Splicing it Up: 3D Modelling to Explore a Digital Experimental Media Archaeology

Description

What can 3D modelling teach us about the history of film editing technologies? The cutting room, an early niche for women in the Hollywood film industry, has witnessed and materialised substantial (technological) changes in the practices of film editing. In viewing, splicing, and cementing celluloid to create movement and illusions of space, editing can also be seen in parallel with contemporary processes of photogrammetry and 3D modelling. This parallel lies at the heart of this workshop, which will engage with questions of gender, materiality, and pedagogy through a participatory process of digitising splicers. Splicers enabled professional editors to align and precisely trim two strips of celluloid film before gluing these together with a specialist “cement,” and were later used widely by amateurs for smaller film formats as well. Working with splicers as a case study, the workshop uses 3D modelling as a mode of visualising the past—adopting a reflexive relationship to the object itself—and a means of opening up novel perspectives on the distributed labour of filmmaking. In order to do this, we will initially situate the workshop in the context of a broader PhD project on digital heritage for media historical education, before engaging hands-on with film splicers. The bulk of the workshop will constitute collaborating to capture 360-degree images of the splicers, and then working to make a digital 3D model, combined with continuous conversations about these processes and their implications. Overall, this session will trial participatory digitisation and 3D modelling interwoven with reflective discussions on process-based parallels with (historic) media practices, digital heritage debates, and the (im)material affordances of digitising heritage.

Organized by Dr. Sarah-Mai Dang, Anne Hart and Pauline Junginger (BMBF research group DAVIF, Philipps-Universität Marburg).

Period	11 Jun 2024
Held at	Philipps-Universitat Marburg, Germany
Degree of Recognition	International