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The screen is so unremarkable in its ubiquity that it might seem to take going out to the very limits to make us aware of the extent to which image projection has become our very condition. Take the migration of the phrase “screen time” from its place in film analysis as the descriptor for the edited duration of an action on screen.

The post Interpreting “screen time” appeared first on OUPblog.

“Most rare workmen”: Optical practitioners in early seventeenth-century Delft”
Huib J. Zuidervaart and Marlise Rijks
The British Journal for the History of Science, pp. 1 – 33, (March 2014)

online article can be accessed at:
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9202672&fileId
=S0007087414000181

abstract:
A special interest in optics among various seventeenth-century painters living in the Dutch city of Delft has intrigued historians, including art historians, for a long time. Equally, the impressive career of the Delft microscopist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek has been studied by many historians of science. However, it has never been investigated who, at that time, had access to the mathematical and optical knowledge necessary for the impressive achievements of these Delft practitioners. We have tried to gain insight into Delft as a ‘node’ of optical knowledge by following the careers of three minor local figures in early seventeenth-century Delft. We argue that through their work, products, discussions in the vernacular and exchange of skills, rather than via learned publications, these practitioners constituted a foundation on which the later scientific and artistic achievements of other Delft citizens were built. Our Delft case demonstrates that these practitioners were not simple and isolated craftsmen; rather they were crucial components in a network of scholars, savants, painters and rich virtuosi. Decades before Vermeer made his masterworks, or Van Leeuwenhoek started his famous microscopic investigations, the intellectual atmosphere and artisanal knowledge in this city centered on optical topics.

Especially of interest is the authors’ tie between three optical practitioners who lived in Delft simultaneously with Vermeer. One of them, Jacob Spoors, was in 1674 the notary of Vermeer and his mother-in-law Maria Thins. Another was an acquaintance of Spoors, the military engineer Johan van der Wyck, who made an optical device in Delft in 1654, most likely a camera obscura. A report about the demonstration in nearby The Hague has been preserved. Van der Wyck also made telescopes and microscopes and an apparatus that probably was a kind of perspective box. As a telescope maker he was preceded by Evert Harmansz Steenwyck, brother-in- law of the Leiden painter David Bailly and father of two Delft still-life painters: Harman and Pieter Steenwyck. The latter was familiar with Vermeer’s father Reynier Jansz Vermeer, at a time when the young Vermeer was still living with his parents. According to the authors, this is the first real archival evidence that such a device existed in Delft during Vermeer’s life.

Yesterday, I went up to Edinburgh for the day to meet up with fellow PaperTigers blogger Sally Ito and her children, who are on holiday in Scotland at the moment. Despite the pretty miserable weather, we had a busy, fun-packed day.

Of course, following Sally’s post about Greyfriar’s Bobby last month, we had to visit the famous churchyard - here we are by the famous statue!

On the way there, we passed The Elephant House, now famous for being the place where J.K.Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone - and at the children’s behest we returned there later, which proved to be an absolute treat for an elephant-lover like me, as it is chock-a-block full of elephants from floor to ceiling - here we are, with elephant-shaped shortbread!

In between we visited the Camera Obscura and World of Illusions - here we all are in the thermal-imaging chamber… In the shop afterwards I found some beautiful Hiroshige pictures to make into Tatebanko, “the forgotten Japanese paper diarama”: they were certainly new to me but I’ve found this very interesting post about Tatebanko by artist Judith Hoffman (and what amazing metal books she creates!).

I also found a fantastic book for young (and old! - Older Brother, Younger Brother and my husband all loved it!) children: Gallop! by Rufus Butler Seder (Workman Publishing, 2007) - a “Scanimation Picture Book”. Without the moving images, this would be a charming board book for the very young, with interactive verse and good use of color and onomatopoeia:

Can you flutter like a butterfy?
Flittery-float-float!
Can you swim like a turtle?
Glippety-gloap-gloap

…and there’s a delightful twist to the poem at the end. But on top of all that, there are the truly wonderful moving images, which, magically, only work if you move the pages. Watch Seder talking about his Scanimation process on this video - fascinating! In the publication details at the front of the book, Seder “acknowledges some illustrations in this book are based on the motion photography pioneered by Eadweard Muybridge” - in fact, the cover itself pays homage to Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion

So all in all, we had a great day and have clocked up another real-life meeting among the PaperTigers Team!