“Film-Symphonie vom Leben und Sterben der Blumen”: Plant Rhythm and Time-Lapse Vision in Das Blumenwunder
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This essay analyzes the use of time-lapse cinematography in the early 20th century to unlock worlds hitherto “closed to man” (Balázs). I demonstrate how the new “image worlds” of time-lapse influenced biologists such as Jakob von Uexküll and 1920s avant-garde theorists alike. Using the 1926 hybrid German “cultural film” Das Blumenwunder (The Miracle of Flowers) as my primary case study, I examine how the film aims to present the “inner rhythm” of plants as an alternative temporality, which challenges an anthropocentric world view and at the same time dialogues with the ecstatic rhythms of modern dance. I discuss the film’s self-reflexive use of time-lapse technology, its reception history in the context of the avant-garde and new trends in reform pedagogy, and the specific use of Ausdruckstanz choreography to respond to industrial rhythms and to create a new mimetic form of affect.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".