On October 29th, Professor Scott Curtis
(Northwestern University) delivered a talk, titled “Experts and Their
Images: Vision, Form, and the Historiography of Media Use,” at the Chicago
Film Seminar. A response was provided by Oliver Gaycken (University of
Maryland). Using case studies from his book The Shape of Spectatorship: Art, Science, and Early Cinema in Germany
(Columbia University Press), Curtis explored the implications of non-theatrical
films (specifically those made by experts such as scientists, physicians,
and educators) for film and media historiography. He began by stating the
objective of his project: “At the broadest level, I am interested in the
criteria for the legitimacy of motion picture technology as a tool or good
object within specific disciplines or communities. The book focuses on Germany
before World War I to examine the interaction between motion pictures and four
disciplines: science (specifically human motion studies, physics, and biology),
medicine, education, and aesthetics. Why would these experts use film? What
problems presented themselves such that motion pictures were at least a partial
solution?” This talk explored the role of film form in these expert
appropriations.
Examining the experts’ own writings on their
implementation of motion picture technology, his first argument is that the
successful appropriation of technology by an expert filmmaker depends on a
correspondence between the logic of the discipline—the collective thought style of an expert group, including its
investigatory or problem-solving methods and ideological assumptions—and the
formal features of the technology, as manifested by the patterns of
use. He explained: “In some scientific disciplines, the ability of film
to frame and isolate
the object under study and to expand or compress time were analogous to
features of scientific experiments, such as the ability to isolate variables
and to extend observational duration. In other disciplines, film’s temporal
discontinuity, indicated by the gap between
film frames, matched theoretical assumptions about the discreteness of the
physical world, as in physics experiments using film to confirm theories of
Brownian motion. For education and aesthetics, the logic of the discipline was
less about solving problems than about describing goals or mental operations to
attain those goals. For educators interested in the use of film, the consonance
between the detail and duration of the moving
image and the richness of the natural world created an analogy between the
(perceived) realism of the image and the goal of visual instruction, which was
to teach students to dwell on natural detail, recognize objects, and place them
in logical and social contexts.” As each group worked with film within its
discipline, it privileged some formal features over others.
If the larger argument of the book concerns
the correspondence between technology’s formal features and the logic of
the discipline, then the specific argument of the book is that “the acceptance
of film as an appropriate tool or good object within a discipline depended on an
alignment between the formal features of the filmic image and the
practices and ideals of that discipline’s modes of expert viewing.” What
important implications does expert viewing have for film and media
historiography? Professor Curtis contends that engaging with the “proper”
viewing model from descriptions of the experts’ practice (and noting their
denunciations of “improper” viewing) helps us understand the duality of these
constructions: "If ‘proper’ modes of viewing relied on ‘improper’ modes as
a useful foil, then the opposite is also true: our understanding of
spectatorship is incomplete without an understanding of expert observation.” One
is the other’s negative space; hence “the shape of spectatorship” is best understood
in relation to “the shape of observation.”
Furthermore, film analysis
by cinema historians illuminates the relationship between form
(style) and the broader historical trends of the time. However, the
historiographical model for expert films differs in that it places emphasis on “patterns
of use” rather than patterns of style: “Style is important and can be helpful,
but patterns of use apply to adjustments to the technology, the circulation of images,
the multiple function of any given film, or the role of moving images in a
selection of representational options—a partial list at best. Patterns of use
provide many more points of contact with the organization’s goals or the
discipline’s logic than style alone.” He stressed that an analysis of
nontheatrical media that ignores the experts’ own understanding of film form
is inadequate, and that patterns of use will only make sense if properly
understood against a background of disciplinary (as opposed to technological or
aesthetic) context. A responsible analysis of expert filmmaking, then, would
entail a significant immersion in their respective fields.
