Indeterminable Frames: Exploring Digital Humanities Approaches and Applications for the Moving Image

Abstract

This project continues ongoing conversations about recontextualizing and expanding our understanding of how we engage with film using avant-garde and experimental works originating as celluloid media as case studies. Digitization of celluloid media provides greater points of access to works on analog formats yet should not be considered a means to an end as there is more to explore within this relationship. Using the computational tools FFmpeg, Image Macroanalysis in JavaScript, and ImagePlot for ImageJ, we can approach a different visual understanding of cinema that allows us to challenge the traditional concept of time and its relation to film. Can we encounter new meanings from moving image works when we view the frames concurrently? How do digital humanities applications contribute to an alternative method of engagement with moving images? Are the resulting revisualizations an alternative form of film analysis, and thus, a form of cinematic consciousness? Key frameworks for analysis include critical approaches to digitality, the history of the moving image, re-investigating the terms in which commentary is drawn and undertaken, data as capta, and revisualizations as a continuation of aura within a domain of tradition.