Cinema, Trance and Cybernetics

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by Ute Holl

Type

Studies

Subject

Sociology

Keywords

psychology, cinema influence

Publishing date

2017

Publisher

Amsterdam University Press

Collection

Recursions

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 352 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-90-8964-668-2

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Book Presentation:
We've all had the experience of watching a film and feeling like we've been in a trance. This book takes that experience seriously, explaining cinema as a cultural technique of trance, one that unconsciously transforms our perceptions. Ute Holl moves from anthropological and experimental cinema through nineteenth-century psychological laboratories, which she shows developed techniques for testing, measuring, and classifying the mind that can be seen as a prehistory of cinema, one that allows us to see the links among cinema, anthropology, psychology, and cybernetics.

About the Author:
Ute Holl Ute Holl is Professor of Media Studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Research on history of cinema and perception, techniques of visualising and knowledge, history of electro-acoustics and radiophonics, anthropologic and experimental cinema. She is fellow of Forscherkolleg Bild-Evidenz, FU Berlin.

Press Reviews:
Cinema, Trance and Cybernetics will change the way you see the cinema's past. Through an impressive synthesis of psychology, cybernetics, anthropology and the cinematic arts, it reveals how cinema was born in the scientific laboratory and grew into a machine for controlling, but also emancipating, mental life. Providing a powerful historical account that brings Maya Deren in contact with Vladimir Bekhterev, amongst others, the book shows how cinema ultimately came to shape us into its own image." - Pasi Valiaho, Goldsmiths, University of London

See the publisher website: Amsterdam University Press