Charitou, Stefania. 2013. The Film Multiple : Technologies, Sites, Practices. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]

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Abstract or Description

This thesis examines the shifting conditions of the material and technological properties of the object of film and subsequently of the idea of cinema, in the light of the transition from analogue to digital technologies. I suggest that this technological transition has ontological dimensions, which I examine by looking at spaces and places that encompass this transition, materially and conceptually. The study argues that the nature of film and cinema is multiple, in continuous states of ‘becoming’. The anchor of this study is post-Actor Network theorist Annemarie Mol’s philosophical argument that objects ‘come into being’ according to the practices and sites in which they are placed. The thesis examines situated practice-based interactions between the two technologies, which shape relationships of power, replacement, exchange and collaboration. I explore those issues at four specific institutional sites: the gallery, focusing on three moving image exhibitions in London, the British Film Institute’s Archive in Berkhamsted, LUX, the UK agency of artists’ moving image distribution and collection, and the movie theatre’s projection room that gradually displays only digital films.

This survey examines the situated practices of presentation, exhibition, print checking, archiving, restoration and theatrical projection of film. The aim of this study is to present a multiple object and a multiple idea that is defined not merely by technology, but rather by sites and in particular their operational practices, objectives and organization. By evaluating how analogue and digital technologies interplay in these sites, the study aims to highlight issues of film’s and cinema’s multiplicity that unfolds and shifts both in space and time. The investigated practices evolve in electronic spaces, physical sites and particular locations. Furthermore, they expose different temporalities for analogue and digital film and indicate cinema’s virtual nature to be transcending in time. The situated practices unite and divide the analogue and digital technologies, exposing a manipulative relationship between tangible space, formed by the mechanical apparatus of projection and network space, marked by the digital’s temporal and spatial ubiquity. At the same time, cinema is actualized in measurable time, while its phenomenon is formulated in the continuous movement and differentiation of duration.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Media, Communications and Cultural Studies
Date:	2013
Item ID:	9469
Date Deposited:	06 Nov 2013 14:12
Last Modified:	08 Sep 2022 08:44
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/9469

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