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Note: This text is an only slightly revised version of the NOMIS Lecture, which I gave at eikones Forum on 11\/3\/2022. I thank the eikones committee for the support of my research. I would also like to thank Sarine Waltensp\u00fcl, for comments on an earlier draft, Hella Wiedmer-Newman, for proofreading the text before it was published on the blog and Giovanni Casagrande from the Archive of the Swiss TPH, for supporting me to find the right pictures.<\/em><\/p>

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I would like to start my talk with a short anecdote: During the first days of my fellowship, as I was wandering down the hallways of this beautiful building where I currently have the exceptional honor of calling one of the offices mine, I found the magazine Horizonte<\/em>. It is the magazine of the Swiss National Science Foundation (fig. 1). Since this issue was about \u201cFilm, Fakt und Fiktion\u201d and I devote most of my research time to scientific films, I reckoned it would be of interest.<\/p>"},"id":"87db1307-ee7f-4e6c-9138-5b99e9f401f8","isHidden":false,"type":"text"},{"content":{"location":"kirby","image":["file:\/\/CH0y7pmcLeH1ZWhF"],"src":"","alt":"","caption":"Fig. 1: Cover of the 2022 autumn issue of the magazine Horizonte<\/em>","link":"","ratio":"","crop":"false"},"id":"2dc22b8d-97bf-4698-97a6-ede2f6a350d3","isHidden":false,"type":"image"},{"content":{"text":"

However, when I started to read the editorial, it felt like somebody was giving me a reality check. The editor recounts some scenes from a blockbuster and a BBC series that are unrealistic from a scientific perspective (like a sandstorm on mars) and he reasons, and I quote: \u201cScience and film are situated at opposite ends of the spectrum. In science, everything has to be as true and detailed as it can be, though only a few people might actually understand it. In the movies, everything is about achieving maximum entertainment value.\u201d Now, everything you are going to hear from me points in the opposite direction. I will claim that science and the medium of film have had a close connection throughout the last 130 years, that they not only share a spectrum but are sometimes quite close to one another on that spectrum (for science, for instance, film has been a medium of choice when it comes to finding out the truth of movement processes of all kinds in the most detailed way), and finally, that there exist a great number of films that are downright boring (at least for most people \u2013 sometimes even for me or the scientists who have made them).<\/p>

Of course, it is too easy to make fun of the SNF magazine (which is not my aim). But I believe that this editorial offers an example of the very commonly held beliefs that stand in the way when we do research about science and film. Beginning with the fact that we often do not clearly distinguish among film, moving images or cinema, among the medium, the technique or the place where movies are shown. But also, more basic assumptions of western thought stand in our way: in this editorial we can detect the belief that the \u2018holy\u2019 endeavor of truth-seeking must be clearly separated from Sinnlichkeit<\/em>, from the very earthly work related to the production of pictures.<\/p>

My starting point is different and rooted in the observation that the last fifteen years have seen a surge of the use of moving images in the sciences. Examples are video conferencing, science channels on YouTube, and maybe most important, although much less often acknowledged, the increasing use of videos as a way of publishing research. Online publishing makes it a lot easier to put moving images alongside texts, whether as PDFs or in other formats. The journal Nature,<\/em> for example, even has its one section called \u201cNature Video\u201d.<\/p>

What I want to show with this overview is that moving images are a standard tool for presenting evidence, communicating knowledge and justifying a given research approach. And more than that, they are not only deployed when the research has been done already. They are important for scientific conceptualization, and for locating possibilities for intervention. Over the course of the twentieth century, the sciences expanded from the book page to the screen, from reading to viewing. Nonetheless, the epistemic status of moving images stays highly controversial to this day. Central categories of scientific work are discussed on the basis of the moving image: are they precise, are they objective, are they reliable, are they installing curiosity, are they a wonder even? Therefore, I would argue it is time to provide a historical basis for a more nuanced discussion.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

My aim today is to discuss some aspects of how closely intertwined knowledge, truth-seeking and image production at times have been, not in order to question truth, but to allow a more nuanced understanding of research films and, ultimately, perhaps enable a better kind of \u2018truth-seeking\u2019 with moving images. I would like to do this in three steps.<\/p>

First, I am going to present the perspective on research film that has prevailed in science studies over the last thirty years, namely the focus on visualization. Second, I would like to introduce an approach that focuses instead on the reuses of research film \u2013 this is something I have been developing, together with my colleague Sarine Waltensp\u00fcl, for the last four years. Third, I would like to present some rather preliminary thoughts about a way of making sense of the mobilities and localities involved in producing and screening research films (which is also my project here at eikones).<\/p>

In my research, I aim to unearth stories from the still largely unknown history of producing, publishing and archiving scientific research films, that means mainly from the period after early film, and its famous inventors, Muybridge, Marey or Comandon, who all used film in their scientific experiments. With this I hope to develop new theoretical approaches for a burgeoning scientific field known as Visual Science and Technology Studies \u2013 <\/strong>a convergence of Bildwissenschaften, visual studies, science studies and media studies.<\/p>