About

The Lumière Brothers Artist Statement

Watching movies has led the direction of our current studio work, which is a response to our love of movies and movie watching. Through our artwork, we want to probe the intensity of the movie watching experience and explore the affection one can have for a movie and the inter- and extratextual relationships of movies. At times, we feel that we are reinterpreting, reevaluating, and reinventing the very things that we hold dear to ourselves as an art process. We consider ourselves not only consumers, watchers, recipients, and victims [of mass media and pop culture], but also agents of that culture. We are interested in the role that we play in this cultural landscape and ideas of hyperreality (the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy). The conversation isn’t always deep or thought provoking and the statements may be frivolous and filled with positive hyperbole, but they are honest and affectionate responses.

The Lumière Brothers Biography

The Lumière brothers were born in Besançon, France, in 1862 and 1864, and moved to Lyon in 1870, where both attended La Martiniere, the largest technical school in Lyon. Their father, Claude-Antoine Lumière (1840–1911), ran a photographic firm and both brothers worked for him. It was not until their father retired in 1892 that the brothers began to create moving pictures. The cinematograph (A cinematograph is a film camera, which also serves as a film projector and developer) itself was patented on 13 February 1895 and the first footage ever to be recorded using it was recorded on March 19, 1895. This first film shows workers leaving the Lumière factory. The brothers stated that “the cinema is an invention without any future” and declined to sell their camera to other filmmakers such as Georges Méliès. This made many film makers upset. Consequently, their role in the history of film was exceedingly brief….or so the legend goes.

What really happened after the invention of the cinematograph in 1895? The next project that the brothers worked on collaboratively was a device known as the HDR or Hyper Dimensional Resonator. With this device, the brothers began to bend the time space continuum to suit their needs throughout the years. One of the most important of these cosmic leaps took place when the brothers decided to travel to September 5, 2003. This was the last recorded event of The Brothers time travels as described and dated in their journal titled The Lumière Cinematograph and HDR. From there, we can only assume that The Brothers have continued to exist throughout many different eras both past and future.

Is it a coincidence that The Time Machine, an 1895 novel by H. G. Wells was written the same year the brothers invented the cinematograph and refused to share it with other filmmakers?