Alice Liu
Seminar: Motomichi
Magic Lantern
Stories in the Dark- Contemporary Responses to the Magic Lantern by Jordan Baseman, Adam Chodzko, Benedict Drew, Louisa Fairclough, Dryden Goodwin, Haroon Mirza, Lindsay Seers, and Guy Sherwin was an installation in 2016 that utilized the magic lantern. The magic lantern is a projection device invented in the 17th century. The lantern only projects still images, however it is often seen as a precursor to the development of animation and cinema. The magic lantern was mainly used for storytelling (entertainment) and education. It engages the audience, calling for participation, which differs from current cinema settings.
Multiple artists took to incorporating the magic lantern into their pieces. Lindsay Seers’s The Beany/Whitstable Biennale, she uses anamorphosis. Anamorphosis is a way of embedding a hidden, elicit, covert or politically dangerous image in another picture through distortion. She has taken the lantern’s projection capabilities to distort and create new animations. Seers has also incorporated sound into the installation. While before, magic lanterns encouraged the audience’s participation, Seers prohibits the audience’s participation and instead restricts them to only audio and visual sensations. The idea is to fully immerse the viewer into this story that Seers is telling. Multiple projections are lit at the same time, and they’re all animated objects that distort.
This installation is quite beautiful, but alarmingly in a small area that does not feel whimsical or as magical as the magic lantern should be set in. I also like that it is immersive, but not enough to allow participation from the viewers. To use the magic lantern just as a medium and disregarding it’s original functions, kind of takes away from the sense of magic that it had to begin with.
Links to articles:
http://www.lindsayseers.info/exhibition_node/423#2
Images:
https://www.whitstablebiennale.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/SITD.jpg
http://www.lindsayseers.info/sites/www.lindsayseers.info/files/imagecache/Gallery/insidetent.sm_.jpg
