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Michael Punt Protocol	Darren Stevens
Friday 22nd November 2002

 

 

The seminar focused on the multiple contexts in which an historical account of a technology, the history of colour in early cinema, might be written.

 

The seminar and accompanying article (Edward Branigan: “Colour and cinema: problems in the writing of history”) highlights the many possible viewpoints to understand the development of  a specific technology through its history, and the assumptions and implications made through these differing historical viewpoints.

 

In order to understand an account of a technological history, you need to know the context (or possible bias) in which the account is written and that it might be the universal historical account.

 

The article does not imply a pluralistic view of the sum of all histories, but of the few, if not many, approaches to viewing the discourse of historical contexts.

 

In order to analyse the historical account the history of colour, the author has subjected four written accounts to the following criteria:

• Cause: The historian’s reasoning about the determinates or conditions of state.
• Change: A reasoning about the difference between temporal states
• Subject: The  role or function ascribed to the individual with respect to a historical process.

 

The article focuses on the history of colour through these approaches:

 

Adventure history

Characteristics of the adventure history are:

• Individual hero’s whose time has come.
• A simple narrative and linear chain of events where history is viewed through neo-Aristolian unities of time, place and action.
• Event centred time span of short duration, history is reduced to a point often to the decision making individual
• A romantic adventure where history is structured as dramas of disclosures, with a stress on conflict and climax. This style of history features a dramatical, staccato rhythm and in a vivid, even inspirational method.
• Looks back and sums up to a climax in the present, a pyramid direction with only one inevitable outcome.
• The focus is shifted towards the telling of the rather than the individual details.
• Use of historical change through organic evolution.
• This type of historical writing is characteristic of nineteenth century historians.

 

Example given:

Terry Ramsaye chapter ‘Adventures of Kinemacolor’.

 

Technological history

Characteristics of the technological history are:

• An historical view of technology that focuses on a history of technology and a history of aesthetics.
• This is a fundamental retracing of the specific strands and networks that made the technology possible.
• Technological History is measured in terms of the techniques that have been developed through the new technology. This inevitably leads to a search for “first timers”, when the technique was used for the first time.
• Technique is an integral part of this type of history, techniques are dependent on new technologies. Technologies are also tied to certain techniques required.
• Advances in technology allow for new techniques to be developed, the quest for new techniques advance the drive for new technology.
• Social and economical forces are avoided in view to technological failures and successes, success is described through ‘newness’ and ‘novelty’.
• A view of technology that falsely drives forward for perfection, dismissing the social and economic forces that surround a technology.

 

Example given:

Patrick Ogle, “Technological and aesthetic influences upon the development of deep focus cinematography in the United States”.

 

Industrial exploitation

Characteristics of the industrial exploitation history are:

• Technology viewed through it’s industrial exploitive success or failure, from both management decisions and maximization of long-run profits.
• Technological invention spans technical device from archaeology up to just short of commercial exploitation.
• Does not focus on a singular businesses or individual specific technology but on multiple companies all seeking commercial success.
• Failure of a technology is not seen through the its technological inferiority and complexity to other related technologies but through lack of solid financial business planning, research and development, inferior marketing and managerial skill.
• Success is seen through the technological exploitation and not the aesthetics benefits that a technology brings to the business/audience.
• The developmental team of a particular technology is seen as secondary to that of creative business management.
• Widespread adoption of technologies is taken by mutual adoption.

 

Example given:

Douglas Gomery, “The coming of the talkies: invention, innovation and diffusion”.

 

 

 

Ideological history

Characteristics of the industrial exploitation history are:

·       Technologies are seen through the context of two social demands – ideological and economic.

·       A non-linear, non-evolutionary view of techological change, emphasing “neither origin nor end”. Technology develops from a pluralistic beginning of events leading to one amongst many possible technologies. History of colour is seen in view to decades if not centuries of development.

·       Technolgy develops through gaps and discontinuities, damaging to a linear evolutionary theory of technological development.

·       Technology is part of an ideology and functions to hold members of a society in certain sets of relationships.

·       Ideological history seen through “science over the body”, “the truths of art” and “insistence on realism”.

·       Man defines himself through redefining his sight in terms of the cinema.

 

Example given:

Jean-Louis Comolli, “Technique et ideologie”.

 

 

Each historical writing follows the writers subjective (selective) account through the writers personal questions of an historical context.

 

 

 

 

 

 

28^th November 2002