Largely before television got institutionalised as “a broadcast flow of illusions of motion controlled from outside for a scattered audience in the private sphere,” the notion of “seeing at a distance through technical means” has emerged as an idea, a discursive entity (in specialists’ writings as well as in popular culture), an experimental, tinkering practice and, finally, a technological marvel that was considered worthy of public attention. My attempt here will be to recover this particular stage in the life span of the medium from an intermedial perspective: in particular, I will address the formative years of Italian radio and its stabilization as a mass medium, from late Twenties to the early Thirties, during aproximately the same period when the idea of “distant vision” was shifting from what television historian R.W. Burns calls “the era of speculation (1877-1922)” to the earliest attempt in electro-mechanical transmissions (1926-1934). In doing so, I will consider the relation between radio and its alleged “visual equivalent” (by that time often named “radiovision”) by taking in account both the immaterial and material aspects involved, that is to say the expectations espressed by radio technicians and commentators in respect to the new medium as well as the concrete attempts to turn audio broadcasting technologies in means for image transmission.

Screening Radio or Broadcasting Cinema. How to Expose a Nameless Medium

Simone Dotto
2018-01-01

Abstract

Largely before television got institutionalised as “a broadcast flow of illusions of motion controlled from outside for a scattered audience in the private sphere,” the notion of “seeing at a distance through technical means” has emerged as an idea, a discursive entity (in specialists’ writings as well as in popular culture), an experimental, tinkering practice and, finally, a technological marvel that was considered worthy of public attention. My attempt here will be to recover this particular stage in the life span of the medium from an intermedial perspective: in particular, I will address the formative years of Italian radio and its stabilization as a mass medium, from late Twenties to the early Thirties, during aproximately the same period when the idea of “distant vision” was shifting from what television historian R.W. Burns calls “the era of speculation (1877-1922)” to the earliest attempt in electro-mechanical transmissions (1926-1934). In doing so, I will consider the relation between radio and its alleged “visual equivalent” (by that time often named “radiovision”) by taking in account both the immaterial and material aspects involved, that is to say the expectations espressed by radio technicians and commentators in respect to the new medium as well as the concrete attempts to turn audio broadcasting technologies in means for image transmission.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11390/1153856
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