Page 59 - Expanded Media & the MediaPlex

Expanded Media - and the MediaPlex 59/206
Robert Houdin: Soirees Fantastiques (from 1845) + Maskelyne & Cooke: Mysteries from 1873
The magic show was one of the staple ingredients of any self-respecting music-hall programme and by 1845 the French master magician Robert Houdin had rented buildings in Paris and was staging his own ‘Soirees Fantastiques’ - afternoon and evening magic shows. By the 1870s, Maskelyne and Cooke and others collaborated in their magic shows at the Egyptian Hall, London. Just as Philipdore and Robertson had more or less created the market for shows like this with their Phantasmagoria performances from 1801, so these late 19th century magicians exploited all the various stage-craft and magical tricks at their disposal, including liberal use of Pepper’s Ghost and other magic-lantern ingredients.
These music-hall performances and dedicated ‘magic’ shows were part of building an increasing demand for highly visual entertainments that ‘immersed’ the audience, both cognitively and viscerally, in a highly multimedia staged experience. This gradual escalation of the ‘immersive experience’ was given occasional extra boosts by inventions like the Panorama and Diorama, and Charles Emile Reynaud’s Theatre Optique; and by the proto-theme-park ‘rides’ and virtual experiences featured at the great world expositions and world fairs towards the fin-de-siecle.
This collective desires for an audience-shared immersive experience were boosted and satisfied by the invention of the Movies and especially the dedicated movie-theatre or Cinema in the 20th century.
There are two films I can recommend: Christopher Nolan’s elegant The Prestige and Neil Burger’s intriguing The Illusionist (both released 2006) and both set in late Victorian/Edwardian times, and both give an insight into the life of stage magicians - and into some of their craft...