An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump

The Scientific Revolution did not take place, to paraphrase Steven Shapin, and this is a short film about it. No scientific instrument epitomizes the spirit of that complex and historiographically dubious process more fully than the air pump (again here we may reference Shapin, this time accompanied by Schaffer). And no work of art conveys the power, danger, and fascination of the air pump more vividly than Joseph Wright of Derby’s An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768), currently on display at the National Gallery in London.

Much experimental natural philosophy of the early modern period cut across the disciplinary boundaries that took shape over the following centuries and that today we often take for granted. The research program that proceeded under the banner of “optics”, for example, was as concerned with the anatomy of the eye as it was with the physics of light. The microscope, too, which surely epitomizes the spirit of the age no less than the air pump, was concerned in roughly equal proportions with the theoretical bases of magnification and with enumerating the ingredients from which toe jam is made (to cite a lovely example from the letters of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek).

In the case of the air pump, we likewise find a striking combination of physics and physiology (two obviously related terms whose separate fields of concern were in any case still in the course of being worked out). It was an instrument that held out the promise of resolving both fundamental questions about the existence of a physical vacuum — though Robert Boyle consistently denied it could really be of much help in solving all those questions from medieval philosophy that Edward Grant would memorably describe as “much ado about nothing”. But it was at the same time an instrument that had quite a bit to tell us about, for example, avian pulmonary anatomy.

But far more than the microscope, the air pump was also an instrument practically custom-made to attract gawkers. Whatever transpired, or expired, within its exhausted chamber could be simultaneously watched by multiple spectators. Thus, much like the human cadaver dissected in the theatrum anatomicum, the air pump held out a new possibility for naughty delectation — for stern men to insist that the scenes on display beneath the glass were but instances of knowledge advancing, and therefore of no moral concern; and for children to look on in wonder and fear, struggling to take these stern men at their word, while knowing inwardly that a sacrifice to science is still a sacrifice. Unfolding somewhere at the intersection between the aesthetic, the ritual, and the properly experimental, air-pump experiments were at once an occasion of fascination and revulsion, of hopefulness and dread.

No one has visually captured the complexity of this cultural practice more powerfully than Joseph Wright. Can Eskinazi adds another dimension, taking this visual lesson in the history of science and rendering it into cinema. It’s paradoxical cinema, such as we’ve known to exist at least since Chris Marker, to the extent that its subjects are not, strictly speaking, in motion. But somehow their enduring stillness, when combined with sound and with the visual storytelling of the camera, hardly seems to matter. On the contrary the scene depicted seems to be positively filled with life (and death).

Can Eskinazi, born in İzmir in 1986, is a filmmaker based in İstanbul. He has made documentaries, music videos, and at least a few short and medium-length films. He has begun to experiment with vertical-format film, using this genre to create work at the intersection between the narrative and the didactic, inspired by Roberto Rossellini's TV miniseries on historical subjects such as Socrates (1971) and Blaise Pascal (1972).

Directed by Can Eskinazi
Written by Can Eskinazi and Emrah Serdan
With help from Çağıl Bocutoğlu, Deren Ertaş, and Yoel Meranda

—The Editors