Five Scenes from a Modern Prometheus - Magic Lantern Conference September 2018

Two hundred years ago Mary Shelley wrote a very famous novel with the subtitle 'The Modern Prometheus'. Inspired by that anniversary we created a magic lantern show using two authentic 'dissolving view' magic lanterns from the 1880s, and over sixty different magic lantern slides. Some were photographic slides originally used to instruct students at a twentieth century London medical school, others were hand-painted, animated, mechanical slides, intended to make nineteenth century audiences laugh. We have imagined five new scenes for our Promethean creation, following the same anguished journey from electrical animation in a laboratory to disappearance in the icy wastes of the north, but with some new detours on the way. Karen Vickery supplied the moaning and groaning, Alexander Hunter the moody chords, and Elisa deCourcy and Martyn Jolly manipulated the antique lanterns and the original slides. Videography by Amr Tawfik