16. June |  19:00   |  Tom Gunning (Chicago)

Projecting the Moving Image: Space, Virtuality and Light and Shadow

I want to look at the long history of projected images, from the magic lantern of the seventeenth century to through the cinema image to the recent development if projection video and installation art. The projected image is light formed within a context of darkness and thus is immaterial in the usual meaning of the term. Its movement through space (it’s »throw«) indicates a situation of transportation of an image from a source to a screen which defines space in a unique manner. Finally although not limited to moving images, the projection of movies involves a relation to the image that has to my mind not yet been thoroughly theorized. By focusing especially on projection, I want to de-emphasize the photographic as the essence of cinema (Kracauer, Bazin, Cavell) and deal more with the projection of light through space. The unique material (or non-material?) nature of the light-borne image, its unique sense of passage through space and of its relation to a variety of screens demonstrates the way cinema’s relation to new media need not be limited to a Darwinesque teleology, a process of utopian or nostalgic mourning. nor an exclusive focus on future possibilities, but rather initiate a new awareness of a broad historical tradition consisting of a new constellation of optical practices through the centuries.