Illusions in motion : media archaeology of the moving panorama and related spectacles / Erkki Huhtamo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Huhtamo, Erkki, author.

Series:

Leonardo book series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Panoramas.

Panoramas--Psychological aspects.

Mass media and culture.

Popular culture.

Psychological aspects.

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Massachusetts Institute of Technology, [2013]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

Tracing the cultural, material, and discursive history of an early manifestation of media culture in the making.Beginning in the late eighteenth century, huge circular panoramas presented their audiences with resplendent representations that ranged from historic battles to exotic locations. Such panoramas were immersive but static. There were other panoramas that moved--hundreds, and probably thousands of them. Their history has been largely forgotten. In Illusions in Motion, Erkki Huhtamo excavates this neglected early manifestation of media culture in the making. The moving panorama was a long painting that unscrolled behind a "window" by means of a mechanical cranking system, accompanied by a lecture, music, and sometimes sound and light effects. Showmen exhibited such panoramas in venues that ranged from opera houses to church halls, creating a market for mediated realities in both city and country. In the first history of this phenomenon, Huhtamo analyzes the moving panorama in all its complexity, investigating its relationship to other media and its role in the culture of its time. In his telling, the panorama becomes a window for observing media in operation. Huhtamo explores such topics as cultural forms that anticipated the moving panorama; theatrical panoramas; the diorama; the "panoramania" of the 1850s and the career of Albert Smith, the most successful showman of that era; competition with magic lantern shows; the final flowering of the panorama in the late nineteenth century; and the panorama's afterlife as a topos, traced through its evocation in literature, journalism, science, philosophy, and propaganda.

Contents:

1 Introduction: Moving Panorama-A Missing Medium

The Panorama and Things Panoramic 1

From a Stationary to a Mobile Medium 6

From the Shadow of the Mighty Rotunda 10

The Painted, the Performed, and the Discursive Panorama 13

Tracing the Topoi: The Media Archaeological Approach 16

From Oblivion to Resurrection: A Road Map 18

2 The Incubation Era: Antecedents and Anticipations

Moving Panorama-An Etymological Excavation 29

Offshoot of the Panorama, or a Form of Visual Storytelling? 32

Peeping at Picture Rolls 35

Parklands in Boxes: Carmontelle's Transparencies 39

Miniature Panoramas: From Popish Plots to Altona's Entertainments 46

3 Large as Life, and Moving: The Peristrephic Panorama

The Elusive Messrs. Marshall 65

The Apparatus According to an Eyewitness 69

Circularity, Stasis, and Motion-The French Connection 72

Uncle lack at the Moving Panorama Show 77

"Perioramas" of the Mind, or the Discursive Dimension 81

4 Rolling Across the Stage: The Moving Panorama and the Theater

Spectacle Takes Over: From Servandoni to De Loutherbourg 93

The Moving Pictures of the Eidophusikon 98

Eidophusikon, Mechanical Theaters, and the Realm of Spectacles 103

The Panorama, the Pantomime, and the Art of Heterogeneity 105

Virtual Voyaging with the Balloon Panorama 112

The Lure of the Market and Perfection in Invisibility 120

5 Transformed by the Light: The Diorama and the "Dioramas"

The Invention and Dissemination of a New Spectacle 139

The Diorama as a Vision Machine 144

"This Wondrous Exhibition," or the Diorama's Reception 149

The Metamorphosis into an Itinerant Attraction 154

6 Panoramania: The Mid-Century Moving Panorama Craze

Dry Season on Rainy Islands 169

The Moving Panorama Penetrates American Culture 172

John Banvard, or the Making of a Myth 176

Trips to the World and the Heart: Panoramic Genres in America 180

The American Invasion of the British Isles 186

Countering with Quality: British Productions of the Panoramania Era 191

7 Panoramania in Practice: Albert Smith and his Moving Panoramas

The Natural History of a Bohemian 215

At Home on the Overland Trail 218

The Anatomy of an Alpine Spectacle 220

Nougat Glacé de Mont Blanc, or Media Marketing 226

Barnumized? 229

A Parade of Epigones, or Anonymous Afterlives 233

8 An Excavation: The Moving Panorama Performance

Parodying the Panorama 245

Constructing Continuity 250

Discontinuity as Strategy 255

9 Intermedial Tug of War: Panoramas and Magic Lanterns

By Any Medium Available: The Civil War and the Panorama Trade 263

The Challenge and Dissemination of Dissolving Views 267

Panoramas and the Coming of Photography 273

A War of Discourses 276

10 Sensory Bombardment: A Medium's Final Fanfares

The Myriorama as a Roadshow Attraction 287

The Théatre Morieux Time Capsule 296

The Past as Future, or the Panorama Revival 302

Panoramas, Patents, and the Universal Exposition of 1900 306

"Vehicular Amplification," or the Quest for Immersion 309

11 Imagination in Motion: The Discursive Panorama

Toward a Shadow History of the Moving Panorama 331

The Literary Absorption of the Moving Panorama 332

Exercises in Perception: From Stationary to Moving Panoramas 337

The Cranking God: Panoramas and the Religious Imagination 342

Mind, Memory, and Consciousness: Panoramic Parables 348

12 Conclusion: From Panoramas to Media Culture

Figures on the Screens, or Things Left Unsaid 361

What Is Media Culture? 364

From Illusions to Interactions 367.

Notes:

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

ISBN:

9780262313094

026231309X

OCLC:

829253306

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.