Cine-Machine as Method: Introduction

Film is inextricably linked to technology. As a product of industrialization, what we usually understand as film is conditioned on two technological breakthroughs. On the one hand, the chemical invention of photography , which fixes light onto a transparent film strip, and on the other hand the mechanical projector, which can display images at such a fast pace that they create an illusion of movement.

Of course, stating these technological conditions are by no means sufficient reasons to explain the evolution of film history. Film works are not merely an extension of the inherent determinism of technology. But yet, we must admit that these breakthroughs are conditions that have pushed cinematic art into new territories of expression.

Most film histories will admit the milestones where technological breakthroughs have left their mark. In the general public, most people will probably know that neither sound, color nor 3D were features that were intrinsic to film at it's invention, even though all three are part of the medium today. And in film theory, a lot of canonized texts describe how the mobile camera, depth-of-focus technique and wide format are as significant breakthroughs as sound, color and 3D.

Beyond film?

In recent years, digital technologies have become a new condition which film theory must address. Since the 90s, CGI (computer-generated imagery) has become an integral part of the way film is made. For example. The sci-fi film Gravity (2013) combines traditional photography with digital manipulation so that the camera can now move freely in space and even "melt" through a space suit glass in front of our eyes. Or the fantasy movie Life of Pi (2012) where the protagonist mostly resides in a computer-generated space - quite controversially, the film won an Oscar for best photography, although many of the photographic virtues such as lighting, colors, etc. were performed digitally.

In practice, CGI means that filmmakers can now easily create works where a T-rex runs next to humans, change actors' mimics, or put them into computer-created landscapes. But at the same time, CGI is also a digital condition that has caused fundamental doubts about what film is.

Among others, Lev Manovich has pointed out that the computer's mix of photography and CGI challenges the indexical nature of film media, and sends it closer to the iconic images of the painting (Manovich 2001: 295). One can dispute this kind of sharp dichotomy between the analogue / indexical and digital / iconic (both the optical printer and the video synthesizer are two analog film machines that predate digital image manipulation) as well as the simplification of media history into the analog / digital opposites (contrary to this, I list four environments). But one can still say that the film's new digital reality makes the break with the indexical all the more widespread and clear.

But not only in the indexical aspect has the digital challenged the dominant view of what film is. As Dan Streible has pointed out, "digital film" is an oxymoron because "film" etymologically refers to the emulsion base that is currently replaced with files and hard drives (Streible 2013). And the development is going fast, because where the old 35mm format was expensive to record and distribute, digital is a far cheaper alternative for both film studios and cinemas.

Historically, the emulsion film has previously been challenged by electronic formats such as TV and video, but where TV and video largely became a parallel sphere of film life[1: Where films (with 8mm films as an important exception) was situated in the cinema, while TV and video was in the home], digitization today threatens both film production and distribution as well as TV and home video in a way where the old formats risk being replaced rather than co-existence.

Although cinemas, museums and art galleries hold on to the old equipment, many commercial cinemas have moved to digital films, making the experience of new analog productions (e.g. when Tarantino has a film in 70mm distribution) and the re-experience of old movie classics in original format an exception.

The conversion of analog film to digital file assumes that image and sound remain the same when translated into new technology. But if one has the pleasure of re-watching a 35mm film classic today, the analog noise seems to be the medium's own counter-argument to that assumption. For in the light of the digital, the analog almost accentuates it's own intrusive materiality, e.g. when picture and sound quality fluctuates from scene to scene as the grain of the film change texture and background noise change. Most DVD and Blu-Ray restorations are "smoothings" of image and sound, removing unnecessary material noise to reach the "real picture".

This practice have also caused direct artistic response. E.g. Bill Morrison's found footage projects where he finds worn and dissolved emulsion films in film archives and utilize their decay as an integral part of his expression. As his title Decasia (2002) suggests, his films operate with an awareness of stripe perishability, and his works belong to a broader movement of contemporary filmmakers who symbolize the film strip as something bodily and/or perishable (Knowles 2013).

Thus, there is a dispute over the future of the film, and this often leads to polemical positions, where filmmakers and critics are either uncritically tech-enthusiastic about the digital, or puritanically oriented towards the old formats.

In my opinion, film theory should not occupy any of these normative positions, or even predict what the outcome of this dispute will be. In any case, something will be lost and something will be won, and possibly we will have a different concept of what "film" and "cinematic" is in a few years. But if film theory must retain relevance through this transformation, it must provide the analytical tools to examine what has continued (and what has not) and how, as well as a deeper understanding of its consequences.

Crucially, the discussion not only concerns the extent to which the film's future is analog or digital. Both Manovich and Streible's views are, in my view, symptoms of the fact that the great narrative of the film is being destabilized and that digitization has made the re-negotiation of the "cinematic" necessary. This applies not only to Manovich's indexical and Streible's media base, but also to unspoken assumptions about how to construct narratives (Le Grice 2001) and the degree of interactivity in film (Snibbe 2000, Levin 2000) - all features that are characteristic of the old, dominant format but which may not necessarily be retained in the digital.

Periods or environments

However, there is a difference to whether one defines "film" as a base for storage, as Streible does, or as an abstract mediality. In the first case, "film" means the emulsion film in which "the filmic" (or "cinematic") are features derived from it. On the other hand, as a mediality "film" extends that meaning, and the "cinematic" is not bound to one format, but has many co-organized manifestations in media history. Even though dominant film theory is not particularly explicit about this assumption, the discourse is characterized by an orientation toward the film strip and/or film camera as an anchor point. This can be seen - among other thing - in the exclusion of animated films in film theory (which, however, is being corrected in recent years (Beckman 2015)). And this in turn challenges the canonized idea that the Lumiere brothers' cinematograph is the first cine-machine, labeling the preceding film works and animation devices as "pre-cinematic" because they lack the photochemical base of the film strip. Similarly, Dan Streible asks if we should today call the medium "post-cinematic" to reflect the transition from "film" to "file".

In both cases, film as a storage medium is expressed as a periodization of "film", as something that has a "before" and "after" and which implies a kind of irreversible process - e.g. that digital technology must replace the analog.

In contrast, I do not want to talk about periods of the film media, but about the manifestations of film media in different environments. This conceptual shift from a temporal to a spatial category should not be confused with a denial of the chronology of the environment - e.g. the digital still comes after the analog emulsion film. But contrary to the "period" term, an "environment" does not imply that one technology is replaced by the next. Consequently, it can be said that the entire film landscape is reshaped when a new environment occurs, and so the introduction of new environments both means retrospective reinterpretations of previous environments (e.g. when experiencing 35mm film materiality in the light of HD videos) and artistic reactions (e.g., when Bill Morrison responds to the digital restoration process).

In addition, the concept of the environment also denotes that environments are co- rather than subordinated, meaning that no environment is more "cinematic" than another. Here, Streble's concept of "film" can be defined as the plastic-mechanical environment where the signal is a (photo) chemical film strip. Before this environment was fully developed, there are examples of "animation devices" in the optomechanical environment . They generally operate without the strip component and form a light signal that is modulated by shutter, mirrors and prisms in combination with mechanics. The optomechanical environment remains active following the invention of the film strip, but is subsequently characterized as light or kinetic art despite it's film-like features.

With TV and later video, an electronic environment is created, which is another analog environment in which varying electrical signals are converted into sound, images and motion. And finally, the digital environment with the signal as binary code enters.

Across these environments, I would argue that a remediation of the same idea of ​​"the cinematic" occurs. This idea unites (so-called) pre-filmic, post-filmic and, if you will, para-filmic (light and kinetic art) into the same analytical category of "film" (or optokinetics?). A similar extended media geography can also be found with Gregory Zinman and Michael Betancourt (Zinman 2012, Betancourt 2012), who include pre-/para-filmic "color organs" and "liquid light shows" in the film discourse, and with Golan Levin and Scott Snibbe, who designs and discusses post-filmic computer programs and apps as cinematic phenomena. (Snibbe 2000, Levin 2000)

Foundations for a film archeology

This extended concept of film is based on a medial definition of cinematic, but it is also supported by the same "cinematic language" occurring across the environment. However, it is not only at the work level that the imitations happen. Similarly the tools used to produce films will borrow and remediate principles from one another.

Most obviously you find the same principles in a camera, whether it is chemical-mechanical, electronic or digital, but also other cine-machines imitate old devices. Digital editors remediate the optical printer's operations (multi-exposure, split-screen, slow-motion, etc.) and can apply filters that make shot resemble 8mm or worn VHS tapes. And VJ apps will imitate video synthesizers both in the effects available and on the interface level.

Thus, even before concrete film works are made, ideas can reside in the cine-machines themselves, and by analyzing and comparing historical machines as objects, it is my assumption that we can decode how each instrument constitutes a creative practice in a cinematic context. In other words, this discipline is not just a film history that deals with film works, but a film archaeological method that examines works in comparison with their technological/material origins, anchor the film historical breakthroughs in these tools, and raise general questions about the importance of technology in the development of film media.

What is a Cine-Machine?

Film machines, first and foremost, are understood as very specific machines that are part of the production of moving images - obviously you can mention cameras and displays such as a projector, a screen or the "pre-cinematic" Zoetrope. But there are also more hidden film machines such as the optical printer, video synthesizers, and software for editing and 3D animation.

It is my assumption that film machines put their imprint on film production. For example, how the machines transform the cinematic signal (such as physical film strip, electromagnetic videotape or binary computer file); an inclination in the way they make images (the camera creates space with perspective; the kaleidoscope's symmetrical patterns); or a particular logic in the movement patterns when they animate (3D software calculates the movement of the characters in a certain way). This should not be seen as an assertion of technological determinism or a downward prioritization of the importance of the human factor, but my focus will be on how the film machines function as conditions for the imagery and movement patterns of the works.

Thus film machines are not only the concrete machines that can be lifted, knocked upon and destroyed. They are also optical-kinetic instruments that, in their structure, contain certain ways of creating image and motion. Each film machine must then also be regarded as an abstract principle which affords certain optical-kinetic inclinations and limitations of expression. This basic feature of the machines will be describe here with an algorithm model that identifies machine inputs, parameters and outputs, and explores how each system facilitates a creative practice.

The object of the study

The cases used in this thesis are selected on the basis of: (1) that they must show breadth in relation to the different environments of the film media, (2) that there is sufficient empirical data for the selected film machines, both in the form of technical documentation and in works, so that they can be systematically investigated and (3) that these film machines are implemented in works where they are used and explored as algorithms.

In particular, the last point is a crucial inference to the general validity of the study, as there are many film works where the film machine operates under the same algorithmic conditions, but is not algorithmically explored by the artist. For example, many classic Hollywood movies use the optical printer to make slow motion, freeze frames, dissolves, etc., just as video synthesizers up to the 90s were used for TV graphics. But in these contexts, the film machines serve a different function, as their imagery must convey e.g. a fictitious content.

Such applications are also a central part of the film machines' history, but because of the scope of this study, they can only be included in passing. By contrast, my primary focus is on films that are often categorized as experimental films. That these films "use and explore the algorithms of a film machine" is in opposition to traditional filmmaking, where the film machines must be invisible and are operated by film technicians who follow and fulfill an director's wishes. Here, the director is considered the actual auteur because it is her/him who has the vision. By contrast, the specialists who manage the camera, optical printer, animation, etc. are regarded as mere technicians who have to realize the director's visions.

In this thesis, the film technician is the artist - either as the one who made the machine (Beck), got it tailor-made (Whitney) or has in-depth technical knowledge of it (Lye). The word "artist" does not mean that it is crucial whether the works have an artistic or entertainment ambition. By contrast, I believe that the distinction between film director and film technician may reflect a current and broader art-historical theme in which the artist (artist) is confronted by the artisan (artisan). Since the Renaissance, this distinction has dominated the discourse, ascribing that the artist works in the sphere of ideas (e.g. with painting), while the artisan works with matter. Here, crafts were considered somewhat lower and often attributed to "otherness," associated with female pursuits, non-Western cultures, etc. (Tarp 2011). Pamela Smith's The Body of the Artisan (2004) made a show of this oppression, arguing that the artisan's dialogue with the material is a particular "artisanal epistemology".

Of course, these conditions cannot be transmitted directly to film history that has a different historical, technological, and political context. But the general discussion raises an interesting question as to whether the film technician's practice is different when she/he does not simply execute the film director's orders.

Handmade film

In Handmade: The Moving Image in the Artisanal Mode (2012), Gregory Zinman addresses a similar problem in which the film artist is also understood as an artisan. In his analyzes of direct film (animations painted directly on the film strip), color organs, psychedelic light shows and video synthesizers, Zinman argues that in these traditions we find an "artisanal mode" within the film medium, where both the film object's "well-made-ness" and the film artist's "attention to and respect for a material" (Zinman 2012: 8) are prominent. Here, in its intimate relationship with the material base of the film objects, the artist must exhibit "an empathy with another matter's distinctive properties, laws, or conventions" (ibid: 8-9), which stands in opposition to the industrial products of film studies.

To some extent, my project is similar to Zinman's in that our empiricism overlaps greatly, and I also assume a craft-like practice in relation to the film machines. But in terms of his focus on film objects, my project suggests a lens shift where I use the film machines rather than the film works as the object of analysis. Here film machines must be understood both as the specific film machines that I want to analyze and as the abstract idea of ​​the Film Machine that unites these individual studies.

Using the assumption that the film machines inherit their motifs, it will also be relevant to investigate how motifs are remediated across film machines and environments. The motifs can be both a result of the film machines' mechanical motivations and a film-historical imitation of it's predecessors.

The Purpose and Parts of Thesis

The purpose of this thesis is to develop the concept of the film machine as a method. The method consists of:

1. an archaeological dimension that uncovers the film machine and its historical practices. The empirical data can be the film machine itself (if it still exists), finished works, demonstration videos, technical records, manuals, manifestos, reconstructions, simulations, interfaces , etc.
2. a material-technological dimension that establishes analytical principles for how the agency of film machines can be detected in concrete works
3. a genealogical dimension that maps the history of the film machines as they imitate each other at the level of image or machine.

The algorithm can be seen as a model for this method that unites all three dimensions.

Chapter 1 defines what a film machine is and how the approach can be seen in continuation of the art-historical tradition of material studies. Next, in Chapter 2, I will characterize the four environments of the film mediality in order to create a framework of how the signals and machines of the environments make constitute creative practices.

The last three chapters are all dedicated to film machines in one environment with a main focus on a single artist's practice. In Chapter 3, the film machine is the computer program Arabesque developed (with Larry Cuba) and used by John Whitney. Here the geometry-based program serves as a prototype for the algorithm model, and Whitney's film as a model for algorithmic practice.

Chapter 4 focuses on Len Lye's practice with the film projector, the Gasparcolor system, and the optical printer in the chemical-mechanical environment. Lye uses these three film machines in a kind of "hacking" where he reveals their inner workings through vitalizing and algorithmic use. By analyzing two of his works, I will demonstrate the agency of the respective film machines, and this leads to 5 of the 6 leitmotifs, which are continued in Chapter 5.

Chapter 5's focus is on Stephen Beck's Beck Direct Video Synthesizer #1 in the electronic environment. Here, the synthesizer's structure and genealogy is compared to other film machines to show how 6 leitmotifs are created and transformed according to the synthesizer's algorithm. Thus, this chapter will analyze and discuss whether these motifs are respectively mechanically or iconographically motivated.

In conclusion, I summarize the method's principles and round up on the 6 leitmotifs to see how the cases together can form a foundation for a film history of film machines. Finally, I discuss the application of these principles to contemporary digital film machines.