In this book cinema spectators are presented as 'observing participants', that is, agents who take part in their own perceptual processes. It takes experience into the centre of its investigation to propose the spectators' active participation. It applies this to understanding cinema, from its outset, as a philosophical dispositif. To this end, the book explores crucial interconnections between the various constituencies that shaped moving image technologies and their reception at the nexus of science, art and popular culture at the end of the 19th century and some of the prevailing concerns...