The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft (Hardcover)

Description

As we spend more and more of our time staring at the screens of movies, televisions, computers, and handheld devices--"windows" full of moving images, texts, and icons--how the world is framed has become as important as what is in the frame. In The Virtual Window, Anne Friedberg examines the window as metaphor, as architectural component, and as an opening to the dematerialized reality we see on the screen.

In De pictura (1435), Leon Battista Alberti famously instructed painters to consider the frame of the painting as an open window. Taking Alberti's metaphor as her starting point, Friedberg tracks shifts in the perspectival paradigm as she gives us histories of the architectural window, developments in glass and transparency, and the emerging apparatuses of photography, cinema, television, and digital imaging. Single-point perspective--Alberti's metaphorical window--has long been challenged by modern painting, modern architecture, and moving-image technologies. And yet, notes Friedberg, for most of the twentieth century the dominant form of the moving image was a single image in a single frame. The fractured modernism exemplified by cubist painting, for example, remained largely confined to experimental, avant-garde work. On the computer screen, however, where multiple "windows" coexist and overlap, perspective may have met its end.

In this wide-ranging book, Friedberg considers such topics as the framed view of the camera obscura, Le Corbusier's mandates for the architectural window, Eisenstein's opinions on the shape of the movie screen, and the multiple images and nested windows commonly displayed on screens today. The Virtual Window proposes a new logic of visuality, framed and virtual: an architecture not only of space but of time.

Anne Friedberg is Professor of Critical Studies in the School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California. She is the author of Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern.

 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix
 
 Introduction 1
 
1. THE WINDOW 25
 
 Lens I: Descartes's Window 50
 
2. THE FRAME 59
 
 Lens II: Heidegger's Frame 94
 
3. THE AGE OF "WINDOWS" 101
 
 Lens III: Bergson's Virtual 140
 
4. THE SCREEN 149
 
 Lens IV: Virilio's Screen 182
 
5. THE MULTIPLE 191
 
 Conclusion: The Future of Windows
Smart Glass, Streaming Portals, and Screenless Images 240
 
 Postlogue 2005 245
 
 Notes 249
 
 Index 349
 

描述

隨著我們越來越多時間盯著電影、電視、電腦和手持設備的屏幕，充滿移動影像、文字和圖標的“窗口”變得與畫框中的內容一樣重要。在《虛擬窗口》一書中，安妮·弗里德伯格（Anne Friedberg）探討了窗口作為隱喻、建築組件和我們在屏幕上看到的非物質現實的開放性。

在1435年的《畫論》中，李奧納多·達·芬奇（Leon Battista Alberti）著名地指導畫家將繪畫的框架視為一個開放的窗口。以阿爾貝蒂的隱喻為起點，弗里德伯格追蹤了透視範式的變化，並介紹了建築窗戶的歷史、玻璃和透明度的發展，以及攝影、電影、電視和數字影像的新興設備。單點透視-阿爾貝蒂的隱喻窗口-長期以來一直受到現代繪畫、現代建築和移動影像技術的挑戰。然而，弗里德伯格指出，20世紀大部分時間裡，移動影像的主導形式是單一畫面中的單一影像。例如，立體派繪畫所體現的破碎現代主義主要局限於實驗性的前衛作品。然而，在電腦屏幕上，多個“窗口”共存並重疊，透視可能已經結束。

在這本廣泛的書中，弗里德伯格考慮了照相機暗箱的框架視圖、勒·柯布西耶（Le Corbusier）對建築窗戶的要求、艾森斯坦（Eisenstein）對電影屏幕形狀的看法，以及今天屏幕上常見的多個圖像和嵌套窗口。《虛擬窗口》提出了一種新的視覺邏輯，既有框架又有虛擬：一種不僅僅是空間而且是時間的建築。

安妮·弗里德伯格是南加州大學電影電視學院的批判研究教授，她是《櫥窗購物：電影與後現代》的作者。

目錄

致謝
導言
1. 窗口
鏡頭I：笛卡爾的窗口
2. 畫框
鏡頭II：海德格的框架
3. “窗口”的時代
鏡頭III：柏格森的虛擬
4. 屏幕
鏡頭IV：維里略的屏幕
5. 多重性
結論：窗口的未來
智能玻璃、流媒體門戶和無屏幕圖像
附錄：2005年
註釋
索引