Unfolding the Assemblage : Towards an Archaeology of 3D Systems

Recent scholarship around the topic of 3D mainly deals with the visual developments that have occurred in the medium during the 21st century. A common perception in these strands of research is that in comparison to the production workflows employed in the analogue era, the 3D compositions that are being crafted through the aid of the ever-evolving digital technology have made 3D develop for the better. Yet a question that nevertheless remains is how the technology itself employed to craft these compositions has evolved. Rather than focusing on the visual developments, the primary aim of this thesis is to render visible the processes and operations of the stereoscopic technology employed to realise this 3D imagery in the first place. Utilising a media archaeological approach indebted to Wolfgang Ernst’s notion of “reverse engineering” technical media objects, I intend to analyse the primary technical components of digital and analogue 3D recording, projection and viewing devices utilised in the production of stereoscopic motion pictures. Moreover, Jonathan Crary’s writings on “the observer” will be used to highlight the important role of the human subject in relation to these binocular media technologies. I conclude that despite the varying production contexts and traditions the digital and analogue formats have been developed in, the primary methods and techniques that characterise digital 3D recording, projection and viewing systems are not specifications simply invented from scratch during the digital age. Through close scrutiny of the stereoscopic systems’ configurations with the aid of Ernst’s media archaeological approach, we are able to trace these supposed developments of the digital age back to the 19th century, when 3D was first realised