History of Moving Images

Kinetograph and Kinetoscope

First described and patented by Thomas Edison and further developed by his employee William Dickson, the earliest version of the motion picture camera, the kinetograph, was invented around 1890. Around the same time, the kinetoscope, a machine to project and view these film reels, was also developed. However, these were electric devices (therefore not portable) and also very large and unwieldy. The Kinetoscope only projected a picture reel inside of the machine and only a single viewer could watch the projection through a peep hole.

The Black Maria

The Black Maria was Thomas Edison's film production studio in West Orange, New Jersey. It is widely referred to as "America's First Movie Studio".

Edison's Kinetoscope Films

Kinetophone/Phonokinetoscope

The Kinetophone (aka Phonokinetoscope) was an early attempt by Edison and Dickson to create a sound-film system. Reports suggest that in July 1893, a Kinetoscope accompanied by a cylinder phonograph had been presented at the Chicago World's Fair. The first known movie made as a test of the Kinetophone was shot at Edison's New Jersey studio in late 1894 or early 1895, which is now referred to as The Dickson Experimental Sound Film; this film, along with eight films made between 1912 and 1913, are the only surviving movies with live-recorded sound made for the Kinetophone.

Cinematograph

A cinematograph is a motion picture film camera, which—in combination with different parts—also serves as a film projector and printer. It was developed in the 1890s in Lyon by Auguste and Louis Lumière

The cinematograph was invented to be an improvement on Edison’s kinetoscope, also in the mid 1890s. Its invention is alternately attributed to the Lumiere Brothers (who used it to much acclaim) or to another French inventor a few years earlier, Leon Bouly. The cinematograph created a projection on a surface, so was the first projector that could be viewed by a group audience. Moreover, it was not powered by electricity like the kinetoscope, but by a hand crank, making it portable and smaller.

The Lumier Brothers

The Lumiere Brothers are credited as the first filmmakers. Their first film was “Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory” in 1894, publicly screened in 1895:

On March 19, 1895, 119 years ago, August and Louis Lumière made the inaugural recording with their newly patented cinematograph, a sixteen-pound camera made to compete with Edison’s nascent kinetoscope. The cinematograph was powered by a hand crank, and it improved on the kinetoscope in that it incorporated a projector, which allowed a large audience to take in its spectacles. (Edison’s machine had only a peephole; maybe he thought moving pictures would appeal exclusively to voyeurs. And maybe they do.) The perforated film reel in a cinematograph was easier to hold in place, which meant it produced sharper, stabler images than had ever been seen.

Film Projection Explained

Early Abstract Film Examples

Viking Eggeling

Viking Eggeling (7m28s, c1923)

"Born in Sweden to a family of German origin, Viking Eggeling emigrated to Germany at the age of 17, where he became a bookkeeper, and studied art history as well as painting. From 1911 to 1915 he lived in Paris, then moved to Switzerland at the outbreak of World War I. In Zurich he became a associated with the Dada movement, became a friend of Hans Richter, Jean Arp, Tristan Tzara, and Marcel Janco. With the end of the Great War he moved to Germany with Richter where both explored the depiction of movement, first in scroll drawings and then on film.

In 1922 Eggeling bought a motion picture camera, and working without Richter, sought to create a new kind of cinema. Axel Olson, a young Swedish painter, wrote to his parents in 1922 that Eggeling was working to “evolve a musical-cubistic style of film—completely divorced from the naturalistic style.” In 1923 he showed a now lost, 10 minute film based on an earlier scroll titled Horizontal-vertical Orchestra. In the summer of 1923 he began work on Symphonie Diagonale. Paper cut-outs and then tin foil figures were photographed a frame at a time. Completed in 1924, the film was shown for the first time (privately) on November 5. On May 3, 1925 it was presented to the public in Germany; sixteen days later Eggeling died in Berlin." (Louise O’Konor, Viking Eggeling 1880–1925)

"While he was working on Symphonie Diagonale, Eggeling was evolving a theory based on his film experiments and his studies of form and colour. He called his theory Eidodynamik [visual dynamics]. Little is kown about it, but the fundamental principle was the projection of coloured lights against the sky to bear the elements of form." (Jennifer Valcke, Static Films and Moving Pictures: Montage in Avant-Garde Photography and Film, p172)

Hans Richter

Form and time relationships between visual elements.

“Rhythmus 21", 1921

“Filmstudie", 1925

Richter believed that the artist's duty was to be actively political, opposing war and supporting the revolution. His first abstract works were made in 1917. Richter was co-founder, in 1919, of the Association of Revolutionary Artists ("Artistes Radicaux") at Zürich.

Throughout his career, he claimed that his 1921 film, Rhythmus 21, was the first abstract film ever created. This claim is not true: he was preceded by the Italian Futurists Bruno Corra and Arnaldo Ginna between 1911 and 1912(as they report in the Futurist Manifesto of Cinema, as well as by fellow German artist Walter Ruttmann who produced Lichtspiel Opus 1 in 1920. Nevertheless, Richter's film Rhythmus 21 is considered an important early abstract film.

Richter wrote of his own attitude toward film: "I conceive of the film as a modern art form particularly interesting to the sense of sight. Painting has its own peculiar problems and specific sensations, and so has the film. But there are also problems in which the dividing line is obliterated, or where the two infringe upon each other. More especially, the cinema can fulfill certain promises made by the ancient arts, in the realization of which painting and film become close neighbors and work together."

Walter Ruttmann

Lichtspiel: Opus I (1921)

Lichtspiel: Opus IV (1925)

"Ruttmann's visual style is considered to be more playful and impressionistic than Eggeling's and Richter's and produces an overall painterly feel both in technique and in the use of screen, colour and movement. Indeed, his technical methods were also painterly and would have had a definite bearing on the resulting imagery. His Opus films have been described as paintings that move in time. While Richter and Eggeling focussed on figures, forms and time relationships between visual elements, Ruttmann focussed on a more expressive visual aesthetic for his imagery. He exploited 'movement and colour to create choreographies, where entrances and exits, collisions and complementary trajectories establish a linear, cumulative scenario or development in which new configurations, colours and shapes appear right to the last moments of the film'." (Jennifer Valcke, Static Films and Moving Pictures: Montage in Avant-Garde Photography and Film, p173)

"I'm in love with the flickering muse, and I share the fate of many men in love: I love her not as she is, but as I would like her to be. For I believe in art in the cinema. But I doubt whether a work of cinematic art has so far ever been made. You can't cure a sick man by painting his cheeks in fresh colors. And you can't turn a film into a work of art by augmenting it and exalting it with "quality". You can gather together the best mimes in the world, you can let them perform in the most exquisite paradise, you can adorn the programs of your film dramas with the names of the most eminent poets - art will never result that way. A work of art will result only if it is born of the possibilities and demands of its material."

Moholy Nagy

“Lightplay: Black-White-Gray”, 1930

Light-Space Modulator (basis for abstract animation above)

László Moholy-Nagy born László Weisz; July 20, 1895 – November 24, 1946) was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as a professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts.

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