‘“Old Wine in New Bottles”: Researching Cinema Heritage

Through Pervasive Media’

Dr Charlotte Crofts University of the West of England

charlotte.crofts@uwe.ac.uk

The End of Cinema is Nigh •  Cinema : Digital (2006)

•  ‘Digital Decay’ Moving Image (2008)

•  ‘Cinema Distribution in the Age of Digital Projection’ Postscript (2011)

•  Godfrey Cheshire / Paulo Cherchi Usai

•  Screen heritage beyond the filmic text

•  Cinema & the built environment

•  Cinema-going & Cinema technologies

Cinema : Digital (2006)

http://www.watershed.co.uk/dshed/content/look-exhibition-and-display

Research Questions •  How do the conditions of production, exhibition and

spectatorship change in a mobile media environment and what is the emotional and physical affect and relationship of audiences to these new technologies of seeing? – Revisiting the ‘Apparatus’ theory of the 1970s

(Baudry, Metz, Heath et al) – How are we situated as enunciating and

enunciated subjects by mobile technologies? – What might an App-aratus theory be? –  Interface theory / Human Computer Interaction

Research Questions •  How can locative media be used most effectively

to engage new audiences for and enhance understanding of moving image culture beyond the filmic text? – How can locative media be applied creatively

to an indoor heritage context?�� – How can these innovations be applied to other

heritage contexts in the UK and internationally?

The Curzon Memories App

The Curzon Memories App

The Curzon Memories App

https://vimeo.com/44960163

Projection Hero

Projection Hero

http://curzonproject.wordpress.com/videos

https://vimeo.com/37568683

Projection Hero

Projection Hero

http://vimeo.com/37570933

AHRC REACT ‘Heritage Sandbox’

– City Strata: App Authoring Platform – Cinemapping App – Bristol Cinemas – The Lost Cinemas of Castle Park App

•  Sandbox = 3 month rapid-prototyping process

•  Creative Economy partner Calvium and Heritage partner Bristol City Council

•  Knowledge Exchange and Innovation

Know Your Place

http://maps.bristol.gov.uk/knowyourplace/

Key points of reference:

•  UCLA’s HyperCities project based on ArcGIS database - “travelling back in time to explore historical layers of city spaces in an interactive hypermedia environment”: – http://hypercities.com

•  ‘A Time Traveller’s Guide to Bristol’ which uses geographically located archive films : –  http://www.atimetravellersguide.com/

•  ‘History Pin’ based on Google maps: – http://www.historypin.com/

See also:

•  Rebecca Solnit’s, Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas – particularly Map No. 3: Cinema City

showing Eadweard Muybridge's legacy, locations from Hitchcock's Vertigo, and movie theaters past and present.

Cinema City: Muybridge inventing movies, Hitchcock making Vertigo

Rebecca Solnit UC Press Podcast

•  “…there were certain things that were meaningful, exciting, strange about San Francisco and about places in general that were better told through maps than through words. For example if I tell you there were ninety-nine murders in San Francisco in 2008, that’s not very exciting. But if I actually show you the maps with the murders mostly on the east side of the city, kind of scattered like buckshot across the geography and you can imagine the particulars of place, and you can see that it happened here, and it happened here and it happened here, it’s much more immediate, visceral and affecting” http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520262508

Locative Experience Design

•  Dialectical montage between physical location, media “content” and user interface.

•  Pervasive / ubiquitous / mobile •  Local / regional / specific •  Returning digital arts and humanities to

the “particulars of place” / presence / aura

Iterative Design Process

•  Single point of interest – Whiteladies Picture House

•  Multi point tour – The Lost Cinemas of Castle Park App

•  User evaluation of work in progress •  On-site and off-site testing •  Feeding back into the design process

Whiteladies Picture House

Whiteladies Picture House

Whiteladies Picture House

Lost Cinemas of Castle Park

Lost Cinemas of Castle Park

Lost Cinemas of Castle Park

The Olympia / Tatler 1910-1963

“I saw my first sub-titled picture shortly after I arrived. It was at the Tatler, an art house disguised as an exploitation flea pit near Old Market – a 1939 Claude Autant-Lara comedy called Fric-Frac starring Fernandel, Arletty and Michel Simon. Not long after that I saw my first neo-realist film there, Rossellini's Paisa” (Philip French).

The Queens Picture House 1910-1933

The Odeon 1938-present

Lost Cinemas of Castle Park

“What, the curtains?”

VALIE EXPORT Tap & Touch Cinema (1968) Dennis Göttel http://apertura.hu/2008/nyar/goettel, citing Laura Marks, The Skin of the Film

Social Media

Key Findings

•  Social media is compelling •  Ability to comment / add to the

database •  Call to action to use the app important •  Magic moments – when app interacts

with location •  Necessity for ‘Arm chair’ mode to be

equally compelling

Future Developments •  Flea Pit – portable Projection Hero

•  Potential AHRC bids – To extend the Cinemapping App

• Liverpool City in Film / Cinema Treasures

– To develop the City Strata Platform • Work with developers & academics to create

other ‘layers’

• Explore a drag and drop interface to make content management more accessible

•  REACT ‘Objects Sandbox’ 2014…

Dr Charlotte Crofts

charlotte.crofts@uwe.ac.uk http://www.eyefullproductions.co.uk/curzon

www.cinemmapping.co.uk @charlottecrofts #curzonmemoriesapp #lostcinemas @cinemapping