Panel 6

Spacetime I: Theoretical Physics and Film

Heinz Emigholz
Arianna Borrelli
Klaus Wyborny

Stephen Kovats

The panel was concerned with the relationship between film and spacetime. It examined how film thinks and represents space, considered what mental space film creates and promotes, and discussed the triangle “real space–film depiction–mental space of the viewer.” Camerawork functions as a filter between real space and the visual surface to be observed. Film becomes imaginary architecture in time in the mental space of the viewer. Historically, the film image and its possible effects appear on the scene at a time in which completely new ideas about space and time are also being raised in theoretical physics. The parallelism between the upheaval of thinking space and time through new physical knowledge and the everyday possibility of experiencing time as fragmented into its smallest components by media is one of the most astonishing developments of the twentieth century.

Moderator:
Heinz Emigholz (Filminstitut der Universität der Künste Berlin)
Panelists:
Arianna Borrelli (physics theorist, Bergische Universität Wuppertal)
Prof. Klaus Wyborny (Hochschule Mannheim)
Stephen Kovats (Kurator, r0g_media, Berlin)