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In the history an evolution of the visual arts is the appreciated imagery
produced with the magic lantern at the Renaissance period,
a device capable to capture light, bend it through lenses
and transform it into images through a series of slides
painted on crystal and projected onto the screen.
Suspended images produced an amazing effect
on the imagination of philosophers and scientists.
The magic lantern also influenced generations of artists.
And it sets a precedent on the invention of the cinematograph.
Athanasius Kircher attributes himself to the invention
of the magic lantern in his book Ars Magna Lucis et Umbra.
The book discribes the camera obscura, as well as another mechanism
used for the visualization of images on the screen, similar to the magic lantern.
Kircher was a German Jesuit and a mathematics professor
at the Roman college, though due to the wonders
produced by his mechanisms, was said to perform black magic.
He defended his work, explaining that the mechanisms weren’t devilish,
but rational applications of the magic secrets of nature.
Among many other inventions, Kircher designed an artificial light
of a parabolic shape, used to reading at night.
But in spite of Kircher's contribution,
it is attributed to the German academic Christian Huygens
who is known as the inventor of the magic lantern in 1659.
He achieved a meticulous and detailed scientific knowledge,
which allowed him to develop a device, able to calculate accurately
the angle of light bending, and combine it with a perfectly sculpted lens.
He created a serious of slides, paintings on crystal,
that would produce the effect of moving image
through a mechanical process.
Concerned with the potential of his own invention
and to turn it away from a scientific purpose
into a commercial distribution,
Huygens thought of his invention as absurd and he hid his authorship.
In his book Oculus Artificialis
Johann Zahn presents many descriptions,
diagrams and illustrations of the camera obscura
and the magic lantern.
Zahn developed the magic lantern further, using it in anatomy conferences.
And he suggested the projection of images on water,
underlining the importance of hiding the device from the viewer.
Some of his works were made with optical impressions, colouring, engravings.
Also an Italian painter, Canaletto, used the camera obscura
for the realization of his paintings of Venice.
He called this instrument "the ottica camera".
The second part of this lesson is about the evolution of the magic lantern
and the art of the audiovisual live performances.
One of the first known live visual performances was the Phantasmagoria,
which took place at the end of the 18th century.
And it was a pioneering show in the history of cinema
and also live audiovisual performance.
It is based on the creation of an immersive space
with imagery of ghosts and death, and other motives.
Recreating a sense of another dimension,
it produced fairy surprise on the audiences
by using magic lanterns, smokes, screens and sound effects.
As the magic lantern became more wildly used
in a number of different ways, its design also evolved.
The oil lamp was replaced by an incandescent lamp.
And later we saw the development of the voltaic arc,
the biunial and triunial magic lanterns.
As it evolved, the magic lanterns started to incorporate mechanisms,
which helped to spread its application into new areas.
Around 1756, Jacques Charles invented the Megascope
that augmented the projected images of any object directly.
For the decade of 1770, Seraphin Francois
presented in Versailles with great success "Ombres Chinoise",
the magic lantern used in a shadow theatre.
In 1789, the magic lantern took a politically relevant role
when it was used to demonstrate how French aristocrats take advantage on commons.
Later, in 1791, it was used with educational purposes
during the court case of Maria Antoinette.
Franz Anton Mesmer, famous for his work Animal Magnetism,
used the magic lantern during classes in hypnotism sessions.
It was also used for healing purposes by professor Jean Martin Charcot
in his treatment of epilepsy and hysteria.
So back to what would later be called "the Phantasmagoria",
Etienne Gaspard Robertson developed several of the features,
which made possible these performances to an extreme
and unforgettable experience for the audience.
Robertson created a version of the magic lantern,
which had adaptable lenses and also made it more portable,
allowing to change the size of a projected image.
The Belgian magician worked with several projectors
and surfaces for projection, specifically made for rear projection
and projecting onto course that produced the translucent appearance.
In Berlin, during the year of 1780,
one of the first phantasmagoria shows scared the audience
with the combination of saloon tricks, sound sessions and projection effects.
The show would reach its peak with an explosion in the room of an exhibition.
The room looked like it was burning into flames with the audience inside,
and the effect was conceived with the use of projections.
These events were not very popular for a period of time.
But he continued developing and improving it.
Couple of years later he started a new performance concept in Vienna,
that took more than a year and arrived in Paris in 1793.
This was around the time of the plan advance in the French revolution.
And the entrance of the events was through the Gothic surrounding cemetery.
The show structure was designed and detailed on scripts and scenes.
But Robertson also applied new effects:
masks, ventriloquism and projection of three-dimensional figures and actors.
The show proved to be extremely realistic.
And finally Robertson had to reveal the secrets as a result of the court trial.
From this moment on the show became very popular.
In 1801, Paul of Philipstal
presented in London his version of the phantasmagoria.
He did this at the Lyceum theatre, and it was a very successful production.
The term "phantasmagoria"
seemed to be coined in 1801 by Louis-Sebastian Mercier.
And it was the name that Philipstal used for the exhibition in London.
Phantasmagoria, the word, comes from two Greek words originally:
"phantasm", meaning "image", and "agoria", meaning "assembly".
The phantasmagoria performances used zooming movements,
camera movements, superimposition and dissolved imagery
with the combination of stage machinery and screen design.
Robertson continued his shows performing in Russia, Europe,
and then arriving in New York in May 1803,
where the show became a form of public entertainment, causing fascination to millions.
In 1849, the Langeheim brothers
used the first photographic slides with the phantasmagoria.
These were called "heliotypes".
They were shown off first of all at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851.
While phantasmagoria was evolving
and amazing many audiences all over the world,
around 1730 another invention appeared: the Colour Organ.
This is the first device that combines motion, light, sound and scientific studies
about the audio and visual perception, anticipating the concept of synesthesia.
A crucial development in the invention of the Colour Organ
was Issac Newton's Optiks,
a treatise of reflections, refractions, inflexions and colors of light.
This book states a direct relationship between seven colors
and seven unities at the audio scale.
Following up from this theory,
an influence by the work of Kircher and Della Porta,
the Jesuit monk Louis Betrand Castel
proposed an instrument called "The Ocular Harpsichord" -
a light organ, that simultaneously produces sound and an associated color.
The Ocular Harpsichord is considered to be the first Colour Organ.
The composer George Philipp Telemann
traveled to France to see the organ firsthand.
And he was inspired to write several pieces for the Colour Organ
in an edition of a book.
In 1794, Castel would build the second model of the instrument,
using chemical candles with refracting mirrors
that allowed a brighter projection to be contemplated a by larger audience.
Later, in 1850, Alexander Wallace Rimington
demonstrated that the color spectrum should closely match the visual octave.
Through observation with the prism,
he divided the spectrum into twelve colors,
one for each semitone of a C-scale.
Rimmington performed at St. James's hall in London
with the Colour Organ in 1895.
Later, the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin
amazed an auditorium in New York
with the synthetic symphony Prometheus: a Poem of Fire.
One year later he performed this again in London with great success.
The Danish musician Thomas Wilfred
also developed the art of light and sound
with his sculptures of light that he called "Lumiere".
To perform Lumiere, Thomas Wilfred created the machine, "the Clavilux".
The Clavilux delivered his compositions of light, color and form
which slowly changed over time and delivered a broad spectrum of colour and shape.
His first public appearance with the Clavilux,
which was a modern Ocular Harpsichord, was in New York in 1922.
Wilfred continued to tour his performance around the world over the years,
and his Clavilux was also developed as a home use unit.
With a series of colored records and a TV-style interface,
people at home could also create their own Lumiere.
The Ocular Harpsichord was one of those marginal instruments
that served science for a while and then disappeared,
only to pop up again occasionally in subsequent history.
It is during the 20th century
that most of the art works were done in visual music
by artists from different areas�