TY - BOOK
T1 - The Magic Lantern at Work: Witnessing, Persuading, Experiencing and Connecting
AU - Jolly, Martyn
AU - deCourcy, Elisa
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - For centuries, various new media technologies have provided individuals with a set of powerful tools to affect their audiences. Among these the magic lantern show was perhaps the most pervasive, and persuasive. Around the world audiences gathered together in darkened rooms to see a sequence of projected images transition one into another as they listened to personal stories or scripted narrations. Through the power of the magic lantern audiences, for the first time, became the direct witnesses to distant, often traumatic, political events; they visually learned new scientific and medical knowledge, virtually experienced distant places, and collectively experienced strange, often uncanny, phenomena. Although relatively neglected until recently, the apparatus of the magic lantern is now receiving the attention it deserves from historians, curators and artists. Through a set of case studies focusing on the use of the magic lantern by very different, but equally fascinating individuals, a team of international scholars analyses the emerging power of the lantern show in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries within politics, religion, travel, science, health, marketing and entertainment. The magic lantern’s connections to today’s multimedia environments are explored through the intertwined themes of connecting, experiencing, witnessing and persuading.
AB - For centuries, various new media technologies have provided individuals with a set of powerful tools to affect their audiences. Among these the magic lantern show was perhaps the most pervasive, and persuasive. Around the world audiences gathered together in darkened rooms to see a sequence of projected images transition one into another as they listened to personal stories or scripted narrations. Through the power of the magic lantern audiences, for the first time, became the direct witnesses to distant, often traumatic, political events; they visually learned new scientific and medical knowledge, virtually experienced distant places, and collectively experienced strange, often uncanny, phenomena. Although relatively neglected until recently, the apparatus of the magic lantern is now receiving the attention it deserves from historians, curators and artists. Through a set of case studies focusing on the use of the magic lantern by very different, but equally fascinating individuals, a team of international scholars analyses the emerging power of the lantern show in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries within politics, religion, travel, science, health, marketing and entertainment. The magic lantern’s connections to today’s multimedia environments are explored through the intertwined themes of connecting, experiencing, witnessing and persuading.
U2 - 10.4324/9780429317576
DO - 10.4324/9780429317576
M3 - Edited Book
SN - 9780429317576
VL - 1
T3 - Routledge Studies in Cultural History
BT - The Magic Lantern at Work: Witnessing, Persuading, Experiencing and Connecting
PB - Routledge
CY - New York
ER -