Mapping the Moving Image

Gesture, Thought and Cinema circa 1900

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by Pasi Väliaho

Type

Essays

Subject

Theory

Keywords

theory, perception, gesture, movement

Publishing date

2010

Publisher

Amsterdam University Press

Collection

Film Culture in Transition

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 256 pages
6 ¼ x 9 ½ inches (16 x 24 cm)

ISBN

978-90-8964-140-3

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Book Presentation:
In Mapping the Moving Image, Pasi Väliaho offers a compelling study of how the medium of film came to shape our experience and thinking of the world and ourselves. By locating the moving image in new ways of seeing and saying as manifest in the arts, science and philosophy at the turn of the twentieth century, the book redefines the cinema as one of the most important anthropological processes of modernity. Moving beyond the typical understanding of cinema based on optical and linguistic models, Mapping the Moving Image takes the notion of rhythm as its cue in conceptualizing the medium’s morphogenetic potentialities to generate affectivity, behaviour, and logics of sense. It provides a clear picture of how the forms of early film, while mobilizing bodily gestures and demanding intimate, affective engagement from the viewer, emerged in relation to bio-political investments in the body. The book also charts from a fresh perspective how the new gestural dynamics and visuality of the moving image fed into our thinking of time, memory and the unconscious.

About the Author:
Pasi Väliaho is lecturer in film and screen studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Press Reviews:
"A commanding and consummate study of art, philosophy, the human sciences, physics, and biology in the matrix of cinema at the turn of the twentieth century. Blending contemporary theory with close readings of the foundational writings of modernity, Väliaho shows how the autonomy of the movie-machine shapes the ways we believe we think and live today. It will be a point of reference for every student of cinema, consciousness, and perception." -- Tom Conley, Harvard University

See the publisher website: Amsterdam University Press