Pervasive screens: Transforming the consumption of cinema history with the Curzon Heritage App

Crofts, Charlotte

Abstract

This paper presents a practice-based research project based at the Curzon Community Cinema, Clevedon, home of the Curzon Collection, an archive of cinema projectors donated by the Projected Picture Trust. The original cinema was built in 1912 and is one of the oldest, continuously operating, purpose-built cinemas in the world. They have recently won a Heritage Lottery Fund to renovate the building and reinterpret the collection and I am working closely with them to develop a "Heritage Application" for the iPhone, which pilots a number of “locative” or “context-aware” technologies (GPS, WiFi, RFID, QR Codes, motion sensors) that will enhance their new exhibit, enabling visitors to gain further insight into the history of the building, projection equipment and cinema itself.

The paper explores how the Curzon Heritage App seeks to use locative media to add depth to the everyday architecture of the cinema beyond that which is immediately apparent. One of the key aims of the project is to use pervasive media as the context within which to critically explore both the new and the old “apparatus” of seeing (as theorised by Comolli, Metz, de Lauretis, et al in the 1970s), and the ways in which we both remember and imagine them. At its heart, then, the project is concerned with the interface between cultural memory and the technological imaginary of the moving image.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Screen International Annual Conference
• Start Date: Jul 1, 2011
• End Date: Jul 3, 2011
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 8, 2019
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: screen, Curzon Memories App, locative media, cinema history, screen heritage, cinema technology, projection, projectors, new media, convergence, locative media, pervasive media
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/961138
• Related Public URLs: http://www.gla.ac.uk/services/screen/conference2011/
• Additional Information: Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : Screen International Annual Conference