Heaven Can Wait : The Revolving Restaurant as Cinéma Trouvé

Abstract

The focus of this thesis is the revolving restaurant perceived as an optical device, where the attributes of elevated view combined with mechanical motion evoke a cinematic experience. By tracing the revolving restaurant’s cine-dream and panoramic desire through a genealogy of the moving and projected image, the 360-degree revolving view is proposed as “readymade cinema” or cinéma trouvé—a specific cinematic experience outside the normative cinematic apparatus. The thesis will start with excavating the roots of the moving and projected image, from the Italian vedutas, the Claude glass and the picturesque gardens of the early 18th century through the development of immersive image practices such as the Panorama and Diorama and the coming of modernism with urbanization, ferro-vitreous architecture and the development of the railway and tourism. This leads up to various moving image experiments and the early days of film production, including panorama films and immersive viewing practices, media architecture and postindustrial control. Ultimately, this is a reflection on basic questions in relation to moving images, noopolitics and visual perception. The intension is to open up a possible strand of resistance in the increasingly dominant audio-visual culture of our time.