The collection of images seen in the ZeitEYE film were selected based on the following aims and criteria:
they were significant developments in the media arts (both in form and content – the technology and the content development)
they were expressions of key formative ideas and philosophies (in the sciences, the technologies and the arts)
they epitomised the period – the stars, celebrities, artists, thinkers who became iconic illustrations of their time (eg Noel Coward, Fred Astaire, Gloria Swanson, Charlie Chaplin, etc).
they illustrate some aspect of the convergence of media (in terms of multimedia, synaesthesia, immersion, interactivity etc) that can be seen as the developing strands of our contemporary broadband digital media. The invention of the digital computer in the mid-20th century is of course central to these ongoing and accelerating developments.
The images were collected over a period of about 15 years, and started with a lexical database created during the production of my second book on new media ‘The Cyberspace Lexicon’ (1994).
The images were collected from many sources, but predominantly from the Web/Net. Many of these images are public-domain. All copyright images are the property of their respective owners. They are used here in the spirit of ‘Fair Use’ as defined in Section 10 of the 1997 Copyright Act – ie in the film they only appear for just one-seventh of a second, and they are used in a not-for-profit film, for educational use only. The music is Ballet Mecanique by the US composer George Antheil – itself a revolutionary piece deploying factory sirens, bell-ringing and other non-musical sound-effects. It is a zeitgeist composition for early Modernism and the 20th Century. It is copyright Estate of George Antheil, and used with their permission.
ZeitEYE - a film on media innovation 