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Cinema and technology : cultures, theories, practices.

This book examines how, within Film Studies and Media Studies, interest in technology has grown in recent years in response to rapid developments in digital and computer media. Cinema's relationship with the technological, however, remains contested. Many contemporary writers describe these technological shifts as alarmingly disruptive, threatening either to destroy or disfigure cinema. This collection of essays does something different. It seeks to situate changes in, for instance, film stock, animation, the depiction of robots and the development of 'synthespians', fire regulations in cinemas, or neurological accounts of spectatorship within more broadly defined technocultural processes around cinema. In order to understand the relationship between cinema and technology, the book draws on media and cultural studies, media anthropology, science and technology studies, philosophy and film theory. Analysing examples that range from cutting-edge Hollywood blockbusters to internet viral films, and from Victorian cinema to the present, this volume brings technology into debates around cinema's forms, meanings and audiences. The three editors made an equal contribution to editing this volume, co-writing the four section introductions and the 7,000-word introductory essay. The volume also includes a 7,000-word chapter written by myself, ‘Children and robots, cinephilia and technophobia’ (pp.168-182), which was derived from papers given at the conference and at the 2004 Screen conference in Glasgow. This edited volume emerged from an international conference, Cinema and Technology, co-funded by the BFI and held at Lancaster University in 2005, for which I was on the organising committee. The volume includes contributions by some internationally significant theorists including James Elkins, Thomas Elsaesser, Marie-Luise Angerer and Aylish Wood, as well as work by younger academics.