Page 5 - Expanded Media & the MediaPlex

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Paul Philipdor + Étienne-Gaspard Robert (aka Robertson): Phantasmagoria 1801
Philipdor had begun these shows in 1797, at the height of the Gothic Romantic revival known as Gothic Horror (began in 1764 with Walpole’s Castle of Otranto). These shows combined seances, magical tricks, optical illusions, and importantly magic lantern projections. Semi-transparent theatrical gauze was stretched over the front of the stage, allowing slides and shapes to be projected in front of stage actors and props. The magic lanterns could be rolled forward and backwards to create ‘zoom’ effects - dramatically enlarging or reducing the projection, and smoke, mirrors, fireworks and other stage sound- effects could add to the dramatic impact. Robert would also use smoke to blur the projected images, and use a rapid-slide movement to create the illusion of moving images on the stage/projection screen. That these dramas were successful in frightening his audience Robert claimed: “I am only satisfied if my spectators, shivering and shuddering, raise their hands or cover their eyes out of fear of ghosts and devils dashing towards them.” Philipdor ran a Phantasmagoria in London at the Lyceum from 1801, and like Robert’s Paris show, it was a huge success. Marina Warner traces the influence of the spirit on media in her book Phantasmagoria (2012).
So the 19th century begins as it will end - with crowds flocking to be entertained with moving pictures, exciting sights projected in darkened halls. In this book I cover some of the contributory factors - the technologies, the art, the inventions and the social innovations that are the deep archaeology of our 21st century networked media.
These innovations ranged across all the conventional ‘media’ of the 19th century, and include some new media inventions too - the most important being Photography - and some wholly new science - electricity; electro-magnetism; public gas-lighting; industrial chemistry giving us new pigments, new drugs; the electric telegraph; computing and algorithms, a national postal service and eventually a national telephone system - and the moving pictures of Lumiere’s Cinematograph, and Edison’s Kinetoscope. All these, along with recorded music, international exhibitions, and much more, are the foundational building blocks of the ‘new’ Thomas Wedgwood: “An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings upon Glass, and of Making Profiles, by the Agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver. Invented by T. Wedgwood, Esq.” 1802.