Abstract
The starting point of this essay is a short film of an optical effect, published in 1998 by the Institute for Scientific Film (Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film [IWF]) as part of a series showing important psychological stimulus images. It traces the stimulus images in the film back to their source in a different medium and then forward through a still ongoing series of remakes. This series of cross-media remakings illustrates the frequent occurrence of remaking—rather than reusing—images in science and the role of interactivity as an epistemic value. The essay introduces the notion of the action context, a category based on a historical actor’s understanding of perception and related to the concept of affordances, to help us understand the historical value of remaking and its consequences for scientific and historiographical replication. This research is based on new archival materials—including a scientific film by Albert Michotte and Charles Dekeukeleire that is here introduced to scholarship for the first time—as well as on live interviews.
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