Living in the Age of the World Motion Picture: Toward an Ecosophy of the Moving Image<\/strong><\/p>\nPhilosopher Martin Heidegger characterized the modern world as the “age of the world picture,” an era when the world itself became conquered by humanity as a picture or representation set fully and clearly before our gaze.<\/p>\n
In the 1960s, the first images of the Earth from space delivered a glimpse of a world picture that was global and ecological, but that also suggested humanity’s domination both of the earth (today) and of outer space (tomorrow). Fifty years later, we have not colonized other planets, but we might speak instead of the “age of the world motion<\/em> picture,” an era when our colonization extends both to imaginary planets (like Avatar<\/em>‘s Pandora) and to our very psyches and souls, and where we see both our world and our selves in turbulent and uncontrollable motion \u2013- on screens around the globe.<\/p>\nThe moving image has been with us just over a century, but over that time it seems the world itself has come to move faster and faster all around us. This talk will provide glimpses across that history, in its evolution from the first motion picture shorts to epics like\u00a0Avatar<\/em> (2009) and The Tree of Life<\/em> (2011), and to the proliferating liveliness of YouTube and its many digital relatives. Like Charles Darwin’s image of nature as an ever branching bush, a “tangled bank” so “interesting to contemplate,” cinema’s branching bush continues to become ever more interesting to contemplate.<\/p>\nFor cineaste and philosopher Gilles Deleuze, it was cinema that provided the greatest resource for reviving our lost \u201cbelief in this world.\u201d How is cinema faring today, on the cusp of a digital era that heightens the speed of life in every direction \u2013- through the uncertainties of global hyperfinance, the turbulence of cultural identity clashes and looming ecological collapses, and the rapid mutations of all manner of image, representation, spectacle and simulacrum?<\/p>\n
I will argue that the metaphysics most adequate for grasping the liveliness of this world of the moving image is a metaphysics of relational process — an aesthetics, ethics, and ecologics built on the insights of Charles S. Peirce, Alfred North Whitehead, and Gilles Deleuze.\n<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ll be giving the following talk next Wednesday, February 6, at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. It’s part of the series Where Are We Going, Walt Whitman? An Ecosophical Roadmap for Artists and Other Futurists. (The series looks incredible. I wish I could be there for all the other talks and events.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-1Gk","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6007,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/06\/07\/nature-the-popular-imagination-keynote\/","url_meta":{"origin":6468,"position":0},"title":"Nature & the Popular Imagination keynote","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 7, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's the abstract for the keynote I will be giving at Nature and the Popular Imagination in Malibu this August. It builds on my recent talk at Bucks College, but without the nod to pop-cultural interest in Avatar. THE AGE OF THE WORLD MOTION PICTURE starring the Cinematic Earth, with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6667,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/04\/22\/dark-earth-days\/","url_meta":{"origin":6468,"position":1},"title":"Dark earth days","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 22, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Composing a worthwhile Earth Day post takes more energy than I have today, so instead I'll link to Jeremy's Earth post at Struggle Forever!\u00a0 It articulates a thought I often feel on this day (surrounded as I get by students eager to maternalize the planet) but in a way that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Earth Day\"","block_context":{"text":"Earth Day","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/tag\/earth-day\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Earth_at_Night","src":"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/struggleforever.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Earth_at_Night.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1087,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/06\/10\/flight-patterns-earthrise-et-al\/","url_meta":{"origin":6468,"position":2},"title":"Flight Patterns, Earthrise, et al.","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 10, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Those links to some of the art pieces Andy Revkin has posted on Dot Earth could be easily missed on my previous post, so I'm posting them separately here. 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Since the talk I gave at the ISSRNC conference here was on immanence (specifically, Charles Taylor's concept of the 'immanent frame' and William Connolly's and others' immanent naturalism), there was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"3272263118_c6ff7e5b8c.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2009\/07\/3272263118_c6ff7e5b8c.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6063,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/08\/07\/earthset\/","url_meta":{"origin":6468,"position":4},"title":"Earthset?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"August 7, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"It's high time for an update here... I'm in Malibu for Nature and the Popular Imagination (conference program here), where I'll be giving a keynote on \"The Age of the World Motion Picture.\" I blogged about this part of the California coast the last time I was out here, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2012\/08\/300px-NASA-Apollo8-Dec24-Earthrise-e1344369947611-275x275.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7767,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/08\/27\/under-western-skies-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":6468,"position":5},"title":"Under Western Skies 3","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"August 27, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The preliminary program is up for the third\u00a0Under Western Skies conference, \"Intersections of Environments, Technologies, Communities,\" which will be held in a couple of weeks at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta. And it looks fantastic. 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