Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00810 by guest on 28 September 2021
ABSTRACT tricks in a laboratory at the Sorbonne. The camera was a was camera The Sorbonne. the at laboratory a in tricks performed they as magicians Parisianphotograph to Binet Alfred psychologist French the by enlisted was Demenÿ 1). (Fig. Marey Étienne-Jules physiologist French the of graphs—taken around 1893 by Georges Demenÿ, a colleague photo serial instantaneous chronophotographs—i.e. of for scientific research ratherthan public enjoyment” [1]. createdimages on based is itknown period, this fromentertainers earliest the is film the moving image long, of a magician—and unlike almost filmsall of seconds few a only though ing trick and more with its status as a historical artifact. “Al- wondrousness the with lessvanish- do footagetoofthe has aid of cinematic effects. For Wiseman,the significance of the the with spectacles fantasticproducing magiciansfeatured enchanted worlds created in early trick films,which typically the from differs markedly scene the simplicity of The stage. a on than rather backdrop blank a against set and chair a in seated is magician The fingertips. his fromvanish to ball a cause to appears who magician a of picture motion early an screening by subject his century.historicizedWiseman cognitive-scientific study of sleight-of-hand magic inthe 21st the on Museum Science London the at lecture a gave man In 2005, the British psychologist and magician Richard Wise processes relatedtotheexperienceofwonder. andhowbothuseopticaldevicesto“see”visual of discovery The authorfocusesonhowbothcasestreatthemagicianasamedium 2000s usingeye-trackingcamerasandotherdigital-imagingdevices. Binet’s studybycognitive(neuro)scientistsbeginningintheearly to studymagiciansinthe1890s.Thesecondisreanimationof is theFrenchpsychologistAlfredBinet’s useofchronophotography magic inthedomainofnontheatricalfilmandmedia.Thefirstcase of intersectionsbetweenimagingtechnologiesandsleight-of-hand intwocases exploresthetopicofscientificdiscovery This article Quicker ThantheEye? GENERAL ©2016 ISAST with thisissue. See
- - how work tricks [5]. “operationaldiscoveraesthetic,” to spectatorsinvites which an opportunity of learning by using what Neil Harris calls an as wonder of experience magician’s the shape the to ability for visual education” [4]. Thiseducative function stemsfrom force a but spectacle mindless just “conjuringnot that was revealed occult the than ratherentertainment and science with magic of affiliation an Enlightenment, the in ginning historian Barbara Stafford has argued convincinglythat, be- magiciansource a asthe of entertaining deceptions. The art of image popular the transformsthat responsewonder this in embedded layer rich a reveals perception human about but inexplicable the Isense nonetheless” [3]. acute uncertainty captured by the response, “I think I know, and the evidence of reason. This conflicttakes the form of an senses the of evidence the between spectators for conflict a stage tricks magic how highlight to mean I “wonder”With intersection ofthe magicians, scientists and opticaldevices. topicthe education wonder of on and focus I at Specifically [2]. magic’s discovery scientific of cinemasencounters with foregroundto dimension ofcurious further ita mine I ticle ar this in Solomon, Matthew by studies film in as well as Lachapelle, Sofie by psychology and science of history the technically and on level the of perception. both work, tricks magic how precisely determine to Binet allowed magician’s images the These ofmovements hands. ing still images of the apparently imperceptible quick-change magician’s conceit of being “quicker than the eye” by produc- mechanical vision, which offered apowerful response tothe “pre-cinematic” optical device privileged for the acuity of its investigative and educational uses of optical devices. Doing devices. investigativeopticalof educational uses and main of nontheatrical film and media, namelythe scientific, do the to magic of relevance the clarify to is perspective this from Binet revisiting in goal My wonders.magicians’ demystify to but audiencesenchant to not served magic of photographicrepresentationswhere site curious a is gation As a scientific response to this challenge, Binet’s challenge, investithis to response scientific a As knowledge of source a as Binet’s magic of identification in insightfully treated been has case Binet’sAlthough ENRO o.4,N.5 p 2–2,21 421 LEONARDO, Vol. 49, No.5,pp.421–427, 2016 - - - Fig. 1. A chronophotographic film in 23 frames representing a sleight-of-hand trick performed by Edouard-Joseph Raynaly. Credited to Georges Demenÿ, 1891–1894. © Iconothèque de l’INSEP, reproduced with permission.
this greatly expands the study of magic and the cinema be- manipulations of cognitive processes like attention. The ma- yond the trick film genre, which remains a guiding focus of gician’s use of cues—e.g. a glance, a false movement of the most outstanding film scholarship in this area. I also link hand or a phrase: Watch closely “here” or “there”—to misdi- this early case to the prominent return of magicians in recent rect the spectator’s attention away from “secret” techniques cognitive-scientific research, which uses digital-imaging de- promotes the spectator’s involuntary inattention to what is vices to visualize certain habits of vision and attention while essentially hidden in plain sight. Wonder occurs when this spectators watch moving images of magicians. Cultivating a misdirection allows for false impressions to develop, which dialogue between Binet’s study and its contemporary ana- Binet extended to explaining errors that occur regularly in logues in this way provides a basis for exploring the long our normal perceptual engagements with the world. history of magic in the cinema. The significance of the camera’s mechanical vision is latent in Binet’s reflections on the study of magic, but the experi- CHRONOPHOTOGRAPHY AND ment is largely animated by the fact that the magician and the SLEIGHT-OF-HAND MAGIC camera figure as competing devices of wonder. In addition to A total of five magicians were involved in Binet’s study but providing visual evidence of how the magicians performed only two consented to being recorded: the mononymous their tricks, the detecting eye of the camera emerged as an Arnould and Edouard-Joseph Raynaly, the magician who object of wonder. With regard to photographs of another appears in Wiseman’s film [6]. Of the seven tricks that Bi- of Raynaly’s card tricks, Binet notes the camera revealed an net mentions were photographed, a record of at least five apparently imperceptible movement of the magician’s hand sequences survives. All of these photographs are taken from between the cards and the spectator’s line of sight. This rev- roughly the perspective of the magician’s audience, on the elation had the unexpected result of enlightening the magi- premise that, because the scientist and the camera both saw cian, who was astonished to see when looking at the pictures independently, the results of their perceptions of the same that the movement, of which he had not previously been phenomenon could be compared. Upon analyzing the pho- conscious, worked as it did. It is as if the camera revealed tographs, Binet discovered that many of the sleights of hand that Raynaly had achieved such mastery of the performance were indeed executed very rapidly. A movement in one of that even to him his trick techniques had become imper- Raynaly’s quick-change card tricks, for example, was timed ceptible and automatic. With an interesting resemblance to at a mere 15/100 of a second. However, because the move- early medical training films and Frank and Lillian Gilbreth’s ments were never actually imperceptible, Binet concluded “cyclegraphic” studies of surgeons, here the mechanical eye that spectators do not compete with the quickness of the ma- of the camera educates the “expert eye” of the practitioner, gician but rather with their own susceptibility to suggestion who in Binet’s case happens to be a magician [9]. and a propensity to error in describing their perceptions. The magician wondering at himself through an optical As in similar contemporaneous experiments by psycholo- device positions chronophotography in such a way that the gists Max Dessoir, Norman Triplett and Joseph Jastrow, the camera verges, like the magician, on being the perfect me- magician appears in Binet’s study as a medium of discovery dium—capable of detecting precisely everything that passes [7]. In his article on the experiment, Binet claims that ex- before its eye [10]. As an object of wonder, however, the plaining how tricks work “helps us understand the normal camera’s vision is also shadowed by the same kind of un- process by which the mind perceives exterior objects and certainty generated by the magic that chronophotography reveals the weak points of our knowledge” [8]. Ultimately, was employed to demystify. The device offered Binet a tech- magic aided Binet in theorizing how errors of perception nique for transporting human vision to an unprecedented are conditioned not necessarily by follies of the eye but by plane of perceptual activity in which phenomena that were
422 Williamson, Quicker Than the Eye?
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00810 by guest on 28 September 2021 previously hidden in plain sight became newly visible. This by producing “cinematic” views of magic prompts the ques- technique of uprooting vision, an ecstatic mode of observa- tion of what this case contributes to our view of magic’s rela- tion characterized by going beyond the body virtually to see tion to early cinema culture. the unseen, exposed an unsettling gap of imperceptibility From a contemporary perspective, Binet’s renewal of that separates the observer from a reality that normally es- magic with an optical device moves significantly between capes detection by the human eye. the domains of early science films and magic in early cinema With regard to photographs of Raynaly performing a [13]. The scientific value of Binet’s photographs is readily ap- vanishing-egg trick, a disparity between what the spectator parent: The images lent a degree of mechanical “objectivity” saw and what the camera recorded was enough to compel to the investigation of an art that derives its power from the Binet to be disturbed by the fact that “in none of the im- manipulation of human subjectivity [14]. Less obvious and ages have the hands the natural movement they should have understandably less relevant to Binet, for whom the cam- in grasping an object” [11]. That the camera produced such era was a useful scientific tool, is the fact that the images an unnatural view was nothing new. By the 1890s instanta- harbor a strong affinity for the representations of magicians neous photography and serial photography, particularly as that proliferated several years later with the emergence of the the latter was developed by Étienne-Jules Marey and Ead- trick film genre, which used magic as a forum for displaying weard Muybridge, were well established as techniques for wondrous new cinematic effects. Although Binet’s images discovering other worlds within reality. As cinema scholars and trick films are radically different in appearance—e.g. like Jean-Louis Comolli and Tom Gunning among others the former are sterilized and “scientific” whereas the latter have observed, these worlds oftentimes appeared uncanny deal in enchantment and fantasy—the figure of the magi- because they could not be reconciled with nature as seen cian similarly stages chronophotography as something to be without the aid of optical devices [12]. The novelty of Binet’s wondered at because it, like the magician, reveals the world use of chronophotography was that it renewed how magic we think we know to be a site of profound uncertainty. was seen and understood by mechanizing the spectator’s act Binet’s case thus makes its home in the interstices be- of watching closely to detect how tricks work. That it did so tween science and art, education and entertainment. These
Fig. 2. Images showing spectators’ gazes plotted on video footage of Gustav Kuhn’s vanishing ball trick. In the sequence on top, the magician looks at the imaginary trajectory of the ball; at bottom, he does not. Reproduced from Current Biology Vol. 16, No. 22, Gustav Kuhn and Michael Land, “There’s More to Magic than Meets the Eye,” p. R951, © 2006, with permission from Elsevier.
Williamson, Quicker Than the Eye? 423
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00810 by guest on 28 September 2021 categories are unified by a discourse of wonder that the ma- map the precise paths of spectators’ gazes. To better analyze gician shapes as an opportunity for learning about the ob- the footage, the scientists reproduced the images in still se- scured and the unknown. This is evidenced by the fact that rial format, making visible the striking resemblance between chronophotography offered Binet a scientific technique for their research and Binet’s use of chronophotography (Fig. 2). demystifying his own experience of wondering at sleight-of- The images revealed that, during the false third toss (Fig. 2c), hand magic. Given the nature of this confluence of science, spectators typically focused on the magician’s gaze, which technology and magic, we can see how Binet’s experiment was directed at the implied movement of the ball. It was prefigures what has recently become a scientific approach to concluded from this that the magician’s ability to astonish visualizing the activities of the eye related to the experience audiences is largely determined by the influence of expecta- of wonder. tions and social cues, like the magician’s gaze, which shape perceptions of phenomena that may or may not have cor- FROM BINET TO NEUROMAGIC: SEEING VISION responding real-world referents. In the last decade, this pre-cinematic interest in magic has Kuhn’s work is part of a larger body of research that uses returned prominently in scientific studies of visual cognition these techniques to visualize the spectator’s “attentional spot- that employ a variety of “new” media—namely digital imaging light” or “focus of suspicion” [16]. This is demonstrated by technologies—to visualize the invisible operations of the vi- another of Kuhn’s image studies of a similar vanishing trick sual system. Although Binet’s experiment is more of a specter in which the spectator’s attention to certain details within than a point of engagement in this research, there are several the visual field (the dotted-line circles) causes other, more significant analogues that reveal how the domain of magic and significant details to fall out of the metaphorical spotlight of science continues to be animated by the educative potential of what is consciously perceived (the solid line circles) (Fig. 3). encounters between optical devices and magicians. Along with Kuhn’s eye-tracking footage, these images con- In a variation on Raynaly wondering through chrono- jure a significantly new dimension from the scientific vision photography at the mechanics of his performance, recent that chronophotography afforded Binet. By using optical research has been conducted by psychologists who are plac- devices to analyze magicians’ techniques and to record the ing their backgrounds as magicians in the service of scientific act of watching closely, the spectator’s vision is literally pro- inquiry. These magician-psychologists have made prominent jected, thrown forth like an image from a movie projector use of specialized cameras to study habits of vision and at- and made visible, such that the scientist is able to “see vision” tention that are foregrounded in watching sleight-of-hand during the act of viewing moving images of magic. magic. In the early 2000s, Gustav Kuhn conducted a series Scientists John Henderson and Tim Smith have expanded of experiments in which participants were asked to watch this research to include studies of spectatorship in moving videos of him performing various tricks. One of the videos image culture, broadly construed. As part of their Dynamic depicted an illusion in which the magician, after tossing a Images and Eye Movements (DIEM) project, Henderson and ball in the air twice, causes the ball to vanish during a third Smith have produced some fascinating empirical demonstra- toss. According to Kuhn, despite the fact that the ball is not tions of how vision and attention work while watching a film actually present in the final toss, a large percentage of the [17]. A recent example, which has garnered the interest of participants reported that they actually saw the ball appear in cinema scholar David Bordwell, is the use of infrared eye- the air and then vanish near the magician’s head [15]. tracking cameras to visualize the behaviors of spectators’ eyes To account for how participants arrived at this descrip- as they watched a scene from Paul Thomas Anderson’s narra- tion of their perception, Kuhn collaborated with scientist tive filmThere Will Be Blood (2007). An analysis of the scene Michael Land and used an eye-tracking camera to plot the is beyond the scope of this essay, but the technical aspects eye movements of spectators as they watched the video of of the study are relevant. In a moving image of the com- the magician. The resulting footage consists of moving im- bined eye-tracking data for 11 spectators, circles representing ages of the trick overlaid with moving white markers that the movements of the eyes actually grow in size relative to
Fig. 3. Diagram showing zones of attention and inattention during Gustav Kuhn’s vanishing cigarette trick. Reprinted from Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol. 12, No. 9, Gustav Kuhn, Alym Amlani, and Ronald Rensink, “Towards a Science of Magic,” p. 350. © 2008, with permission from Elsevier.
424 Williamson, Quicker Than the Eye?
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00810 by guest on 28 September 2021 Fig. 4. Screen capture of eye-tracking footage produced by DIEM researchers in 2010 showing the gaze locations of 11 spectators watching a scene from There Will Be Blood (Anderson, 2007). © 2010 (CC-SA-NC) The DIEM Project, reproduced with permission from the DIEM Project Internet database at
the length of time a detail in the image holds the attention right of the screen, in the next shot she will enter the screen (Fig. 4). Smith has interpreted this data using “dynamic heat from the left—and matching characters’ gazes to objects or maps,” which transform the eye-tracking images into zones other characters within the story world. These techniques of attention (represented by the warmer colors) and inatten- allow the spatial and temporal continuity of a scene to un- tion (represented by the cooler colors and the black) (Color fold across “cuts”—where two different sequences of images Plate C). In both cases optical devices revealed that, as in are joined—in such a way that the editing goes unnoticed the perception of tricks, shifts in spectators’ “attentional [19]. Henderson and Smith have used eye-tracking cameras spotlights” corresponded strongly with cues given by actors’ to analyze the related phenomenon of “edit blindness,” the movements and gazes. spectator’s failure to detect cuts or notice changes between To be precise, what is being measured is the behavior of shots if the changes are not disorienting and do not “violate the human eye, which Smith and Bordwell see as useful for expectations” [20]. Because continuity edits are never un- developing a better understanding of how spectators experi- detectable but rather promote the impression of continuity, ence film and for scientifically “testing” cognitive film theory. Smith has noted the resemblance between how these edits Smith’s analyses generated visual evidence of how techniques work and the magician’s ability to manipulate the spectator’s of staging—e.g. the positioning and framing of actors, the gaze and attention away from the labor involved in perform- timing and objects of actors’ gazes—control a spectator’s vi- ing a trick. The crucial difference is that in continuity editing sion so as to guide the attention to the most important story the transitions between shots remain hidden in plain sight information and, ultimately, to “direct” the interpretation of because the goal, unlike in the magic performance, is not to a film. As with the ability of the magician to manipulate vi- cause spectators to wonder at how continuity is achieved [21]. sion and attention, visual cues were revealed to be strikingly Interestingly, related neuroscientific studies of magic—or powerful, as the eye movements of the 11 spectators watching “neuromagic”—are aiming the gaze of imaging technologies the scene were mostly “synchronized” by where the actors inward to visualize the brain activities associated with the were looking. However, Smith’s footage also revealed that this experience of watching magicians. Along with scientists Ste- power to manipulate spectators was complemented by the phen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde, Kuhn and his fact that spectators’ eyes were constantly scanning the scene colleagues have been exploring how magicians’ violations of independently of dominant visual cues. This activity con- expectations about cause-and-effect relations affect the brain. firmed Bordwell’s idea that vision in the cinema is active and In one experiment participants were studied with fMRI tech- influenced significantly by desires, expectations and “tasks” nology as they watched video clips of magic tricks. The re- that are set by the mind every second. Because one of the pri- sulting neuroimages were used to develop a “neurobiology mary tasks in watching most movies is the comprehension of of disbelief”—an account of those parts of the brain that are narrative, the scanning of the scene from There Will Be Blood activated by the conflict that magicians stage between the was interpreted as evidence of the spectators searching, like evidence of the senses and the evidence of reason [22]. As a detectives, for relevant story information [18]. poignant variation on the idea that the magician is “a force DIEM research also has significant implications for the for visual education,” the scientists claim that this investi- study of classical continuity or “invisible” editing techniques. gation of magic provides insight into both the brain’s rapid Among these techniques are matching characters’ move- negotiation of uncertain visual phenomena and the processes ments between shots—e.g. if a character exits a shot to the related to “learning from novel/unexpected events” [23].
Williamson, Quicker Than the Eye? 425
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00810 by guest on 28 September 2021 CONCLUSION Although recent attempts to theorize the mind through trick films, they do not use magic to display novel cinematic magic mark an exciting new phase in a long genealogy of trick techniques; rather they preserve magic tricks as attrac- which Binet’s case is only a part, the cinematic value of these tions in and of themselves by representing the magician in cases warrants further consideration. Shadowing this gene- the mode of an actuality [24]. Although preserving tricks is alogy is the fact that optical devices have consistently been not the objective in scientific studies of magic, considering used to study spectators’ encounters with “representations” such scientific images to be part of a long genealogy of films of magicians rather than with “live” performances of magic. of tricks is useful for exploring other histories of magic in Whether the distinction is relevant from a scientific per- the cinema, namely representations of magicians produced spective is unclear, but it confirms that these cases occupy not for theatrical effect but for research and educational an important if underexplored place in cinema and media purposes. studies. Additionally, that science and magic continue to These representations offer an opportunity to rediscover a converge around optical devices suggests that this field has dimension of magic that remains somewhat marginalized in much to contribute to the pursuit of understanding the hu- cinema and media studies. In the 19th and early 20th centu- man through representational technologies, a project that ries, the figure of the “magic professor” circulated widely as has been central to developments in cinematic media for part of magicians’ attempts to garner the respectability of the more than a century. scientific and academic communities. Although this title is Without denying the scientific values of investigating largely considered to be superficial, scientific investigations magic, an equally rich dimension is the potential for these of magic suggest that magicians have much to teach us about cases to greatly expand the field of magic and the cin - how we see and come to know the world through technol- ema. Whereas film historian Jacques Deslandes identified ogy. Acknowledging this allows us in turn to see magicians, Demenÿ’s photographs as the first trick films ever made, particularly in the domain of cinema and related media, both these images also harbor a strong affinity for what Matthew as entertainers and as educators, whose potential as “media” Solomon calls “films of tricks.” For Solomon, films of tricks of discovery mirrors that of the optical devices used to in- dating back to 1896 are distinguished by the fact that, unlike vestigate and represent them.
Acknowledgments lation, see Alfred Binet, “Psychology of Prestidigitation,” Smithson- ian Report (1896) p. 555. All quotations are my translations. The page I would very sincerely like to thank Tom Gunning, James Lastra, Peter numbers refer to the French version. Bloom, Murray Pomerance and two anonymous reviewers for their in- sightful feedback on this project. I am also grateful for the support of 7 Max Dessoir, “The Psychology of Legerdemain,” The Open Court the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and l’Institut National du (23 March–20 April, 1893); Norman Triplett, “The Psychology of Sport, de l’Expertise et de la Performance in Paris, France. Conjuring Deceptions,” The American Journal of Psychology Vol. 11, No. 4 (July 1900) pp. 439–510; Joseph Jastrow, “Psychological Notes Upon Sleight-of-Hand Experts,” Science Vol. 3, No. 71 (May 1896) pp. References and Notes 685–689; and Joseph Jastrow, “The Psychology of Deception,” The Popular Science Monthly Vol. 34, No. 10 (December 1888) pp. 145–157. 1 Richard Wiseman, “The First Film of a Magician,” Genii Vol. 69, No. 4 (April 2006) p. 36. 8 Binet [6] p. 904. In the original French, “cette étude nous renseigne sur la marche ordinaire de notre pensée pendant que nous percevons 2 Sofie Lachapelle, “From the Stage to the Laboratory: Magicians, les objects extérieurs, et nous découvre les points faibles de notre Psychologists, and the Science of Illusion,” Journal of the History of connaissance.” the Behavioral Sciences Vol. 44, No. 4 (Autumn 2008) pp. 319–334; Matthew Solomon, Disappearing Tricks: Silent Film, Houdini, and the 9 My reference to the “expert eye” is from Scott Curtis, “Images of Ef- New Magic of the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Illinois ficiency: The Films of Frank B. Gilbreth,” inFilms That Work: Indus- Press, 2010) pp. 20–24. trial Film and the Productivity of Media, eds. Vinzenz Hediger and Patrick Vonderau (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009) 3 Tom Gunning uses this idea in his seminal theory of early film spec- pp. 85–99. See also Scott Curtis, “Dissecting the Medical Training tatorship when he claims that the cinema was received like a trick Film,” in Beyond the Screen: Institutions, Networks and Publics of with an “I know, but yet I see” response. Tom Gunning, “An Aesthetic Early Cinema, eds. Marta Braun, Charlie Keil, Rob King, Paul Moore of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator,” in and Louis Pelletier (New Barnet, UK: John Libbey Publishing Ltd., Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film, ed. Linda Williamson (New 2012) pp. 161–167. On related uses of film by the French surgeon Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995) p. 117. I have added the Eugène Louis Doyen, see Thierry Lefebvre, La Chair et le celluloïd: term “inexplicable” to emphasize an impulse to explain how tricks le cinéma chirurgical du docteur Doyen (Brionne: Jean Doyen, 2004). work. 10 Binet [6] pp. 921–922. 4 Barbara Maria Stafford, “Conjuring: How the Virtuoso Romantic Learned from the Enlightened Charlatan,” Art Journal Vol. 52, No. 2 11 Binet [6] p. 922. Original French: “Dans aucune des images les mains (Summer 1993) p. 28. n’ont la position réelle qu’elles devraient avoir pour saisir un object.” 5 See Neil Harris, Humbug: The Art of P.T. Barnum (Chicago: Univer- 12 Jean-Louis Comolli, “Machines of the Visible,” in The Cinematic sity of Chicago Press, 1973) pp. 59–89. Apparatus, ed. Teresa de Lauretis and Stephen Heath (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980) pp. 121–142; Tom Gunning, “Never Seen 6 Binet also lists the magicians Pierre, Dickson and Georges Méliès. This Picture Before: Muybridge in Multiplicity,” in Muybridge and Alfred Binet, “La Psychologie de la prestidigitation,” Revue des deux the Instantaneous Photography Movement, by Phillip Prodger (New mondes Vol. 54, No. 125 (October 1894) p. 904. For the English trans- York: Oxford University Press, 2003) pp. 222–272; and Tom Gunning,
426 Williamson, Quicker Than the Eye?
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00810 by guest on 28 September 2021 “Invisible Worlds, Visible Media,” in Brought to Light: Photography Scenes,” Journal of Eye Movement Research Vol. 2, No. 2 (2008) and the Invisible, 1840–1900, ed. Corey Keller (New Haven, CT: Yale pp. 1–17; Tim Smith, “The Attentional Theory of Cinematic Continu- University Press, 2008) pp. 51–63. it y,” Projections Vol. 6, No. 1 (2012) pp. 1–27; and Tim Smith, “Watch- ing You Watch Movies: Using Eye Tracking to Inform Cognitive Film 13 Laurent Le Forestier notes the fluid boundaries between trick films Theory,” inPsychocinematics: Exploring Cognition at the Movies, ed. and popular science films in the early 1900s. See Laurent Le Forestier, Arthur P. Shimamura (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) “Une Disparition instructive: Quelques hypothèses sur l’évolution pp. 165–191. des ‘scènes à trucs’ chez Pathé,” 1895: Revue de l’association fran- çaise de recherche sur l’histoire du cinema No. 27 (September 1999) 21 Tim Smith, “An Attentional Theory of Continuity Editing” (PhD pp. 61–73. diss., University of Edinburgh, 2006) pp. 87–88. 14 For more on issues of scientific objectivity see Lorraine Daston and 22 Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde, Sleights of Mind: Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2010). What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday De- ceptions (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2010); and Ben A. Par- 15 See Gustav Kuhn, Alym Amlani, and Ronald Rensink, “Towards ris, Gustav Kuhn, Guy Mizon, Abdelmalek Benattayallah, and Tim a Science of Magic,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol. 12 (2008) Hodgson, “Imaging the Impossible: An fMRI Study of Impossible pp. 349–354. Causal Relationships in Magic Tricks,” NeuroImage Vol. 45 (2009) 16 See Stephen Macknik, Mac King, James Randi, Apollo Robbins, pp. 1033–1039. Teller, John Thompson, and Susana Martinez-Conde, “Attention and 23 Parris et al. [22] p. 1038. Awareness in Stage Magic: Turning Tricks into Research,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience Vol. 9, No. 11 (November 2008) pp. 871–879; 24 Jacques Deslandes, Le Boulevard du cinéma à l’époque de Georges and Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknik, “Magic and Méliès (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1963) p. 17; and Solomon [2] p. 65. the Brain,” Scientific American Vol. 299, No. 6 (December 2008) pp. 72–79. Manuscript received 13 August 2013. 17 See
18 See Bordwell’s series of blog postings at:
Williamson, Quicker Than the Eye? 427
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00810 by guest on 28 September 2021 COLOR PLATE C COLOR PLATE COLOR PLATE C: QUIC KER THAN THE EYE? A COLOR PLATE
Using infrared eye-tracking cameras to visualize the behaviors of spectators’ eyes as they watched a scene in a movie and then interpreting this data using “dynamic heat maps,” which transform the eye-tracking images into zones of attention (represented by the warmer colors) and inattention (represented by the cooler colors and the black), DIEM researchers in 2010 transformed the footage from Fig. 4 (page 425) to create this screen capture. (© 2010 [CC-SA-NC] The DIEM Project, reproduced with permission from the DIEM Project Internet database at
395
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00810 by guest on 28 September 2021