Ute Holl: Cinema, Trance and Cybernetics (2002–)

25 July 2017, dusan

“Ute Holl explores cinema as a cultural technique of trance, unconsciously transforming everyday spatio-temporal perception. The archaeology of experimental and anthropological cinema leads into psycho-physiological laboratories of the 19th century. Through personal and systematic catenations, avant-garde filmmaking is closely linked to the emerging aesthetics of feedback in cybernetic models of the mind developed at the same time. Holl analyses three major fields of experimental and anthropological filmmaking: the Soviet avant-garde with Dziga Vertov and his background in Russian psycho-reflexology and theory of trance; Jean Rouch and his theory of cine-trance and the feed-back; and the New American Cinema with Maya Deren and Gregory Bateson conceptualising the organisation of time, space, movement and feedback trance in anthropological filmmaking.”

First published as Kino, Trance und Kybernetik, Brinkmann & Bose, Berlin, 2002.

Translated by Daniel Hendrickson
Publisher Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2017
Recursions series
Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 License
ISBN 9789089646682, 908964668X
326 pages

Publisher
OAPEN
WorldCat

PDF, PDF

James J. Gibson: The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979–) [EN, RU]

2 March 2015, dusan

“James J. Gibson (1904–1979) is one of the most important psychologists of the 20th century, best known for his work on visual perception. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and his first major work was The Perception of the Visual World (1950) in which he rejected behaviorism for a view based on his own experimental work. In his later works, including The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979), Gibson became more philosophical and criticized cognitivism in the same way he had attacked behaviorism before, arguing strongly in favor of direct perception and direct realism, as opposed to cognitivist indirect realism. He termed his new approach ‘ecological psychology’.”

“He moved from thinking about what patterns could act as stimuli to rethinking the concept of the stimulus itself, ultimately rejecting “stimulus” in favor of his version of “information.” In a 1960 paper that is a classic in its own right, Gibson carefully surveyed the patch work of meanings of the term “stimulus” that could be found in the literature. He concluded that the optical (or acoustic, or haptic etc.) patterning that would best correspond to actual perceiving in the world no longer seemed like a “stimulus” at all in any proper sense. Instead, he proposed a common-sense usage of the term “information” (as opposed to the technical usage of Shannon) which was fairly well developed by that time. By information, Gibson meant structured energy that was information about environmental sources, in contrast to information as structure in an information theoretical sense which implies a sender and a receiver. Gibson’s information is specific to its environmental sources though not a replica or a copy. It certainly is not a stimulus in the sense of energy that triggers a response. Gibson’s information does not come to the animal. The animal goes to it, actively obtaining the information. Part 2 of this volume develops this concept of information and is at the heart of Gibson’s theory.” (from the Introduction)

“Gibson’s legacy is increasingly influential on many contemporary movements in psychology, particularly those considered to be post-cognitivist.”

Publisher Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1979
This edition, Psychology Press, 2014
ISBN 9781315740218
315 pages

Reviews and commentaries: E. Bruce Goldstein (Leonardo, 1981), Frederick A. Jules (1984), A. P. Costall (Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 1984), Maurizio Ferraris (1999, IT), William M. Mace (Ethics & the Environment, 2005).

Wikipedia, FR
Publisher
WorldCat

The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (English, 1979/2014, 4 MB)
Ekologicheskiy podchod k zritelnomu vospriyatiyu (Russian, trans. T.M. Sokolskoy, 1988, 11 MB)

For more on Gibson see Monoskop wiki.

Sigmund Freud: His Life in Pictures and Words (1974/1985)

6 July 2014, dusan

Photographs assembled from family collections, manuscripts, letters and published material, each captioned by a passage from Freud’s writing.

Originally published as Sigmund Freud. Sein Leben in Bildern und Texten, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1974.

Edited by Ernst Freud, Lucie Freud and Ilse Grubrich-Simitis
With a biographical sketch by K.R. Eissler
Design by Willy Fleckhaus
Translated by Christine Trollope
English edition first published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1978
This edition published by W.W. Norton & Company, New York and London, 1985
ISBN 0393302857
350 pages

PDF (95 MB, no OCR)