The screen test 1915–1930:how stars were born

This article examines the emergence of the screen test as a cultural phenomenon during the silent era in the US and Europe and its role in the development of the star system. The lore that grew up around the screen test almost from its inception held out the possibility for members of the public to cross a threshold into the rarefied world of celebrity. The screen test itself is situated in the liminal space not only between audience and actor, but also between fiction and non-fiction, Europe and Hollywood, the silent era and the talkies, and the public and private spheres. In order to trace the ways in which the screen test as such was narrativized and conceptualized in its foundational stages, this article will analyse accounts from Hollywood and European fan magazines of the silent era, including articles, short fiction, and early cinema apocrypha. The article culminates in a discussion of the film Prix de Beauté / Beauty Prize (Augusto Genina, 1930), which starred Louise Brooks, herself a transnational film icon whose film career spanned the divide between Hollywood and Europe. The film’s final scene, in which a beauty queen is shot dead by her jealous husband as she watches a screen test of herself, has been invoked by a number of film scholars as an allegory of the work performed by cinema, which preserves and disseminates the image of the star far beyond the actor’s physical presence. Speaking to historical conditions of star-making while also capturing its resonance in cultural mythology, the conclusion of Prix de Beauté allows us to consider the origins and functions of screen test discourse itself

The Location of the Image: Cinematic Projection and Scale in Modernity

產於十九世紀動態顯影的早期機器(頻閃動影盤(phenakistoscope)、活化動片(zoetrope)、手翻動畫書(flip book)等)投放能以手操弄且一次只供一個或一小群觀眾觀賞的小型影像。隨著電影的發展，產生了視覺對觸覺、抽象對物質，關鍵性，雖未臻全面的取代，這是在現代性中一個往消弭影像物質性，令無物的影像散佈、交換的運動。電影院把影像放大比例給觀眾看時，顯示活動幻影的製作，已從摸得到又可擁有的玩具商品，過渡到代表二十世紀影像製作與傳播的大規模形式；同時，前衛藝術家以投映的去物化，將投映的過程當作能夠躲避商品論宰制的新美學語言。納吉(Laszlo Moholy-Nagy)、雷傑(Fernand L?ger)、夢雷(Man Ray)、杜象(Marcel Duchamp)等早期前衛藝術家對光線、反射與投影的眷戀，正是對活動攝像現代性中的身體和地點的再度深探。1960與1970年代，受到早期前衛藝術的影響，前衛電影恢復對投影及以光線為媒介的執著。沃荷(Andy Warhol)、麥考(Anthony McCall)，以及1960年代拍製「閃光電影」(flicker films)的導演，皆關心投映影像的衝擊與效果。本文以精神分析理論與影像逐漸去物化的歷史蹤跡為框架，探討投映與投映衍生出的各類影像實踐。Early machines for the representation of movement produced in the 19th century (the phenakistoscope, the zoetrope, the flip book, etc.) involved small images that could be manipulated by hand and viewed by only one or several spectators at a time. With the development of the cinema, there is a crucial although incomplete displacement of touch by sight, materiality by abstraction–a movement toward dematerialization of the image that circulates and is exchanged in modernity. While the projection of an image on a large scale, in theaters, to a mass audience, marked a transition from the production of an illusion of movement as toy, as tangible and possessible commodity, to the spectacular forms of image production and dissemination characterizing the 20th century, that process of projection was also perceived, by the avant-garde, as a distinctly new aesthetic language, capable of dodging, in its dematerialization, the discourse of commodification. The fascination of the historical avant-garde—of Moholy-Nagy, of L?ger, of Man Ray and Duchamp—with light, reflection, and projection, can be seen as an engagement with the intensive rethinking of location and bodies in a cinematographic modernity. In the 1960s and 1970s, the filmic avant-garde, in a move deeply influenced by the historical avant-garde, resuscitated an obsession with projection and with light as medium. Andy Warhol, Anthony McCall, and the filmmakers who produced “flicker films” in the 1960s, were all concerned with the impact and effects of the fact that the cinematic image is projected. This article is an investigation of projection and its various ramifications in filmmaking practice, in psychoanalytic theory, and in a historical trajectory which traces the increasing dematerialization of images

A design study for the ECH launcher for ITER

The Design Description Document for ITER calls for 50 MW of electron cyclotron power at a frequency of 170 GHz, upgradeable to 100 MW. This power is intended to heat the plasma from Ohmic temperatures to ignition, in concert with power from some combination of neutral injection and/or ICRF heating. The second major application of ECH power is current drive. In the advanced steady-state scenarios, the total current is 12 to 16 MA, of which 75% is driven by bootstrap effects. The current drive requirement is 2 to 3 MA at a relative minor radius of 0.7, plus a small current near the center of the discharge. ECH power is also used for plasma initiation and startup, using a separate ECH system of two fixed frequencies between 90 to 140 GHz and total power to 6 MW. Suppression or control of MHD instabilities like neoclassical tearing modes, sawteeth, ELMs, and locked modes are also important objectives for the ECH systems. However, the launching and power characteristics of the ECH for these applications is highly specialized. The ability to modulate at high frequency (at least several tens of kHz), the ability to redirect the beams with precision at relatively high speed, and the requirement that the stabilization be carried out at the same time as the bulk heating and current drive imply that separate and specialized ECH systems are needed for the stabilization activities. For example, for stabilization of neoclassical tearing modes current must be driven inside the islands near the q = 2 surface. If this is done near the outboard mid plane, a system with optimized frequency might be much more effective than what could be done with the main 170 GHz system. This paper does not treat the launchers for the stabilization systems

Successive Oligopolies, Vertical Downstream Integration and Foreclosure

Vertically integrated firms have repeatedly been accused of abusing a dominant position by refusing to sell the intermediate product to non-integrated downstream producers and thus to practice foreclosure. To evaluate the merit of such an accusation requires an adequate theory of vertical integration which allows to decide whether a refusal to sell follows straightforwardly from profit maximization or is driven by an intent to monopolize. We investigate whether in the case of successive oligopolies vertical integration is profitable for the participating firms and to what extent cross deliveries between integrated and non-integrated firms can be expected to arise. By contrast to the previous literature where at the downstream level Cournot competition has been assumed to prevail between integrated firms and non-integrated downstream producers, we propose a model where integrated firms and non-integrated upstream suppliers meet in Cournot competition and take as given the inverse demand function for both the final and the intermediate product. Game theory is invoked to examine whether an integrated firm will participate in the intermediate market. If marginal costs at the downstream level are constant and identical as between integrated and non-integrated firms, integrated firms will never wish to sell to non-integrated downstream producers they can, however, be expected to buy from non-integrated upstream suppliers. Utilizing theoretical implications regarding pass through of changes in marginal costs we find empirical evidence supporting the applicability of our model to the gasoline industry in Germany. We finally examine to what extent issues of competition policy and public regulation arise. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2005Oligopoly, vertical integration, foreclosure,