I was really struck by the relationship between active/passive viewership in today’s group of readings. Britt Salvesen writes that “In its nascency, cinema did not offer seamless illusions to passive, susceptible observers; instead, the medium’s first decade was characterized by improvisation and interaction.” (62) Apparatuses such as the stereoscope, zoetrope, and projected image offered individuals a new form of technological satisfaction and visual spectacle. It seems to me that one goal of Salvesen’s essay is to challenge the idea of technological determinism, and present a reading of 19th century spectatorship in which the viewer is both a part of the cinematic apparatus, and in control of it. Thomas Elsaesser’s article on the “Cinematic Dispositif” provided a helpful literature review on apparatus theory, tracking particular fraught or anxious moments in its history. He foregrounds the 1900s and the 1970s as two such instances; for me this transhistorical relationship was really thought provoking and I couldn't help but wonder how something like the iPhone fits into this lineage. Why is it that technological innovation is often constructed in opposition to human agency? Is  the debate over TikTok (for example) and the “stupefying” effect of its endless scroll just a rehash of this older dialog — one that positioned television as “mind-numbing” or the 19th c. cinemagraph as “dangerous”?

This discussion reminded me of a (somewhat) recent exhibition at Whitney, Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905–2016. The show spotlighted works of art that manipulated or made visible the “Cinematic Dispositif.” (Anthony McCall and Hito Steyerl are two of the included artists that could be interesting to discuss in relation to the long history of apparatus theory). From my recollection, the exhibition was criticized for being too much of a “spectacle” (versus something more quiet and contemplative). Again, why is the status of cinema in the art museum so fraught?