Page 96 - Expanded Media & the MediaPlex

Expanded Media - and the MediaPlex 96/206
But Michael Jackson’s resurrection nearly didn’t happen that evening. Days before the ceremony, an emergency patent infringement lawsuit was filed against Pulse Evolution, the company behind the performance, accusing it of using technology it didn’t own. A request to cancel was denied by a judge, but in the weeks and months that followed, a heated disagreement erupted between the two firms. The promise of future resurrections – Whitney Houston and Elvis, Billie Holiday, Marilyn Monroe – was delayed as a chaotic power-grab engulfed the fledgling industry.” (Jimi Famurewa: Inside the bitter war to bring Tupac and Michael Jackson back to life in Wired May 2018). The illusions created here were invented by Uwe Maas, who formed the effects company Musion3D, and showed the Musion Eyeliner Process in 1995.
Lothar Meggendorfer: Moveable Books (Pop-Up Books 1862)+ International Circus pop-up book (1887)
Meggendorfer was a popular and successful illustrator, specialising in children’s books, and importantly, he is the inventor of the ‘moveable book’ now known as the ‘pop-up book’ - where a variety of cut-out pop-ups appear as the book pages are opened. These books are related to the paper toy- theatres popular in Victorian Britain (see Pollock’s Toy Theatre 1856). They are also influenced by the general trend in infant or ‘kindergarden’ education initiated by Frederick Froebel in the 1820s. The market for children’s books expanded through the 19th century as general literacy grew and childhood education developed through illustrated books, and kindergarden (educational) toys. Meggendorfer played a key role in inventing this hybrid book-toy and successfully marketing it worldwide. Meggendorfer’s invention occurred in a climate of rapid innovation in print media - in children’s books and popular literature generally and in the invention of the illustrated paper and comic strip (see Gilbert Dalziel: Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday (1884) and Rudolph Dirks’ Katzenjammer Kids - from 1889), and collectible picture cards (‘Baseball Cards’ from the 1960s, Cigarette Cards from 1875), and the emergence of children’s editions of (for example) Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Hans Anderson’s Fairy Stories - illustrated by an emerging generation of specialist children’s artists.