museum assignment

Today I went to the museum of the moving image. I would not say that I learned something about the moving image that I had not already been aware, but rather that it re-focused my existing knowledge and opinions about the photographic medium in motion. Film has a long and rich history and is ever evolving. It is a multifaceted medium which combines various concepts and culminates many media in order to create the illusion of movement. On the conceptual end of film it was also interesting to see how film had been even looked at as a scientific breakthrough, allowing Muybridge to freeze frame and study the movement of the human body as well as various other species. On the media end it was fun to take the time to acknowledge the asynchronous reality of film. Films to not exist within a vacum, nor do they represent spatial or temporal reality. A film is shot often out of sequence, re-dubbed later, scored with non-diegetic sound, the images and sound itself are treated, spliced, and combined before the final product is revealed. In truth film is a game of smoke and mirrors, a form of neo magic.  I participated in various interactive exhibits. The first was a simple stop motion approach to animation using a computer camera and a few objects to play with against a background. I found this exhibit fun because I have had experience doing short animations of my own combining photos with hand painted frames. I also ventured into the dubbing booths where i decided to insert all sorts of funny and lude audio content. I even tried out the exhibit which allowed me to swap different music tracks over Vertigo so that i could experience the images in new ways. This trip gave me no new knowledge of the media, but did help to broaden my understanding and deepen the specifics of my knowledge of film and film history.