Frozen Moments and Motion Flow. The Inverted Panorama within Digital Media Culture

Abstract

For the 1999 film The Matrix, John Gaeta created a new visual effect, known as “bullet time.” This effect, also called frozen moment, dead time or flow motion, is based on a series of photographic cameras arranged around the subject in a 360-degree circle and triggered at the same moment or sequentially. Stitched together and processed through a computer program, the still images are then animated by the introduction of a virtual camera that orbits around the frozen scene. In terms of production and reception, the bullet time can be described as an inverted panorama. While digital panoramas, such as QuickTime VR, Google Street View and Photosynth, provide 360-degree image environments that are captured and explored from a central viewpoint, bullet time places the cameras – and thus the viewer – around the subject, enabling the eye to examine it from all angles and positions. Technologically, theoretically, and historically, such images actually have a lot in common with the panoramic formats mentioned above. Composed of numerous still photographs they offer the experience of an overall space through which one navigates virtually in order to create what Walter Benjamin called the panoptic view: “Not only does one see everything, but one sees it in all ways.” The hovering between frozen time and motion flow, the combination of photographic fragments and continuous movement as well as the simulation of visual control in the form of an all-encompassing perception, locate the bullet time in a complex historical framework including chronophotography, panorama, photo-sculpture, film and, more recently, digitally produced videos and immersive environments. Situating the bullet time at the core of this (inter-)media history, I propose to understand this special effect as both an example and a touchstone of the various uses, techniques, and purposes of panoramic images within digital media culture