Optical environment

In the optomechanical environment we find devices that have often been characterized as light and kinetic art, and also some early animation machines that are set as precursors of the film projector. I have defined it's signal type as light (opto-), which can seem confusing, because light is an essential part of all film environments. And when adhering to "mechanical" in the name it can seem difficult to distinguish it from the plastic-mechanical, which also depends on a plastic film strip and mechanical projector.

However, many of the environmental film machines differ from the plastic-mechanical because the light is handled directly as the signal when transformed through the use of shutter, mirrors and prisms. A film projector also uses lenses, shutter and possibly mirrors to show movies, but once the operator has set these components, it is not intended to change e.g. the sharpness of the image or the speed of the film along the way - so the optical mechanisms simply give access to the actual signal that lies on the film strip.

On the other hand, in the optomechanical environment many film machines create movement by manipulating the optical components. An exemplary type in this context is the many "color organs" that were used to create cinematic projections of moving light on the big screen. The images were often abstract in nature without any photographic or iconic ambition. One of the most well-documented color organs was the Danish-American inventor Thomas Wilfred's Clavilux, whose first public display was in 1922 in New York. His projections look like diffuse colored flames or clouds floating around on the canvas as they change shape and blend with one another.

Wilfred's film machine consisted of a series of light cannons controlled from a control panel. The cannons threw light on a large canvas - very similar to a movie theater - and Wilfred was able to shape the image by controlling the brightness, turning the cannons, changing color filters, and dazzling the light via masks. In this way he could perform his light shows live in the same way a musician plays an instrument. (Betancourt 2012: 26-28)

However, despite the film-like nature of the compositions, Wilfred would not let his works re-produce on film, because the film medium's low sampling rate of 24 frames per minute second would mean a distortion of the work. In an essay, he argues that "beyond a certain velocity, a moving object becomes a blurred flicker" (Wilfred in Betancourt: 26), because the camera "smudges" the movement in frames to reproduce it. Contrary to the camera's "apparent motion", what you see on the Clavilux is an "actual motion" when the light is modulated, and therefore the purest expression is maintained. (Ibid: 26)

Decades before the advent of television, video and computer, Wilfred has announced the first format war - to a connoisseur of the environment, the conversion to a seemingly uniform film environment was not without aesthetic consequences. Here we will dwell only on the characteristic which he uses to distinguish the two environments, namely the difference of continuous versus successive movement. The concepts here derive from Gerald Mast's media theoretical work Film · Cinema · Movie (1983), in which he presents a thorough study of the film medium (i.e. the plastic-mechanical environment). To show what separates films from the other arts, Mast anchors the cinematic in the projector mechanism and emphasizes it's successive operation. Because the film strip is divided into separate frames, it requires the projector to: (1) project the frame onto the canvas when the strip is in the right place, (2) shut off the light while the next frame is moved into place, (3) open to the light, when the next frame is in place, and so on. This basic operation means that the viewer is actually sitting in the dark half of the time watching an emulsion film, but due to the persistence of vision we experience the light for longer than it is on the canvas, and synthesizes one image with the next as movement.

The film's abrupt succession of individual frames stands in contrast to the continuous movement of reality, and among other things, Mast uses this premise to discuss montage as the principle of film, because we similarly synthesize meaning in sequences out of successive shots (Mast 1983: 137).

In addition to the color organs, the optomechanical environment contains a number of early filmmakers, such as the kaleidoscope with the changing mirror construction, laser projections, psychedelic light shows, bendable cards (Werner Nekes), anorthoscope animations, kinetic art works that produces light phenomena (Moholy-Nagy, Nicolas Schöffer) and light sculptures, e.g. those filmed in plastic-mechanical reproduction (Jordan Belson, Jim Davis).

Practices in this environment are often conditioned by the laws of light, as the performers perform optical operations (for example, in the form of refraction, scattering and mirroring). More recently, George O. Stadnik used computer programs designed to simulate optics experiments to mimic Wilfred's machines.

Fra arbejdspapir (20/7-2019)

De optiske displays er animationsmekanismer

Der er grundliggende principper for at gøre noget bevægeligt:

• Kinetisk/mekanisk (fx. postkort med små mekanismer)
  • I kombination med phi-effekt bliver det: Kaleidophone + Chromatrope
• Bøjeligt papir
• Spejle/linser
• Lyset selv (fyrværkeri, plasma-kugle, lava lampe)
• Ren lys projektion - inkl. Diaskopisk projektion (dias)???
• Ren skygge projektion
• Laser-projektion
  • I kombination med phi-effekt bliver det: Laser-mønstre [ligner oscilloskop]
• Hologram

Kan kaleidoskop ligge under lys-projektion/diaskopisk?