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.

Illusions in Motion: Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles (Leonardo)

Huhtamo, Erkki

Arts & Photography

The MIT Press

Tracing the cultural, material, and discursive history of an early manifestation of media culture in the making.\nBeginning 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.

Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications

This book introduces an archaeological approach to the study of media - one that sifts through the evidence to learn how media were written about, used, designed, preserved, and sometimes discarded. Edited by Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka, with contributions from internationally prominent scholars from Europe, North America, and Japan, the essays help us understand how the media that predate today’s interactive, digital forms were in their time contested, adopted and embedded in the everyday. Providing a broad overview of the many historical and theoretical facets of Media Archaeology as an emerging field, the book encourages discussion by presenting a full range of different voices. By revisiting ‘old’ or even ‘dead’ media, it provides a richer horizon for understanding ‘new’ media in their complex and often contradictory roles in contemporary society and culture.

Parikka, Jussi

History & Criticism

University of California Press

•First and definitive book on the career of influential artist Toni Dove •Accompanies major exhibition at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art (February 25, 2018 - May 20, 2018) •Will appeal to those with interest in contemporary art, new media and the growing field of Virtual Reality •Debuts latest work The Dress That Eats Souls, which exists at the forefront of computer and robotic technology This uniquely designed book presents the first survey of contemporary artist Toni Dove's pioneering work at the crossroads of performance, cinema, and virtual reality. Credited as one of the innovators of "interactive cinema," since the early 1990s, Toni Dove has created an oeuvre of "speculative technology" blending computer driven interactivity, live-mix performance and installation in projects which examine histories of consumer culture through evolving technologies. Dove's collaborative practice brings together visual artists, filmmakers, fashion designers, robotics engineers, computer programmers, musicians, actors, and writers-each at the vanguard of his or her own métier. Accompanying a major exhibition, this distinctively designed volume presents four of Dove's most notable works, including the debut of her newest work The Dress That Eats Souls, which exists at the forefront of computer and robotic technology. Contents: Director's Foreword; Our Ghosts, Our Machines, Our Selves: The Art of Toni Dove; Beyond Mother Tongue: A Brief Archaeology; Toni Dove's Nonmodern Ontologies; Carried Away; Collaboration, Toni Dove; On Narrative and Interface: An Interview with Toni Dove; Projects.

Toni Dove: Embodied Machines

Paul, Christiane

Balken, Debra Bricker

Lewis, George E.

McLendon, Matthew

Scala

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