Dissertation by Birk Weiberg
This dissertation provides a historical account of a previously neglected field of moving image p... more This dissertation provides a historical account of a previously neglected field of moving image production. It identifies and focuses on optical effects as a practice of montage within moving images as opposed to the montage of like images in time. Drawing on a wide range of new archival material, my dissertation presents previously unknown reasons for the developments of different techniques of image compositing such as traveling mattes, color-based processes, rear projection, and optical printing. This field has gained a new relevance as a forerunner to contemporary digital effects and image processing, a fact that in part also explains the marginal presence optical effects in existing scholarship. My work collects original publications by participants and critically relates them to each other and akin areas of film production. As a result I will show that there are no single privileged sources of agency but rather chains of translation that involve humans as much as non-humans.
I will draw on Actor-Network-Theory as a methodological framework as it provides an approach that tries to avoid presumptions that inform the analytical descriptions. Therefore, I will deploy individual case studies. In these I explore the specific functions of such different entities as groups of studio employees, the studios themselves, entrepreneurs and manufacturers, associations and organizations, devices and sets, patents and other publications, and finally images. The image as the result of these production practices (rather than as an aesthetic phenomenon alone) here is regarded at the same time as representation and aim of its production practices that it tries to conceal. It thus assembles its own collective which I will understand not as a model but as an hypothesis that guides my historical description.
Articles by Birk Weiberg
Display, Distribute, Disrupt: Contemporary Moving Image Practices, 2024
Post-photographic Modes of Existence of the Camera Delivery for Mr. Assange On January 16, 2013, ... more Post-photographic Modes of Existence of the Camera Delivery for Mr. Assange On January 16, 2013, the artist group !Mediengruppe Bitnik in the northeast of London sends a package to WikiLeaks co-initiator Julian Assange, who, eight months earlier, has found refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in the city's Knightsbridge district. The package contains a modified mobile phone, batteries, and a camera mounted on the long side of the box so that it can look out through a small hole (fig. 1). All components are assembled into a system that is set up so that the camera takes pictures at regular intervals, which are then sent to the artists by the mobile phone together with GPS data. On the artists' website, the progress of the operation can be followed in real time. Bitnik also posts comments and a selection of the photos on their Twitter account. Thanks to the group's extensive network, the unannounced operation is followed by a large audience within a short time. 1 Until the package reaches the embassy and later Assange the following afternoon, mainstream media also report about it. Assange uses this situation by presenting small, handwritten cards with political messages like "Transparency for the state! Privacy for the rest of us!" and calls for the release of other activists while sitting in front of the camera package.
Update Available: Transforming Education in Design, Film and Fine Arts, Mar 2023
Rundbrief Fotografie, 2021
FilmZeit. Zeitdimensionen im Film, 2021
Material ist ein wesentlicher Aspekt künstlerischer Praktiken, und es soll hier darum gehen, an d... more Material ist ein wesentlicher Aspekt künstlerischer Praktiken, und es soll hier darum gehen, an drei Beispielen zu untersuchen, welche Rolle materielle Arbeitsweisen spielen können, wenn bildende Künstler:innen sich dem Medium Film zuwenden. Was bedeutet es, Film als zeitliches Material zu betrachten, und welche Fragen stellen sich dabei? Wie anhand filmischer Arbeiten von Andy Warhol, Peter Roehr und Morgan Fisher zu zeigen sein wird, führt die Behandlung von Film als Zeitmaterial weniger zu neuen Formen diegetischer Zeitlichkeit als vielmehr zu einem Verständnis von Zeit als konstruktiver Handlung.
INTRA! INTRA! Towards an INTRA SPACE, 2021
In her reading of the philosophy-physics of Niels Bohr, Karen Barad has proposed a new ontology b... more In her reading of the philosophy-physics of Niels Bohr, Karen Barad has proposed a new ontology based on the post-representational concepts of diffractions and material-discursive practices. In my paper I trace these concepts in the INTRA SPACE project from the perspective of reading the experimental system as a apparatus for the production of real-time technical images. I will do so by comparing it to recent developments in computational photography and contextualizing the project within post-photographic artistic practices. A central question herein is whether photography can be understood as a non-distancing technique.
Arti dello Spettacolo / Performing Arts, Jun 2020
The documentation of performing arts by means of databases is a challenging task for several reas... more The documentation of performing arts by means of databases is a challenging task for several reasons. Primarily, this has to do with the absence of a central, sizeable object that can be described and quantified. Any information collected in a database for performing arts thus seems to be of second order, paraphrasing what cannot be reproduced. Furthermore, for the contingency of database models likewise applies what Michel Foucault said about discourses when he analyzed them as power structures, which predefine what may be said in regard to a specific subject. This has become increasingly relevant since cultural databases are turning into knowledge graphs and loose descriptions are translated into highly structured and machine-readable data in the face of Linked Data and Digital Humanities. The article looks at the evolution of data models for performing arts in regard to how domain-specific representations of agency and shows how this issue is addressed in the emerging database of the Swiss Archive of the Performing Arts based on the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model.
Transpositions: Aesthetico-Epistemic Operators in Artistic Research, 2018
Can we understand photography as transposition? Such a reading seems to be at odds with the major... more Can we understand photography as transposition? Such a reading seems to be at odds with the major narratives of photo theory. Despite all differences over the question of how photographic images (either still or moving) obtain meanings, there is a basic consensus that an image as such is something different from the specific thing or situation it apparently has a connection to. The main issue of any photo theory, then, is how to define the translation between these two poles of subject and image. The answers range from a direct, indexical relation to no relation at all. Even normative aesthetics of realism that call for closing the gap between subject and image in their first step accept the divide as a problem they promise to solve. 1 The notion of transpositional photography, on the other hand, implies that no ontological transformation occurs, or at least that any kind of transformation is less relevant than the change of position or environment that the term transposition suggests. Thus, to understand photography as transposition means that there are not two states but two positions for the same thing. In the course of the photographic process this thing would not change in regard of what it is but of where it is and what surrounds it. So can we replace the ontological question of photography with a topological one? If we dismiss subject and image as the two states that theories of photography under a semiotic paradigm postulate, we have to ask how one can conceive of an identity across very different manifestations.
Bildwelten des Wissens, Feb 2018
Ästhetik und Gebrauchsweisen fotografischer Bilder in den Naturwissenschaften sind Gegenstand ein... more Ästhetik und Gebrauchsweisen fotografischer Bilder in den Naturwissenschaften sind Gegenstand einer inzwischen mehrere Jahrzehnte währenden Diskursgeschichte. Eine wesentliche Frage ist dabei vor allem, welche repräsentativen Funktionen den Bildern zugeschrieben werden und in welchem Maße diese Repräsentationen Konstrukte sind, deren Verweise auf die Welt mehr über ihre Entstehungsmilieus sowie Urheber und Urheberinnen aussagen als über die Bildgegenstände selbst. Die Bilder des Spielfilms in diesen Diskurs einzubeziehen, ist insofern diffizil als sie zum einen offensichtlich einer Fiktion dienen aber zum anderen in ihrer Gegenständlichkeit den Anspruch auf Repräsentation nicht aufgeben.
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Orson Welles' Citizen Kane und die Filmtheorie, 2017
Film History, 2017
Film scholars in recent years have identified a differentiated landscape of color systems in term... more Film scholars in recent years have identified a differentiated landscape of color systems in terms of looks and processes that represent natural color phenomena with increasing fidelity and automation. Here, I propose extending the concept of film colors to techniques that deploy colors in order to produce effects that do not show color but use it for other means. Stereoscopy and compositing are two applications from the 1920s that employed complementary colors and that were often developed by the same parties that helped create representational color systems. These correlations have, thus far, not been the subject of color studies because research is organized according to the intended applications of techniques and does not follow the work of the technicians and artists. I argue that techniques that use colors for other purposes have been ignored due to a focus on color primarily in relation to human perception and understanding. To extend the scope of research to nonrepresentational applications of color, as I propose, thus implies a methodological critique of the existing discourse on color as being anthropocentric, that is, as ignoring functional relationships of colors that do not relate to humans.
In my paper I want suggest an alternative reading of Post-Internet art that asks for its relation... more In my paper I want suggest an alternative reading of Post-Internet art that asks for its relationship to photography rather than to the net.art of the late 1990s. Photographic practices play a crucial role in many Post-Internet works and possibly reveal more about the current state of photography than photography itself. The artists discussed here address issues such as the status of the digital photograph as an object, the documentary role of photography in relation to non-photographic art practices, and the effects of the Internet on vernacular photography. In a second step I try to rethink our understanding of the camera as an apparatus. I do so by looking at two works that are contemporary with but do not belong to Post-Internet art as it is usually conceived and by drawing on the Soviet movement of factography and the writings of Vilém Flusser.
Multimodale Bilder. Zur synkretischen Struktur des Filmischen, 2013
Journalism and Mass Communication, 2012
The paper discusses optical effect techniques of the 1930s and early sound film as intrinsic prac... more The paper discusses optical effect techniques of the 1930s and early sound film as intrinsic practices of commercial cinema. The approach only to be sketched here is to discuss structures, machines, people, and institutions as tantamount agents of an epistemological network where education turns into means of development and control.
In der Gründerzeit der amerikanischen Filmindustrie gab es ein paar Jahre, in denen Hollywood ger... more In der Gründerzeit der amerikanischen Filmindustrie gab es ein paar Jahre, in denen Hollywood geradezu im Raum schwelgte: in den Weiten der vielfältigen kalifornischen Landschaft und in den stetig wachsenden Ausmaßen der dort gebauten Kulissen, als deren Höhepunkt das Babylon-Set für D. W. Griffiths Intolerance (usa 1916) gelten kann. Noch war das Zelluloid zu lichthungrig und die Scheinwerfer zu schwach, um die Aufnahmen vollständig in den ebenso begrenzten wie kontrollierbaren Innenraum der barackenhaften Filmstudios zu verlegen. Aber auch wenn die technische Entwicklung diesen Schritt bald ermöglichte, stand ihm das Verlangen des jungen Mediums entgegen, seine Eigenständigkeit gegenüber den Kammerspielen des Theaters unter Beweis zu stellen. Die erst wenige Jahre zuvor abgefilmten Bühnenprospekte von Méliès wirkten bereits nach kurzer Zeit unerträglich altmodisch.
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Dissertation by Birk Weiberg
I will draw on Actor-Network-Theory as a methodological framework as it provides an approach that tries to avoid presumptions that inform the analytical descriptions. Therefore, I will deploy individual case studies. In these I explore the specific functions of such different entities as groups of studio employees, the studios themselves, entrepreneurs and manufacturers, associations and organizations, devices and sets, patents and other publications, and finally images. The image as the result of these production practices (rather than as an aesthetic phenomenon alone) here is regarded at the same time as representation and aim of its production practices that it tries to conceal. It thus assembles its own collective which I will understand not as a model but as an hypothesis that guides my historical description.
Articles by Birk Weiberg
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I will draw on Actor-Network-Theory as a methodological framework as it provides an approach that tries to avoid presumptions that inform the analytical descriptions. Therefore, I will deploy individual case studies. In these I explore the specific functions of such different entities as groups of studio employees, the studios themselves, entrepreneurs and manufacturers, associations and organizations, devices and sets, patents and other publications, and finally images. The image as the result of these production practices (rather than as an aesthetic phenomenon alone) here is regarded at the same time as representation and aim of its production practices that it tries to conceal. It thus assembles its own collective which I will understand not as a model but as an hypothesis that guides my historical description.
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A systematic and critical discussion of computational photography is still due possibly because its technical details are out of the scope of photography scholars. It is mostly practitioners who address the topic in their work or call for a discussion of what Hito Steyerl (2014) has called 'proxy politics' or what Bruno Latour (2005) in regard to science and technology studies in general has conceptualized as 'mediators.' According to Steyerl, computational photographs no longer refer to 'the world out there' but to other photographs they use as statistical references. Photography thus turns into an "a gamble with probabilities that bets on inertia."
In my talk I want to take a closer look at the emergence of image compositing in Hollywood's studio system. The technologies and practices that the studios developed primarily in the 1920s and 1930s have led to specific types of images and aesthetics that prefigure digital image/world constructions in their refusal to represent actual sites. The filmic process of assemblage has traditionally been analyzed as a combination of images in time but not as a synthesis of distinct locations and times within images. The latter not only reference locations of the diegesis but also the studio space as a mediatic non-site of globalization. From this point I want to ask the question whether such images that combine different parts of the world and are then distributed globally have to be understood as a build-up for globalized infrastructures and economies.
Im Vortrag soll der Frage nachgegangen werden, ob sich aktuelle Arbeiten, die mit massiven Konvoluten fotografischer Bilder arbeiten, in eine historische Perspektive setzen lassen. Automatisch generierte Fotoserien, wie sie etwa Jules Spinatsch oder !Mediengruppe Bitnik in den letzten Jahren produziert haben, stellen insofern interessante Sonderfälle vernetzter Bilder dar, als sie nicht nur etablierte Praktiken der Fotografie hinterfragen, sondern auch einen Brückenschlag zu den Serienbildern von Film und Video leisten. Der Umstand, dass Filme aus Serien von Fotografien bestehen und die Taktungen der beiden Medien zur Disposition gestellt werden können, ist erst ab den 1960er/70er Jahren reflektiert worden. Dazu gehören die Zeitmanipulationen von Warhols Stummfilmen aber auch die Kritik der Apparatustheoretiker an der Geschlossenheit des kinematografischen Dispositivs. Parallel dazu ist an der Aufhebungen medialer Grenzen gearbeitet worden -- etwa in Ruschas Fotobüchern oder Framptons Fotofilmen.
Gerade diese rückblickend als 'post-medium condition' (Krauss) beschriebene konzeptuelle Haltung ist durch die Digitalisierung technisch weiter forciert worden. Wenn man davon ausgeht, dass die Digitalisierung und Vernetzung als technische Wende nicht nur eine post-digitale Ästhetik zur Folge hatte, sondern dass letztere sich auch auf eine Geschichte post-moderner und post-konzeptueller Kunstpraktiken stützen kann, ist ein systematischer Vergleich mit solchen Vorformen unerlässlich. Ein Beitrag dazu soll im Vortrag anhand des Themas der automatisch erzeugten Bildserie geleistet werden, wie sie durch den Wechsel von der mechanischen zur digitalen Kamera weiter befördert wurden.
Als Fallstudie werde ich dies am Übergang vom sog. Dunning-Verfahren (einem Vorläufer heutiger Blue Screen Techniken aus den 1920er Jahren) zur Praxis der Rückprojektion in den frühen 1930er Jahren untersuchen. Diese Verschiebung von Produktionspraktiken war nicht alleine begründet in technischen Vorzügen des neueren Verfahrens, sondern auch in juristischen Konflikten zwischen Hollywood-Studios und Dienstleistern. Ich werde im Folgenden ausführen, wie mit den dort entstandenen Konflikte umgegangen wurde und wie dies den Umgang der Studios mit Patenten allgemein geändert hat.
https://github.com/birk/opticaleffectspatents
https://vimeo.com/birk/triumphofastana
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