[Commlist] CFP: 13th International Seminar on the Origins and History of Cinema: Virtual worlds in early cinema: devices, aesthetics and audiences

13th International Seminar on the Origins and History of Cinema: Virtual 
worlds in early cinema: devices, aesthetics and audiences
ONLINE EDITION October 20th - 22nd 2021

UNIVERSITAT DE GIRONA & MUSEU DEL CINEMA

Call for Papers

The seminar Virtual worlds in early cinema: devices, aesthetics and 
audiences comes
from an obvious desire for articulating a clear relationship among 
cinema’s past and
contemporary audiovisual’s present. The nodal point of the project is 
the concept of
virtual worlds. As Pierre Lévy states, we assist nowadays before a 
“general movement
of virtualization has begun to affect not only the fields of information 
and communication
but also our physical presence and economic activities, as well as the 
collective
framework of sensibility and the exercise of intelligence. The process 
of virtualization
has even affected our modalities of being together, the constitution of 
a collective "we"
in the form of virtual communities, virtual corporations, virtual 
democracy...”.

At the present time, an essential debate in the study of early cinema 
consists in the
possibility of thinking in which way cultural series pre-exist. If the 
goal of early cinema
studies was no other than trying to analyze the cultural, aesthetics, 
economical and
social conditions which had accompanied the birth of a new way of 
expression, currently
the debate has been moving into the possibility of creating and 
establishing bonds
among past and present. In order to understand the emergency of virtual 
worlds, we
have to consider why dioramas or panoramas proposed to 19th century 
audiences ways
of immersion in a universe built by images. In order to understand how 
new depth of field
three-dimensional forms are generated it is necessary to know how from 
the beginning
of photography stereoscopic images arose and how these were already 
present under
the model of relief cinema in 1910. It is also necessary to know that 
despite sound film official institutionalization in 1927, a series of 
tests oriented to the search of systems for
sound synchronization were already carried between 1907 and 1908. Cinema 
was born
to expand itself beyond cinema itself because, ultimately, the notion or 
idea of virtuality
was already present in many of the visual devices which were created 
between the
ending of 19th century and the beginning of 20th century. It is for this 
reason that in order
to study how the virtual universes of early cinema were generated, it is 
necessary to
know the devices that originated them and the places where they were 
produced. At the
same time it is also key to know which were the aesthetic challenges 
that cinema
undertook beyond the moving images’ projection onto a screen. From the 
beginning
there were created spectacles such as the Hale’s Tours that simulated 
the movement in
a mean of transportation while the images were being projected or 
Mareoramas that
recreated boat travels, with the purpose of creating immersive type 
experiences. All
these elements proposed aesthetic proposals for which cinema was not 
unrelated and
that went through a desire of the virtualization of the experience, but 
also produced
certain audience models which seek to find a correlate between virtual 
experience
offered by the spectacles, with the new perceptive experiences 
originated in real life in a
changing moment caused by the modernity.


Paper Submission Guidelines

Topic A: Virtual worlds in early cinema: devices, aesthetics and audiences

- Media archeology. The archeological study of the devices previous or
contemporary to the cinematograph might be helpful to introduce the History
of cinema inside a much broader process, focused on the evolution of visual
devices, screens and projection/audition systems.

- The viewer experience in the face of the visual spectacles. In order to
comprehend the devices’ impact. It is fundamental to know which was the
audience experience in front of the images.

- Virtual experiences on early films. Another research path might draw 
from the
period existing films, in order to check how new sensorial ways are glimpsed
in them. The idea of considering early cinema films as spaces to the visual
attraction can lead us to consider the realist simulation effects that 
they gather.

- Immersive spectacles and virtualization. The study of leisure spaces 
from the
past reflects the existence of hybrid spectacle systems, between cinema,
theater, magic lantern which proposed specific forms of exhibition and
enhanced the viewer immersion in possible worlds.

- Bridges between the past and the development of virtual technology in the
present. It is possible to establish a thinking that carries out a 
revision of the
past through a double logic based on the analysis of the re-use by the new
technologies of preexisting techniques and other based on the aesthetic
reflection around virtuality modes in the present and its connection 
with other
aesthetic achievements that were developed in a moment of transformation
and reuse of the means of communication.

Topic B: pre-cinema and early cinema

- Presentation of works in progress on pre-cinema or cinema until 1915.

Extension: Abstract of the communication in 60 lines maximum where it
appears the state of the question that is posed, bibliographical 
references, primary,
secondary or unpublished research documentary references and the novelty 
of the
contribution.


Deadline for abstracts: May 5th 2021

E-mail to: (institutestudis /at/ museudelcinema.cat)

Call For Papers: 
https://museudelcinema.girona.cat/eng/institut_seminari_2021.php 
<https://museudelcinema.girona.cat/eng/institut_seminari_2021.php>


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