Cubism and Futurism ― Spiritual Machines and the Cinematic Effect

Cubism and futurism were closely related movements that viedwith each other in the economy of renown. Perception, dynamism, and thedynamism of perception?these were the issues that passed back and forth betweenthe two. Cubism, Futurism, and Technologies of the Spirit: Spiritual Machines and the Cinematic Effect shows how movement became, in the traditional visual arts, a central factor with theadvent of the cinema: gone were the days when an artwork strived merely to liftexperience out the realm of change and flow.

The cinema at this time was understood as an electric art,akin to X-rays, coloured light, and sonic energy. In this book, celebratedfilmmaker and author Bruce Elder connects the dynamism that the cinema made anessential feature of the new artwork to the new science of electromagnetism.Cubism is a movement on the cusp of the transition from the Cartesian world ofstandardized Cartesian coordinates and interchangeable machine parts to aGalvanic world of continuities and flows. In contrast, futurism embracedcompletely the emerging electromagnetic view of reality.

Cubism, Futurism, and Technologies of the Spirit examines the similarity and differences betweenthe two movements? engagement with the new science of energy and shows that thenotion of energy made central to the new artwork by the cinema assumed aspiritual dimension, as the cinema itself came to be seen as a pneumaticmachine.