Past, Present, and Future
Ribbons of Calcium: Experiments in Color from Loie Fuller to Lana del Ray
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Wendy Haslem
Paolo Cherchi Usai describes how in 1895 the Edison Kinetoscope company marketed Annabelle’s Dance, a single shot view of a serpentine dance painted in a range of transforming, colors (2000, 21). At Edison’s Black Maria factory, the desire was to capture Loïe Fuller’s chemical experiments in the production of the illusion of color. The serpentine dance became an eroticised spectacle displaying the ability of film to capture and exhibit movement, the image as a reminder of the movement of film itself. Hand painted and stencilled colours that trace movement in early film often appear ‘undisciplined’, unable to be constrained by the diegesis. Colors that are painted across film frames create additional patterns of time and movement. In early cinema colors pulse and move, many escaping outlines creating spectral spectacles of their own. The transformation of the hues projected from the flowing robes makes the viewer aware of the patterns of time, duration and the broader history that intersects early experiments with celluloid and those using digital film. This paper will explore the interrelationship between color and temporality, movement and spectrality in celluloid and digital serpentine dance films. It relies on Tom Gunning’s model of dialogue and engagement to extend towards recent forms of the Serpentine Dance (1995, 79). This paper is dedicated to an exploration of the interrelationship between experiments with color in expressing time through movement. Positioning the Serpentine Dance within a continuum, refusing to limit the discussion to firsts or origins, and focusing on some of the dynamic intersections across histories and performances allows for a reading of the dynamic intersections that connect the materiality of celluloid with the digital.
Immortal Photo Object?: The Material Culture of Porcelain Photo in Hong Kong
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Wing Ki Lee
This paper examines the material culture of porcelain photo in Hong Kong. Porcelain photo, also known as photo-ceramics or vitrified photography on porcelain, is an obsolete, historic photographic printing process to mark a photographic image permanently on porcelain and/or ceramic plate. The technique and application of such was originated in mid 19th Century Europe and found its place to emerge and efflorescence since the mid 20th Century Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, the technique is employed to make black-and-white photographic portraits for the deceased, or as an honouring act. Porcelain photo, as such, permeates rituals of life and death and situated in networks of public and private spheres. The paper discusses the material culture, technical history and application of porcelain photo in Hong Kong informed by oral history, field research and study of private museum collection. The immortality of this photo object (claim for an eternal existence) and the empirical discovery of the opposite (e.g. the evidence of fading and deterioration in public cemetery and town hall) draw a new perspective to re-examine the ontology of porcelain photo. The author will also argue for the cultural uniqueness and pervasiveness of porcelain photo in Hong Kong and the Chinese context.
Photography and Public History: Facing New Challenges
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Cécile Duval
Photography, together with written material, is one of the traditional communication channels of public history. Written material on its own, especially in our predominantly visual era, can often fail to convey the desired message; but images on their own can be misunderstood if no text is added to place them in context. The scientific use of photograph requires the contextualization of images by verified data. With the growth of sources in the field of public history, it is vital to constantly check and compare any available data about images because it could be tempted to play on the emotions generated by some photographs to elicit a stronger reaction from the public. This is ignoring the fact that reinterpreting a photo in this way is essentially the same as rewriting history.
The Perseverance of the Still Photographic Image
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session David Julian Cubby
This paper does not deal with a subjective valorization of what is generally understood as the still photographic image, there is no intention to "save" or "obstruct" the still image in the face of new electro-digital paraphernalia and paradigms. What is questioned existentially "for better or worse" is the usefulness of still photography and its objective viability as a discrete class of imaging, that has proven so useful within analog material and processes - a massive industrial, commercial presence and vital creative influence throughout two centuries. Now, within a couple of decades more or less, analog still and moving technology appear subjugated by new media that initially constructed rapidly improved electro-digital parodies of analog antecedents that inevitably extend into new, innately digital formations, blending boundaries between still imaging and animation. On the menu bar at the foot of the camera screen of my already outdated iPhone, I can select between “Time Lapse – Slow-Mo – Video – Photo – Portrait,” there continue to be more and greater options. I shall redefine for myself, at least, other forms of stillness and contemplation across ranges of choice and more. Because this paper is in effect a phenomenological observation - as has been the default methodology behind western contemporary art since Duchamp - it has no concern with ‘second-guessing’ futuristic technological development, but concentrates on emotional and intellectual affects of past technologies transitioning new definitions of stillness, movement and dimensionality reforming human thinking and creativity.
