Phase(n): Zur Konzeption des Bewegungsbildes (2013)

The Shape of Motion: Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement, a first book by Jordan Schonig, is a unique and deeply engaging foray into some of cinema's numerous and often overlooked motion forms. By studying six different forms of cinematic motion, the book also, and importantly, presents a method for critically engaging with the movements in and of cinema. Significantly, Schonig proposes what we could call an alternative phenomenology of cinematographic movement, a way to "re-examine an aspect of cinema so fundamental that it rarely garners sustained theoretical attention." 1 Throughout six chapters and a conclusion, Schonig consistently and convincingly highlights the fundamental strangeness of movement when it is imaged-that is, when it is framed (temporally and spatially) and made available for reviewing. Each chapter deals with a different kind of motion form, from the "wind in the trees" of early cinema to unusual camera movements to the novel effects of compression glitches. None of Schonig's examples are strictly limited to any particular period in film history, as he prioritizes tracing links between recognizable phenomena, regardless of their context or, for the most part, of their function within narrative films.

Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 2022

The Shape of Motion: Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement, a first book by Jordan Schonig, is a unique and deeply engaging foray into some of cinema's numerous and often overlooked motion forms. By studying six different forms of cinematic motion, the book also, and importantly, presents a method for critically engaging with the movements in and of cinema. Significantly, Schonig proposes what we could call an alternative phenomenology of cinematographic movement, a way to "re-examine an aspect of cinema so fundamental that it rarely garners sustained theoretical attention." 1 Throughout six chapters and a conclusion, Schonig consistently and convincingly highlights the fundamental strangeness of movement when it is imaged-that is, when it is framed (temporally and spatially) and made available for reviewing. Each chapter deals with a different kind of motion form, from the "wind in the trees" of early cinema to unusual camera movements to the novel effects of compression glitches. None of Schonig's examples are strictly limited to any particular period in film history, as he prioritizes tracing links between recognizable phenomena, regardless of their context or, for the most part, of their function within narrative films.

2015

Since its inception in the 1830s, the cinematic motion of animated images has been achieved through the rapid succession of still images, creating a peculiar effect that shows motion, or different kinds of motion. Almost two centuries after its discovery through graphic methods, drawings and animated engravings, its principle has remained yet diversified through its applications in the fields of photography, electronics and digital technology. Therefore, its status has shifted from that of mere optical illusion in the 19th century to a universal technique used in the 21st century to show animated images of all kinds and in every setting. Nowadays, it is fixed somewhere between an artifact and the authenticity of the motions that it reveals. The evolutions of this status are analyzed in relation to a dual shift: on the one hand the shifts in the notions of illusion and perceptive effect of synthesis to its representations, including through photographic cinema; on the other hand, the...

Moving Stills. Images in Motion. Brüssel [Hogeschool Sint-Lukas], 2013

In film theory, the history of photography is often read as the prehistory of cinema, the step from still to moving images appearing as a teleological consequence of a desire for the replication of the real world (Bazin) or as a culmination of the history of art (Benjamin). From this perspective, film came to be defined in terms of what it added to the photographic image: movement and projection, while photography was understood as both the predecessor (still image) and the material basis (film frame) of the filmic image. Film, then, is a dispositif of display: the spatial constellation of film projector, screen, and viewer, while photography is a dispositif of recording: the alignment of an object, a camera lens, and a photosensitive surface, generating a material image-object, which can be viewed as such, i.e. without viewing instruments such as the film projector needed for the display of the film image.

2012

The aim of this Cahier is to bring together contributions that, induced by digi- talization but not confined to digital images, explore historical and contemporary image practices that are situated beyond the habitual definitions of photography and film. The first part of the essays traces the pre-digital history of photography as a time-image in early photography (Starl), the implications of using photo- graphic images for proto-cinematic optical toys (Tietjen) and Auguste Chevallier’s translation of panoramic images into a circular image which upsets traditional notions of photographic temporality as much as notions of the frame (Müller- Helle). The second part explores the historical legacy of the digital “moving still” such as the freeze effect (Røssaak) employed in the blockbuster film The Matrix (1999) or the ubiquitous Ken Burns effect (Hoelzl) used as a display feature in Apple iPhoto and other photo-software. It is preluded by a visual essay by Maarten Vanvolsem and Jonathan Shaw. The essay assembles and discusses their respec- tive artistic practice in relation to their chronophotographic predecessors such as Bragagila—in the unusual format of the photographic still.

Chapter in the book: The Photofilmic: Entangled Images in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture. Edited by Brianne Cohen & Alexander Streitberger. Leuven University Press, 2016: 233-257.

CTheory, 2002

Julian Hochberg and Virginia Brooks argue in "Movies in the Mind's Eye" that the apparent movement of motion pictures should be understood as a mental process described by cognitive theory and gestalt psychology. This argument is a reconfiguration of the traditional, physiological model that makes the motion an effect of ocular physiology. In place of this model, they propose that the movement we see when watching a movie—whether in the form of a film or a video tape—is more than simply the illusion of motion: it is perceptually as real as any other visual motion we perceive. The difference between this motion and other motion resides in its empirical status independent of observation, not in our subjective perception. Their transformation of the conceptualization of "motion pictures" has implications for our understanding of motion in painting. So-called "painterly motion" is historically one of the most important effects employed in old master p...