05/08/2023
++++. NOTE: Attached schedule is likely to change and details will continue to be added over the next couple of months. ++++
Register now for what is shaping up to be an interesting, diverse, and inspirational lineup. Presentations…films…objects…ideas. For crying out loud, people, Buckey Grimm is going to make and TRAVEL with a bunch of gadgets he found plans for in archival amateur film publications! He’s driving. So no need to worry about TSA!
Other topics: radar imaging to study birds; time lapse flower photography; cutting (sorry) edge brain-imaging technologies from the 1970s; practical guides to VHS; psychedelic weddings; preservation ideas (from the field) for video installations; copyright and creative re-use; reimagined video of a Spanish art collective; amateur video as family mediator; poetic cross-country road trips as therapy, and so much more.
Plus:
https://www.facebook.com/thedairyport?mibextid=LQQJ4d
And lobsters.
In Bucksport, ME!
At a film archive!
In a movie theatre!
Northeast Historic Film!!!
Northeast Historic Film Summer Symposium
Technology, Invention, Tinkerers, and Gadgets
July 27-29, 2023
***
Northeast Historic Film / Alamo Theatre
Bucksport, ME
SCHEDULE OF PRESENTATIONS
Thursday, July 27:
MOTHERS OF INVENTION
5:00
A bit of inspiration from Deserted Films, Palm Springs.
DR #3. [“Letter from California, March 1980.”] VHS. Color.
Sound. 3:01 min.
5:30
SPECIAL SURPRISE FEATURE FILM SCREENING (2023) 93 mins. (OPEN TO PUBLIC / FREE)
Conversation with filmmakers after screening
Dinner on your own
Friday, July 28:
SEEING THINGS: ENHANCED AND ALTERED VISIONS
9:00
Alamo Lobby
Registration, Chat, Official Welcome etc
10:00
Oliver Gaycken (University of Maryland)
Cinema Builds a Computer Brain: Robert Livingston’s The Human Brain: A Dynamic View of Its Structures and Organization (1977)
Both cinema and computers were employed in novel ways to advance the frontiers of medical imaging. Dr. Robert Livingston's The Human Brain: A Dynamic View of Its Structures and Organization (1977), a documentary held by the National Library of Medicine, surveys Livingston’s innovative techniques for depicting brain anatomy. The film depicts both the process of cinemorphology, Livingston’s term for the combination of a cinema camera and tomography (the production of ultra-thin slices of tissue using a tomograph), as well as the transformation of these images into computer graphics. The end result of this procedure was a volumetric computer rendering of the human brain that allowed for its display in novel forms, including fly-throughs and rotating views of anatomical structures. Cinema and computer animation are combined to dazzling effect in this masterpiece of medical cinema.
11:00
Rachel Del Gaudio (George Blood LP) and Andrew Farnsworth (Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology)
Radar Love: Digitizing Radar Films for Ornithological Science
Used across the country beginning in the 1950s, the WSR-57 was the first ‘modern’ weather radar. The invention included a mounted film camera over the radar screen which documented blips as they moved across the display. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology and George Blood LP are immersed in digitizing hundreds of these rolls of film that capture invaluable information for expanding knowledge of bird populations, understanding changes in climate, and doubling the temporal sampling of the atmosphere and its biology and meteorology. The project has required a reinvention of film prep and scanning to capture old information for new purposes.
12:00
lunch (on your own) and tour (meets in lobby)
2:00
Olivia Babler and Justin Dean (Chicago Film Archives)
Making Flowers Dance: The John Nash Ott Collection at Chicago Film Archives
In late 2022, Chicago Film Archives acquired a collection of over 400 16mm film elements from amateur filmmaker John Nash Ott. With no formal training in either science or photography, Ott built an elaborate automated film studio in his suburban Chicago greenhouse in the 1940s and went on to become a wildly successful time-lapse photographer of plants and cell life. In this presentation, archivists from CFA will explore Ott’s methods and materials, and will detail how Ott’s teenage hobby as a timelapse photographer catapulted him from banker to local TV heartthrob to Disney collaborator to infomercial pitchman.
3:00
Charles “Buckey” Grimm (Contract researcher)
Movie Magic Homemade
With the rapid development of amateur and home movies it was clear early on that much of the appeal came from the fact that it provided a creative outlet for the amateur filmmaker. Since most had a limited budget, it was incumbent that one of the results of this creativity was in utilizing whatever materials that were handy in order to enhance the filmmaking process. From adapters to the camera, accessories for projecting, and devices for editing a whole realm of opportunity opened up to the
creative process. Using the guides provided at the time we will endeavor to prove (or disprove) their effectiveness in the filmmaking experience.
4:20
ANOTHER SPECIAL SCREENING FROM A LOCAL ARCHIVE…DETAILS TBA
Friday’s closer:
Mark Neumann
Everywhere West (8 mins.)
Everywhere West is a film-poem that puts viewers in the driver's seat on a high-speed journey across America, from Arizona to Maine, in less than 9 minutes. This is "cine-poetry," a rhapsodic, panoramic vision of America's highways and backroads, and a high-velocity search for self and country.
6:00
Dinner at Verona Wine and Design (lobster, etc.)…just a few doors down from the Alamo
Saturday, July 29:
TECH SUPPORT: QUESTIONS OF TECHNOLOGY AND THE SHAPE OF ARCHIVAL NARRATIVES
9:00
Cass Fino-Radin (Small Data Industries, Rochester, New York)
Daniel Mauro (Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland)
Samantha Owens (Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland)
From Ship to Ship: The Migration of Gary Hill’s Interactive Video Installation Tall Ships (1992)
For more than 50 years, American artist Gary Hill has pushed the boundaries of moving image art and technology. An early innovator of video art and interactive computer-based installations, Hill’s work has been foundational to the development of intermedia and expanded cinema. This presentation focuses on the recent conservation of Hill’s Tall Ships (1992), a sixteen-channel interactive video installation built upon the combination of custom analog and digital technologies. The presentation details migration from a DOS-controlled, laserdisc source to a streamlined Raspberry Pi-based backend while maintaining the unique imaging system at the core of the work for future preservation and exhibition.
10:00
Chris Ruble (Clark University)
Analog Analysis: Teaching VHS to Digital Natives
Most students attending college right now have little to no experience with VHS. In my work with students in Clark University’s Media, Culture, and the Arts program, I have created a lesson that provides a basic overview of what VHS was within the context of the motion picture industry and personal technology landscape. I aim to show that despite being outdated and outmoded now, analog videotape was a significant part of media consumption and allowed creation of more personal home videos. The video that I created, What is VHS? is the introduction for students on analog media and its place in history.
11:00
Lucas Larriera & Luiza Gonçalves (Archivo la Esquina)
Arteleku No-GUI
Arteleku No-GUI is an experimental “old school” linear editing project using open-source software without a graphical user interface through the command line (FFmpeg) with the aim of activating, disseminating and generating new audiovisual pieces from orphan materials without implying loss of generation. We applied this procedure to create an observational documentary using video recordings found on the web page of the now disappeared basque arts center called Arteleku. Recorded between 1989 and 1994 in the outskirts of Donostia, Spain, we edited these videos to re-tell an afternoon at Arteleku, featuring important figures in the Spanish arts scene.
12-2
lunch (on your own) and tour (meets in lobby)
2:00
Hugo Ljungback (University of Chicago)
“Tinkering with Video Floppy: Electronic Photography Between Still and Moving Image”
This presentation will provide a brief history of Video Floppy, the first viable "filmless" alternative to traditional photography. Released in the mid-1980s, the Video Floppy camera recorded electronic, still video images on a specially designed floppy disk, and the images were viewed by connecting the camera to a standard television set, situating the technology somewhere between home movies and the photo album, between analog and digital, and between still and moving image. The presentation will also recount my own efforts and experiments—with varying degrees of success—to engage the technology creatively through my art practice.
3:00
Claudy Op den Kamp
(Centre for Intellectual Property Policy & Management at Bournemouth University, UK)
The Shadow Line (50 mins.)
In 1893, W.K.L. Dickson, assistant to Thomas Edison, registers the first motion picture material for copyright at the Library of Congress. In THE SHADOW LINE, a curious film scholar chronicles her search in the world’s largest library for this unidentified material, 130 years after Librarian of Congress Ainsworth Rand Spofford signs off on it, and questions the reasons for its mysterious status.
Taking the shape of a fictional love letter to Spofford, the film describes the research topic, the researcher’s contemporary experience, and by reusing diverse archival documents, highlights the archive as a point of entry for creative re-use.
Thank you for making NHF 2023: Technology, Invention, Tinkerers, and Gadgets an actual thing. We haven’t met (physically or virtually) since 2019 and we are very excited to be back. Will you help us spread the word for next year? Post about us and follow us on social media. And keep an eye out for next year’s call for papers.
Also, would you help us spread the word about the O’Farrell Fellowship, which will be back in full force for 2024. Please click link for a glimpse at the application (last round) and keep an eye open for our next call for applicants.
https://oldfilm.org/give/william-s-ofarrell-fellowship/ #:~:text=The%20O%27Farrell%20Fellowship%20is,particularly%20amateur%20and%20nontheatrical%20film.
