This is a past event
Join us for this George Washington Wilson Centre Research Seminar with visiting speaker Patrick Ellis (Georgia Institute of Technology).
Patrick Ellis (Georgia Institute of Technology) - Vertigo Effects: Film, Flight, and Simulation Sickness
One of the first media pathologies associated with cinema was “camera sickness,” a vestibular malady that shared symptoms with other newly identified motion sicknesses. Dizziness, nausea, perspiration: many early film viewers simply dismissed the medium due to these unintended effects, which were associated with a sensory mismatch that cinema, with its immersive mobility, imposed upon the stationary viewer. Camera sickness was especially tied to aerial films. Drawing from classical film theory and medical literature, this talk will discuss initial public encounters with films that provoked motion sickness, before pivoting to later experiments that used cinema as a potential cure for the same. The paradoxical premise: that the vertigo effects of this media pathology could double as filmic cure.
Dr. Patrick Ellis is a Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His first book, Aeroscopics: Media Archaeology of the Bird’s-Eye View (forthcoming from the University of California Press) provides a history of aerial vision in the era prior to commonplace flight. He has published in The British Journal for the History of Science, Cinema Journal, Early Popular Visual Culture, and Imago Mundi. He is also a curator, and has arranged film programs and exhibits at the sites including the Pacific Film Archive, retrotech, and the Paper Museum.
Monday 13 May, 3pm, Room 224, Sir Duncan Rice Library, University of Aberdeen
Hosted by the VIEW programme of the George Washington Wilson Centre for Visual Culture. Free and all welcome!
- Venue
- The Sir Duncan Rice Library - Room 224
- Contact
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This is a FREE event with no booking necessary.