Victor Cox

Victor Cox (left) and his father James Newton Cox, were originally monumental stonemasons who projected moving pictures in the town hall.  They built the Picture House, the first cinema to be built on the site of the Curzon Community Cinema, Clevedon (UK), in 1912.  At one point in the Curzon Memories App we meet George Dimond who worked for Cox as a “button boy” whilst still a school boy in the 1930s – the name button boy comes from the uniform he wore with brass buttons up the front.  Dimond’s duties included showing people to their seats with a torch and crawling through a trap door to open the curtains on the projetionist’s signal at the start of the show.  He was also responsible for plugging the hard of hearing into the cinema’s audio system up on the balcony.  He used to work from 5-11pm every school night and Cox sometimes asked him to work for free for on a Saturday as well.  He describes Cox as “the meanest man in Clevedon, he was tighter than the wallpaper on the wall”.  So I imagine Cox, on overhearing George’s version of him, barking, “Dimond! You stupid boy, go and wire Mr Calderwell up for sound!”  - it was hard to resist an intertextual reference to Ian’s role as “stupid boy” Pike.  

Wedding of James Newton Cox to Blanche Harwood, with the young Victor Cox on the right

In contrast, Cox’s stepmother, Blanche Cox, nee Harwood, is described by George’s wife Kathleen as “the nicest woman you could ever hope to meet”.  According to Maurice Thornton’s book, The Everlasting Picture House, Blanche had been an operatic diva prior to her marriage to James Newton Cox (left), his third wife, and her stepson Victor stayed with her after his father’s death until she died.  They continued to run the cinema until the end of the Second World War, in 1945.

Kathleen Dimond, who worked for the Coxes in their grand home on Dial Hill Road (below), remembers Blanche singing during the interval occasionally.

The Coxes' house on Dial Hill Road, Clevedon

In the app Victor’s voice represents the hard-nosed businessman whose main concern is bums on seats, whilst Blanche represents the magic of cinema: “Look at them with their shopping bags, we should have built a supermarket the amount they spend in a week”, remarks Victor commenting on the Lidl and Morrisons stores that have sprung up behind the cinema; “No, no, no, darling, the magic of the moving pictures, Clevedon needed a cinema,” retorts Blanche, dismissively.  I asked Ian to play Cox as a mixture between the officious Captain Mainwarring and the down trodden Pike, living in the shadow of his over-protective stepmother Blanche, played by Anna Farthing, who’s interpretation was informed by the cut-glass accent of Marguerite Patten, the doyenne of British cookery.

Notwithstanding George Dimond’s characterisation, Victor Cox is also known to have been a great benefactor to Clevedon and paid for two charabancs to drive all the builders of the 1922 cinema to a picnic to Cheddar Gorge.

If you look closely you can see Blanche, James Newton and Victor Cox in the foreground

Right from the start, I wanted to explore the idea of having conflicting voices, contested histories in the app – which at no point claims to be a historical document – memory is fallible and subjective and it’s right that the different characters can comment on their own representation.

The Art Theatre, Campaign, Illinois. Photo Sanford Hess (the cinema manger)

One of the cinemas cited is the Art House Cinema, in Champaign-Urbana, a University town in the middle of corn fields in the mid-West (where I happened to live for a short spell, and where my father is still based), pictured above.  I think it might be where I first saw Terence Mallick’s Days of Heaven as a girl of nine, and have been haunted by it ever since. This, combined with my involvement with the Curzon, and indeed the Whiteladies Picture House campaign, made me feel how urgent it is to preserve screen heritage beyond the conservation of the films themselves – which is in itself incredibly important – but there’s something rather pressing about preserving the cinema-going experience in today’s multi-screen world: the apparatus of cinema, the built environment, the technologies; which is at the heart of the Curzon Memories App, and Projection Hero in particular.

The Curzon is such a brilliant site through/in which to explore these issues as, come this April, a cinema will have been operating there for 100 years, yet it was also one of the 210 cinemas to receive a digital projector in the UK Film Council’s Digital Screen Network (DSN), and houses a unique collection of cinema projectors and equipment in the Curzon Collection, curated by Maurice Thornton.  I hope that the Curzon Memories App will enable visitors to enjoy the cinema’s history, whilst reflecting on the important but invisible work that goes on behind the scenes to ensure their viewing pleasure.

Curzon Memories App Documentation from Charlotte Crofts on Vimeo.

Leo is sure to sleep well tonight!

Exhibiting the mini-cinema at the MeCCSA conference last week, hearing the blast of Pearl and Dean as the lights dim and the curtains open, watching the videos of veteran projectionists Maurice Thornton and Pete Stamp through the tiny little projection booth windows, it all started to make sense.  It was great to see the installation screening the correct films at last.  Maurice says, “you are a performer and you’ve got to behave as if you’re on the stage… that’s the difference between showing a film and pressing a button”, whilst Pete cheerfully acknowledges that the Curzon’s DSN digital projector will eventually make his job obsolete … as you manipulate the cinema with your smartphone.

If you are interested in having a go, the installation is on display at the Pervasive Media Studio in the Watershed Media Centre, Bristol for the rest of January 2012 before being finalised and put on permanent exhibition at the Curzon Community Cinema in Clevedon some time in February. Pop by and try your hand at being a Projection Hero…. and you can also test the third iteration of the Curzon Memories App here.

Hellenistic women sharing a game of 'Knucklebones'

She talked about “focus attention” between humans, and between human and machine, arguing that a joint attentional scene is essential to (new) media, citing the example of Engelbart’s mouse. I wanted to ask how her theories related to ideas of the value of attention which was the subject of DCRC’s recent conference on Paying Attention, but didn’t have the opportunity. She touched on the “expanded” attention afforded by iPad and twitter, etc., citing examples from the Experimental Television Lab at Georgia Tech, including the Smart Tablet which uses semantic segmentation (drawing on the Encyclopaedic affordance of digital media) to enable documentary footage from different films to be navigated coterminously.  All useful stuff to reflect on in terms of developing and evaluating the app and the REACT Hub bid I’m working on at the moment… I’m musing about the apparatus of cinema and the shared attention of the darkened auditorium.

The poster was on display in the communal coffee/lunch area, so had a high footfall, along side the Projection Hero exhibit and a short video documentation by Sy Taffel featuring Jon Dovey and Constance Fleuriot of the Digital Cultures Research Centre. I’d not submitted a poster to a conference before, but felt that it would afford more opportunity to explain the project and enable people to try out the app than the traditional 15min presentation.  The poster described the project, the use of QR codes and GPS to trigger content, and had instructions on how to download a demo of the app, plus some sample QR codes to listen to memories, including snogging in the back row, dancing in the aisles to Rock Around the Clock and getting married in the Oak Room Cafe.  Thanks to Colin Purrington for excellent tips on formatting a research poster and a really useful template.

Curzon Memories App poster at MeCCSA 2012

Delegate enjoying Projection Hero on exhibit at MeCCSA 2012, with talking head of Jon Dovey on the screen behind

Feedback so far: Projection Hero nearly brought one user to tears with nostalgia for Saturday morning pictures…

Jo Reid demonstrating Projection Hero from within the Curzon Memories App

Many thanks to Hannah and Ollie at the Watershed for enabling us to exhibit. It was really great to be able to test the installation on a live audience and has forced me and Tarim to address issues of PAT testing and health and safety and trouble shoot some of the code, etc. which we wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise.  We got some useful comments in the little comments book which I’ll try and upload shortly.

The main things that arose from observing it in use were issues to do with 1) QR scan-ability (if that’s a word) – problems with reflections on the protective glass we put on to stop people spilling their drinks getting in the way of scanning the code, plus issues with the curtains tassels hanging too low and the angle of the viewing hole.  You can scan through the projection booth windows, but it’s tricky.  Tarim shortened the curtains and made the QR larger and adjusted the contrast to make it easier to scan.  2) Audio – the need for headphones – or not – as in a crowded bar you need to have the option of headphones so people can actually hear, but then it’s quite an isolated experience and bystanders can’t hear and therefore don’t get sucked in to want to try to manipulate the cinema.  Tarim is working on the ability to switch between the two without dismantling the whole box. 3) Interface – it wasn’t clear that there were more films to see as the button just said ‘Start Projector’ Tarim has amended to ‘Next Reel’ to imply that there are more films to cue up.  Since then we’ve added tab and auditorium lights and hope to test it for a few more weeks in the Watershed throughout January, prior to installing it at the Curzon.

The installation works on any smart phone with with a QR code scanner, but is ultimately designed to be operated with the Curzon Memories App as one of a series of QR codes to discover as you explore the cinema.  The joy of it working independently of the App is that it can be used in different contexts (like Electric December), using the internet and web interface. Tarim is also experimenting with other control mechanisms and ultimately it would be good to make it more into a game where you get points for how well you present the film, if you dim the lights and open the curtains in the right order, etc. But that’s for future iterations.

In the meantime, I’m looking forward to having the actual films about projection screening in the cinema, as being a ‘Projection Hero’ makes more sense in the context of Maurice Thornton talking about training to be a projectionist and Pete Stamp talking about the digital projector making his job obsolete. “That’s the difference between, showing a film and pressing a button” as Maurice puts it…