Spectacle

In general, spectacle refers to an event that is memorable for the appearance it creates. Derived in Middle English from c. 1340 as “specially prepared or arranged display” it was borrowed from Old French spectacle, itself a reflection of the Latin spectaculum “a show” from spectare “to view, watch” frequentative form of specere “to look at.”[1] The word spectacle has also been a term of art in theater dating from the 17th century in English drama.

via Spectacle – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

All persons fictitious… / disclaimer

The disclaimer originated with the 1932 MGM movie, Rasputin and the Empress, which insinuated that the character Princess Natasha had been raped by Rasputin. Princess Natasha’s character was supposedly intended to represent Princess Irina of Russia, and the real Princess Irina sued MGM for libel. After seeing the film twice, the jury agreed that the princess had been defamed.[1][2][3] Princess Irina and her husband Felix Youssoupoff were reportedly awarded $127,373 in damages by the English Court of Appeal in 1934 and $1 million in an out-of-court settlement with MGM.[4][5][6] As a preventative measure against further lawsuits, the film was taken out of distribution for decades.[7] Prompted by the outcome of this case many studios began to incorporate an “all persons fictitious” disclaimer in their films in order to try to protect themselves from similar court action.[8]

via All persons fictitious disclaimer – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

and more in this pdf: NZDavisYaleart

The Virtual Window – Anne Friedberg

As we spend more and more of our time staring at the screens of movis, televisions, computers, and handheld devices—”windows” full of moving images, texts, and icons—how the world is framed has become as important as what is in the frame. In The Virtual Window, Anne Friedberg examines the window as metaphor, as architectural component, and as an opening to the dematerialized reality we see on the screen.

In De pictura (1435), Leon Battista Alberti famously instructed painters to consider the frame of the painting as an open window. Taking Alberti’s metaphor as her starting point, Friedberg tracks shifts in the perspectival paradigm as she gives us histories of the architectural window, developments in glass and transparency, and the emerging apparatuses of photography, cinema, television, and digital imaging. Single-point perspective—Alberti’s metaphorical window—has long been challenged by modern painting, modern architecture, and moving-image technologies. And yet, notes Friedberg, for most of the twentieth century the dominant form of the moving image was a single image in a single frame. The fractured modernism exemplified by cubist painting, for example, remained largely confined to experimental, avant-garde work. On the computer screen, however, where multiple “windows” coexist and overlap, perspective may have met its end.

In this wide-ranging book, Friedberg considers such topics as the framed view of the camera obscura, Le Corbusier’s mandates for the architectural window, Eisenstein’s opinions on the shape of the movie screen, and the multiple images and nested windows commonly displayed on screens today. The Virtual Window proposes a new logic of visuality, framed and virtual: an architecture not only of space but of time.

About the Author

Anne Friedberg was Professor of Critical Studies in the School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, and the author of Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern.

The Virtual Window – The MIT Press.

Joseph Plateau

Hij ontdekte en formuleerde het fenomeen van de gezichtstraagheid of lichtnawerking: het fysisch verschijnsel waarbij een beeld nog gedurende een zeer korte tijd op het netvlies van het oog blijft ‘hangen’. We kennen allemaal dit verschijnsel wanneer we in een lichtbron kijken en dan de ogen dichtknijpen: de lichtvlek blijft nog op het netvlies nawerken. Op basis van dit gegeven construeerde Plateau in 1831 zijn fenakistiscoop ook wel fantascoop en optische illusie genaamd Grieks voor ‘vals beeld’ een toestel waarmee hij een serie van opeenvolgende tekeningen doorlopend ‘in beweging’ kon brengen. Hiermee legde hij de basis voor de cinematograaf en de filmindustrie.

via Joseph Plateau – Wikipedia.

and more: http://mhsgent.ugent.be/engl-plat5.html