- 期刊
早期電影的科學化－《科學》月刊與影戲機、照像術和夢的知識翻譯
Scientification of Early Cinema: The Science Monthly and Knowledge Translation of Cinematograph, Photography and Dream
摘要
本文藉一組圍繞《科學》月刊1916年10月號廖慰慈（1893-1951）譯〈活動影戲機與自然科學之關係〉的翻譯文本，望說明電影之甫入中國，在被認識為文藝或娛樂之前，首先被視作一種獲得客觀知識的科學方法。「活動影戲機」即電影攝影機（Cinematograph）。在個案文本中，涉及電影攝影術（Cinematography）和照像術（Photography）的光學原理及夢的生理機制如何互為科學解釋的文章尤其重要，這些文章共同表明視覺成像或幻象的背後總有科學原理；人可利用電影攝影技術，對時間的呈現施加主觀控制，藉此獲得對客觀事物的理性認識；線性的時間意識或由此打破。個案表明，在中國電影史早期，電影攝影術之成為專門知識，乃是與照像術逐漸剝離的過程。1910年代早期電影被視為科學，而1920年末至1930年電影在民國審查制度中卻被斥為迷信，此一落差亦值得發掘。
並列摘要
This paper synthesizes sources surrounding a partial Chinese translation of Leonard Donaldson's The Cinematograph and Natural Science (1912), published by Liao Wei-tzu (1893-1951) in the 1916 October issue of the academic journal The Science Monthly (Kexue, 1915-1949), to argue for a cognitive turning point in China when cinematography gained recognition as an empirical scientific method and the cinema as an exhibit of science. The scientification of cinema thus preceded but contrasted with the 1920s, in which cinema was primarily accepted as a form of art and entertainment in China. The translation of Donaldson's text and the explanatory marginalia that accompanies it reveal that the scientification of cinema was highly associated with two scientific themes notable not only in The Science Monthly but also in other similar journals: the optical mechanism of photographs and the physiological origin of dreams. These associations reveal the multi-faceted nature of the initial access of cinematography to the Chinese intellectual scene, where the cinema emerged as a sub-field of natural science, a method and an outcome of scientific discovery, a form of time manipulation, and a potential challenge to linear time. This short era where the cinema was made scientific stood in sharp contrast to a later time when the cinema was critiqued primarily as an art, and even later was ironically censored as superstition.