the camera shutter.

The color blending of the cine-machines is yet another motif that goes across multiple environments, although it is not a figure in the same sense as the dot, the gap and the wave. Nevertheless, the use of color holds deep traces of the cine-machines' algorithms. In Rainbow Dance, Lye used Gasparcolor as a cine-machine, utilizing the system's color rolls as three separate algorithm inputs rather than as one unified rendering system. The algorithmic practice leads him to an unreal and synthetic use of color, where he exchanges color channels in color fantasy. In addition, the process also allows him to emancipate the color as an independent image element. E.g. they can be used to express kinetic energy when the three tennis players hit the ball, or to contradict spatial dimensions when he uses the Gasparcolor's color layers like the spatial layers of cell animation, but then let's the fore-, middle- and background collapse through color changes. Contrary to Lye's practice, color is embedded in the image generating structure of the DVS, where it necessarily comes after form and motion, when the color chord module fills the surfaces first drawn by the VtP module. On the video screen, these colors are created by the additive color blend (as opposed to the subtractive of the strip) of red, green and blue that strives towards the pure with light as substance. However, the DVS is not bound in this color process because Beck, with the module, can program how the specific interactions between elements should show color. In this way, the film machine introduces a break with both Gasparcolor and the color printing of the optical printer in a way that anticipates the programmability of the digital environment.

Closely related is the dynamic free scraping used by Lye in Rainbow Dance. The appearance is based on the optical printer's matte technique, e.g. when it turns the silhouette of a figure into an abstract texture, making Lye able to use a figure as a hole in the background for a new space. Whereas this practice reflects the DVS's dynamic filling of shapes with textures, Lye's use realizes an algorithmic potential of the optical printer. Normally, the free scraping of a figure is not associated with transitions in mainstream cinematic practice, but Lye uses it as a transition, e.g. when the figure remains constant as the background changes, and vice versa. This practice is obvious if one considers it from the optical printer's algorithm: Both collage and "wipe" appearances are made by using the matte parameter, and thus working with the optical printer this relationship can foster the fusion of the two appearances, so that the scraping takes over the function of the wipe and becomes a transition between shots. This use is particularly linked to the optical printer, and is even today in contrast to many digital film machines, where the matte-based wipes and exposure-based dissolves and fades are standardized as transition parameters in most editors' interfaces.

The split screen appearance is another continuation of this problem. It is a technique that appears both optical printer, video synthesizer and digital TV graphics, however, in the migration between the environments, we can observe an increasing spatial dynamization of the picture-in-picture effect that reflects a changing parametric embedding in algorithms. In the optical printer, the appearance is made by the matte parameter, and this elaborate practice is automatized in "raster scan" synthesizers like Scanimate, where the position, size and perspective become the new parameters that let's the artist model and even animate each input signal immediately. The ultimate limitation of the video synthesizer is that it can only modulate an image in flat dimensions. By contrast, digital 3D programs allow graphics to be reshaped and adapt to curved surfaces and spaces - a trend that can still be seen in the augmented reality-like graphics in TV's photographic space, e.g. in the news broadcast on DR1.

The echo effect is seen in Lye's Rainbow Dance, where the jumping silhouette leaves a colored trace of the movement, and in Illuminated Music, where the dancing dots multiply toward the center of the image and merge to form a star. In Lye, the motif is a continuation of Marey's photographs, where several stages of a movement is exposed on the same photograph, so that the result is a figure stretched in time and space. In Lye, the appearance is made by an optical printer, which exposes the figure several times on the same frame, but here the movement must unfold in the flat dimension in order to keep the movement clear. In Beck, the echoes are made by video feedback, where this motif holds both spatial and temporal dimensions because the repetition in space is also a delay in time as the video camera records the screen displaying it's own image. Here the video format reveals an essential feature as it projects the echo into the depths of the image. The echoes gradually merges and becomes a new figure, and its strident movements are direct traces of the video feedback's cybernetic system as it re-balances itself.

The machine genealogy as a film-historiographical approach

As the analysis of the six leitmotifs shows, the question of the material as opposed to historical motivation of a motif is complex, and will probably rarely be answered as either/or. It is, however, a question that we can be posed to examine the nuances of origin. Of course, we cannot isolate an artist from the influence of cinematic history - let alone the influence of reality, psychology and other arts - and even when a motif is deeply rooted in a cine-machine, it always requires an artist who has a hand on the machine or uses it in a final work. However, my examination shows that we can strengthen our sensitivity to what new features of the motifs that indicate the cine-machine's agency.

The problem has been discussed in modern art history since Semper and Riegl's time, and it may not stand as such to solve. But our analytical search for detectable has a potential to reframe the problem as a film archaeological issue. Then we can ask what film history would appear if we shift the focus to investigate the cine-machines' own history and to map their imitations, transformations and ruptures?

To answer this question, the algorithm model can be an obvious basis for this study. First, it allows us to distinguish between an appearance and a parameter-based imitation of a motif; secondly, the algorithm gives an expectation of what a practice will be like given a specific cine-machine.

However, this requires a broader historical study that takes into account: (1) the economic and cultural motivations and conditions under which new cine-machines can be invented and developed, (2) a mapping of the concrete imitations and exchanges that occur between cine-machines, and what improvements, refinements and standardization they bring, and (3) how these cine-machines' changing algorithms manifest themselves historically in the film language, because the invisibility of machines in canonized film history can be challenged at significant points by the film history/ies of cine-machines.

The digital cine-machine

The further possibilities of the cine-machine method is not limited to historical issues. It is also a matter of understanding the technological dynamics that have become even more relevant with the spread of the digital environment.

In conclusion, I will return to the issue from a previous chapter and ask how the cine-machine model can explain the (mis)use of analog noise in the DR documentary Skeletterne i Skat. Considered as static signs, the series is problematic because (1) it mixes noise effects from separate environments and (2) it consistently associates visible framelines with cuts between scenes - two features that indicate how signs that were previously indexical are detached from their technological context in the digital environment.

These errors also become evident if we examine them with the cine-machine's method. But in return, we can also detect how the errors are actually traces of the digital editing software if we look for a deeper cause than ignorance or postmodernism.

The typical digital non-linear editing software uses a timeline interface where clips are sequenced and cropped. These clips that come from other sources are the program's inputs. In addition, I want to highlight two parameters: First, filters that are put on top of one (or more) clip, e.g. to make the clip black and white, slow motion, out of focus, etc. Second, transitions that are put between two clips to make a transition, much like the transitions between slides in PowerPoint.

Having identified these few components of the software's algorithm, it is now possible to demonstrate how the DR program's use of noise could be a practice promoted by the software's algorithm. The first group of error may indicate that the emulsion film scratches and error exposure as well as the flicker and scanlines of the video are all appearances generated by filter parameters. This means that in the interface these are presented as the same tool, e.g. effects that add graphic depth or texture to the image. Similarly, we can assume that the second error with visible framelines is an appearance generated by a transition parameter, that is, the skipping framelines is presented along with the optical printer wipes, Scanimate's skewed "raster scan" transitions and digital 3D cubes. If this is the case, the cine-machine could account for the consistent use of the effect as a transition between clips.

However, these misinterpretations should not lead to a general condemnation of the digital environment, because it is precisely a practice associated with the specific film machines (software) and not the digital computer as such that causes it.

Through the history of the cine-machines, we have seen that the imitation of machines have always reduced and expanded certain aspects of the previous. That is why these genealogies require that we become aware of these processes. In particular, the spread of digital film (and image) cine-machines has a huge impact on creative practice. An example is the Instagram photo app, which offers filters such as polaroid, pixelation, solarization, etc. These effects are historically associated with specific apparatuses and techniques of development that required money, time and technical talent to use them. But with apps and software, there is a new condition where the appearances have become economized, standardized and automatized, so that everyone can use them. I.e. the appearances that were initially technical and experimental become democratized as users acquire them through their own creative practices.

Examined through the algorithmic model of the cine-machine method, we can see how the appearances in Instagram are also being conventionalized. Just like in the editing software, the algorithmic scheme with filters has an impact on practice. But in addition to confusion of machines and environments that the practice of filters may risks, there is also a significant parametric reduction. Instead of imitating, for example, the parameters of the dark chamber, such as the temperature, concentrations and application times of the chemicals, filters merely imitate the end products, i.e. appearances such as solarization, sepia, 8mm noise, etc.

On the other hand, if we compare Instagram with Adobe Photoshop, it becomes clear that digital environment cannot be generalized into one category. In Photoshop, there is precisely a similarly wide range of parameters that can be used. In the context of cine-machines the same could be said of Adobe AfterEffects with it's key-frame-based editor. The software thus promotes a practice that is full of parameters and which is just as cumbersome as working with the optical printer. Furthermore, many of it's algorithmic capabilities are not just imitations and simulations of previous cine-machine techniques - they go even further into the digital environment and even enables the user to program their own plug-ins for customized effects.

Here, the algorithm model can become a critical tool for evaluating these interfaces, as the method contributes with a central distinction between input, parameter, output and appearance, as well as with knowledge about how these conditions can be detected in and has influenced works.

Thus the cine-machine method is in opposition to both digital aesthetics and traditional film studies. Compared to the former, because the subject is fundamentally expanded to include all four environments. And compared to the latter, because the method challenges the traditional accentuation of works, whereas works are now empirical data that is secondary to illuminate the cine-machine as an object. With these two crucial differences, it is possible with the history of the cine-machines not just to interpret the digital as a new era, but also as a return to 19th-century optomechanical cine-machines, where (rich) children and adults also owned zoetropes, laterna magica, flip books and kaleidoscopes, and spent hours exploring and be entangled by them.

Back then the use was recreational and playful, and it was not intended to create works, but merely be a diversion for the individual user. But the aesthetic exploration that lay in this process was not fruitless for this reason. For example, a large part of the apparatus was categorized as "philosophical toys" with reference to how the thaumatrope and zoetrope made the user experience the newly discovered perceptual phenomena such as the phi effect and the inertia of the eye, when they turned the disc or drum and watch the figures merge or come alive.

While the perceptual and the substantive are mediated by an artist or operator in traditional works, the digital interactivity promotes a possible return of the individual user, who acquires the perceptual and substantive behavior of the algorithm and explores their unity. In this regard, the finished works can be seen as a "frozen play", which the archaeological study of the underlying cine-machine can "animate". In this respect, the theory of the cine-machine not only becomes a checklist for whether this or that motif is used in the work of a specific cine-machine, but also a way of bringing that work back to life, knowing it's cine-machine origins and thus entering a dialogue with the poetics that the artist has explored.

In addition, this aesthetically-creative supplement to the cine-machine method can illuminate how the acquisition of an algorithm allows us to experience the systems contained in the individual technologies and environments. Not only do we interact with the cine-machines, we also through them. They let us interact with algorithms that we acquire, for example when the algorithm originates from a geometric equation (Whitney), the projector and strip synthesis (Lye), an analog electronic systems (Beck), the laws of optics (Wilfred), simulations of our own reality (3D programs), alternate realities, or our perception (Zoetropen). Even if these topics are as diverse as the different cine-machines, they do share one common principle: That the cine-machine allows the algorithm to be experienced cinematically.