Marey's strange story emerges in this fascinating account of a voyage of scientific and aesthetic study that would have reverberations in many aspects of modern culture. Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904), the brilliant French physiologist, developed photographic techniques for the study of animal locomotion that directly influenced the invention of cinematography. His work and the images he created are among the very sources of modernity, yet his own history and background remain obscure. Marey's strange story emerges in this fascinating account of a voyage of scientific and aesthetic study that would have reverberations in many aspects of modern culture. Dagognet, a philosopher, focuses on the meaning of Marey's work, on being able to capture a trace of the usually invisible world of motion, for aesthetics and science. Marey succeeded Claude Bernard (whose passion for recording opened the frontiers of cinema and modern art) at the Academy of Sciences. There his central preoccupation led Marey to search out increasingly accurate and sensitive methods for "fixing" motion so that its details could be studied. Around 1880 and after a meeting with Muybridge, it became clear that photography, the possibility of a snapshot, would furnish Marey with the ideal instrument for his studies. Not only the gallop of a horse but also the flight of bird, the quivering of insect wings, the bounce of a ball, the slightest of turbulences - all could all be made to stand still: from the invisible came the image. Fran ois Dagognet teaches epistemology at the University of Lyon. Among his previous publications are Philosophie de l'image and Remat (c)rialiser. Zone 6: Incorporations includes his essay "Toward a Biopsychiatry."

A complete, illustrated survey of Etienne-Jules Marey's work that investigates the far reaching effects of her inventions on stream-of-consciousness literature, psychoanalysis, Bergsonian philosophy, and the art of cubists and futurists.

"Examines three projects in late nineteenth-century scientific photography: the endeavors of Alphonse Bertillon, Francis Galton, and Etienne-Jules Marey. Develops new theoretical perspectives on the history of photographic technology, as well as the history of scientific imaging more generally"--

This ambitious study explores how important darkness--artificial darkness--was, as an actual technology, in producing not just photographs but visual novelties and experiments in cinema in the nineteenth century. The study plays out against a backdrop of urban history, where most scholars have focused on the growth of artificial light and the electrification of cities. Elcott’s study challenges that approach. In considering zones of darkness, it ranges from the sites of production (darkrooms, studios) to those of reception (theaters/cinemas/arcades) that shaped modern media and perceptions. He argues that, in the nineteenth century, the avant-garde was often less interested in the filmed image than in everything surrounding it: the screen, the projected light, the darkness, the experience of disembodiment. He argues that darkness has a history separate from night, evil, or the color black, and has a specifically modern manifestation as a media technology. We are all aware of the "velvet light trap” in photography, but at the heart of this book are technologies of darkness crucial to cinema that were commonly known as "the black screen,” but have, over time, faded from the storied discourse.

A new philosophy of movement that explores the active relation between sensation and thought through the prisms of dance, cinema, art, and new media. With Relationscapes, Erin Manning offers a new philosophy of movement challenging the idea that movement is simple displacement in space, knowable only in terms of the actual. Exploring the relation between sensation and thought through the prisms of dance, cinema, art, and new media, Manning argues for the intensity of movement. From this idea of intensity—the incipiency at the heart of movement—Manning develops the concept of preacceleration, which makes palpable how movement creates relational intervals out of which displacements take form. Discussing her theory of incipient movement in terms of dance and relational movement, Manning describes choreographic practices that work to develop with a body in movement rather than simply stabilizing that body into patterns of displacement. She examines the movement-images of Leni Riefenstahl, Étienne-Jules Marey, and Norman McLaren (drawing on Bergson's idea of duration), and explores the dot-paintings of contemporary Australian Aboriginal artists. Turning to language, Manning proposes a theory of prearticulation claiming that language's affective force depends on a concept of thought in motion. Relationscapes takes a “Whiteheadian perspective,” recognizing Whitehead's importance and his influence on process philosophers of the late twentieth century—Deleuze and Guattari in particular. It will be of special interest to scholars in new media, philosophy, dance studies, film theory, and art history.

Argues for another history of cinema, one which had its origins in the research needs of nineteenth-century scientists. Investigators such as Étienne-Jules Marey, Georges Demeney, Jules Janssen, Albert Londe, Ottomar Anschütz, and the maverick Eadweard Muybridge were keenly interested in the analysis of motion through photography. Their technological breakthroughs led to the cinema we know today, but their true inheritors were not the producers of cinema as spectacle, but a dedicated band of scientists, doctors, anthropologists and naturalists inspired by their work who established the art of scientific cinematography.--From publisher description.