Film scholar takes on illusion of motion

For Tom Gunning, chairman of the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago, the phenomenon of moving images — like those found in a flip book made of a series of slightly varied pictures — could not be more perplexing. That is precisely what makes it so fascinating to him.

On Wednesday, Gunning set out to discuss these issues in his lecture, “The Discovery of Virtual Movement.” In Penn Museum’s Rainey Auditorium, Gunning explored the invention of virtual motion and all of the intricate questions that come along with it. The event, which was a part of the Penn Humanities Forum, brought cinema studies back to its basics in a quest to understand the paradox of the virtual image.

“We can’t deal with film if we don’t deal with motion first,” said Gunning. So he began his lecture by discussing the 19th century processes of the movie image and how we experience its motion.

To illustrate how virtual images work, Gunning showed his audience a phenakistoscope disc, which is an early animation device that creates the illusion of motion when rotated. On the disc were images of a series of ballerinas, each one frozen in a slightly different pose. When the disc is rotated, however, the eye is tricked into seeing one dancer pirouette endlessly in an elegant dance.

“A virtual image is not the same as a painting or a photograph,” Gunning explained. “Those are material. The virtual image is intangible.”

Our fascination with the moving image, Gunning said, stems from its “playfulness and delight.” The viewer seems to hold movement in his or her hands, and there is something pleasurable about being able to “animate the inanimate.”

Bryn Mawr graduate student Johanna Gosse appreciated how Gunning was able to take such a complex issue of virtual movement and “pin it down once and for all.”

“He’s one of our most brilliant minds in visual culture and cinema studies,” Gosse said. “Hearing him speak is a really great pleasure.”

Penn alumna Lynne Strieb was also intrigued by Gunning’s speech. “My grandson loves animation, and now I understand what he’s doing a lot better,” she said. “When it all comes together, you don’t see the still images he creates. You see the motion as a whole.”

At the end of Gunning’s talk he summarized his perspective on the issue, tying up the complex conundrum of virtual movement in one fell swoop: “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the moving image is an illusion,” Gunning said, “but it’s a trick, a trophy, a turn, a transformation that surprises us.”

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