Book ID: CBB922684697

The Shape of Spectatorship: Art, Science, and Early Cinema in Germany (2015)

unapi

In this exceptionally wide-ranging study, Scott Curtis draws our eye to the role of scientific, medical, educational, and aesthetic observation in shaping modern conceptions of spectatorship. Focusing on the nontheatrical use of motion picture technology in Germany between the 1890s and World War I, he follows specialists across disciplines as they debated and appropriated film for their own ends, negotiating the fascinating, at times fraught relationship between technology, discipline, and expert vision. As researchers, teachers, and intellectuals adapted film and its technology to their viewing practices, often emphasizing the formal connection between material and discipline, they produced new ideas of mass spectatorship that continue to affect the way we make and experience film. By staging a collision between the moving image and scientific or medical observation, visual instruction, and aesthetic contemplation, Curtis showcases both the full extent of early cinema’s revolutionary impact on society and culture and the challenges the new medium placed on ways of seeing and learning.

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Reviewed By

Review Brockmann, Stephen (April 2017) Review of "The Shape of Spectatorship: Art, Science, and Early Cinema in Germany". Technology and Culture (pp. 583-584). unapi

Review Andreas Killen (2017) Review of "The Shape of Spectatorship: Art, Science, and Early Cinema in Germany". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 470-471). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB922684697/

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Authors & Contributors
Allyson Nadia Field
Ellen C. Scott
Pérez-Fernández, Francisco
Blatter, Jeremy
Tryster, Hillel
Taylor, Jennie
Concepts
Popular culture
Motion pictures; cinema; movies
Mass media
Science and culture
Visual representation; visual communication
Science and technology, relationships
Time Periods
20th century, early
19th century
20th century
21st century
20th century, late
18th century
Places
Germany
United States
Weimar Republic (1919-1933)
Americas
Great Britain
Institutions
Mass-Observation
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