Back to the Wall: Home Video and Digital Decorating

This paper describes the experimental use of home video images as source materials for home decoration, It includes a brief description of the reasons for the experiment, as well as the equipment and software used. The remainder of the paper examines issues raised by the potentials offered by the availability of film titles in electronic form, and their use as sources in digital media. Shortly after returning from an extended period away from my apartment, I decided that it was in dire need of reorganization. At first, this overhaul was confined to those rooms and furniture directly related to my work. However, what started as a matter of a new filing cabinet and moving my computer quickly developed into a re-decoration of the entire apartment. Having committed to this process, I decided there was no point in compromising. I allowed myself the luxury of purchasing new furniture, to mark my new status as an academic and to say good-bye to student life. The theme of these new acquisitions was Napoleonic, allowing me to indulge a life-long fascination with Napoleon and Empire Style. This fascination has ebbed and flowed, but never disappeared. Like most interests that take an early hold, I have never been able to talk myself out of it, despite a growing realization of what the first empire meant to those who lived under it. It is, in short, an illogical hold, produced and continually reenforced by equally irrational associations. The most powerful of these other associations is an interest in classical music. This interest began at virtually the same time as my interest in Napoleon, and one of its first expressions was a devotion to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Whether Napoleon served as my introduction to classical music, or Tchaikovsky’s fanfares and marches made me interested in Napoleon is a secondary point. Whichever came first, they quickly reenforced one another, Tchaikovsky’s music was also important in the development of my interest in Empire Style and the painting tradition associated with it. Once I came across a recording of the 1812 Overture that had a reproduction of Meissonier’s “The Battle of France” on the cover. In the painting, a disconsolate Napoleon at the end of his glory rides his famous white horse across a snowy landscape, as in a dream. He is followed by a group of officers wearing equally bewildered expressions. The painting was, of course, “wrong” for the cover, since the battle of France occurred two years later than the events commemorated by Tchaikovsky’s music. However, the record cover demonstrated how the power of connotation (snow=Russia) can triumph over intention and accuracy. The fact that Napoleon conducted more than one winter campaign became less important than his association with a particular winter campaign, the retreat from Russia. Such poetic truths have much greater emotional resonance than mere facts. They stick, glue-like, transforming into the basis of a personal mythology. After some thirty years of nurturing this mythology, watching its branches creep into every cranny of my psyche, it has become impervious to criticism and rational comment. At this point, I know I identify with Napoleon, and that is enough. (I also know I will always associate Meissonier’s painting with Russia, not France.) If that is the reason I choose to furnish my apartment with Empire memorabilia, so be it. At least its plentiful presence in Southern California suggests I am not the only one with delusions of stylistic grandeur. However, if it was relatively easy to find furniture which suited this taste, finding the right props to accompany it proved more problematic. It was particularly difficult to find art works that matched the furniture. Military paintings are out of fashion, frequently very large and in any event beyond the budget of a research associate. Even reproductions of the more famous paintings of Napoleon’s period proved elusive. I was ready to give up on the idea, or to settle for a less appropriate set of images, when I had an idea: why not use my computer to manipulate images from films set in the Napoleonic era, then print the results? This solution seemed particularly suitable, since in addition to giving my apartment the desired “look” it would help to bring together my different interests in military, political and art history, Napoleon, digital technologies and film. The resulting images would even have the extra “Post11