Landecker Hannah
University of California, Los Angeles, USA.
Sci Context. 2011 Sep;24(3):381-416. doi: 10.1017/s0269889711000160.
Film scholars have long posed the question of the specificity of the film medium and the apparatus of cinema, asking what is unique to cinema, how it constrains and enables filmmakers and audiences in particular ways that other media do not. This question has rarely been considered in relation to scientific film, and here it is posed within the specific context of cell biology: What does the use oftime-based media such as film coupled with the microscope allow scientists to experience that other visualization practices do not? Examining three episodes in the twentieth-century study of the cell, this article argues that the apparatus ofmicrocinematography constitutes what might be thought of as a technical portal to another world, a door that determines the experience of the world that lies on the other side of it. In this case, the design of apparatuses to capture time-lapsed images enabled the acceleration of cellular time, bringing it into the realm of human perception and experience. Further, the experience of the cellular temporal world was part of a distinct kind of cell biology, one that was focused on behavior rather than structure, focused on the relation between cells, and between the cell and its milieu rather than on cell-intrinsic features such as chromosomes or organelles. As such, the instruments and technical design of the microcinematographic apparatus may be understood as a kind of materialized epistemology, the history of which can elucidate how cinema was and is used to produce scientific knowledge.
电影学者长期以来一直提出电影媒介和电影设备的特殊性问题，询问电影的独特之处是什么，它如何以其他媒介所没有的特定方式限制和促使电影制作人和观众。这个问题在科学电影方面很少被考虑，而在此它是在细胞生物学的特定背景下提出的：电影等基于时间的媒介与显微镜结合使用能让科学家体验到其他可视化实践所不能体验到的什么？通过审视二十世纪细胞研究中的三个片段，本文认为显微电影摄影设备构成了一种可被视为通向另一个世界的技术门户，一扇决定其另一侧世界体验的门。在这种情况下，用于捕捉延时图像的设备设计使得细胞时间得以加速，将其带入人类感知和体验的领域。此外，细胞时间世界的体验是一种独特的细胞生物学的一部分，这种细胞生物学关注行为而非结构，关注细胞之间以及细胞与其环境之间的关系，而非诸如染色体或细胞器等细胞内在特征。因此，显微电影摄影设备的仪器和技术设计可被理解为一种物质化的认识论，其历史能够阐明电影过去和现在是如何被用于产生科学知识的。
