The Dead Media Notebook

by Bruce Sterling

  Source The Female Thermometer: 18th-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny by Terry Castle Oxford University Press, 1995 ISBN 0-19-508097-1

  Dead media: Robertson’s Phantasmagoria; Seraphin’s Ombres Chinoises; Guyot’s smoke apparitions; the Magic Lantern

  From Bruce Sterling

  “In the 1770s a showman named Francois Seraphin produced what he called Shadow Plays, or ‘Ombres Chinoises,’ using a magic lantern at Versailles; another inventor, Guyot, demonstrated how apparitions might be projected onto smoke.”

  “Robertson began experimenting in the 1780s with similar techniques for producing ‘fantomes artificiels.’ He soon devised several improvements for the magic lantern, including a method for increasing and decreasing the size of the projected image by setting the whole apparatus on rollers. Thus the ‘ghost’ could be made to grow or shrink on front of the viewer’s eyes.

  “Robertson recognized the uncanny illusionist potential of the new technology and exploited the magic lantern’s pseudonecromantic power with characteristic flamboyance. He staged his first ‘fantasmagorie’ as a Gothic extravaganza, complete with fashionably Radcliffean decor. An observer described the scene at the Pavillon de l’Echiquier:

  “’The members of the public having been ushered into the most lugubrious of rooms, at the moment the spectacle is to be begin, the lights are suddenly extinguished and one is plunged for an hour and a half into frightful and profound darkness; it’s the nature of the thing; one should not be able to make anything out in the imaginary region of the dead. In an instant, two turnings of a key lock the door: nothing could be more natural than than one should be deprived of one’s liberty while seated in the tomb, or in the hereafter of Acheron, among shadows.’

  “Robertson then emerged, spectrelike, from the gloom, and addressing the audience, offered to conjure up the spirits of their dead loved ones. A long newspaper account (cited in his memoirs) recorded the somewhat comical scenes that followed on one of these early occasions:

  “’A moment of silence ensued; then an Arlesian- looking man in great disorder, with bristling hair and sad wild eyes, said: ‘Since I wasn’t able. to reestablish the cult of Marat, I would at least like to see his face.’

  “’Then Robertson poured on a lighted brazier two glasses of blood, a bottle of vitriol, twelve drops of aqua fortis, and two numbers of the journal Hommes- Libres. Immediately, little by little, a small livid, hideous phantom in a red bonnet raised itself up, armed with a dagger. The man with the bristling hair recognized it as Marat; he wanted to embrace it, but the phantom made a frightful grimace and disappeared.

  “’A young fop asked to see the apparition of a woman he had tenderly loved, and showed her portrait in miniature to the phantasmagorian, who threw on the brazier some sparrow feathers, a few grains of phosphorus and a dozen butterflies. Soon a woman became visible, with breast uncovered and floating hair, gazing upon her young friend with a sad and melancholy smile.

  “’A grave man, seated next to me, cried out, raising his hand to his brow: ‘Heavens! I think that’s my wife!’ and ran off, not believing it a phantom anymore.’.

  “Robertson, it should be allowed, disclaimed the accuracy of this account and accused its author, Armand Poultier, of trying to get him in trouble with the authorities. This particular exhbition, Poultier had written, concluded with an old royalist in the audience importuning Robertson to raise the shade of Louis XVI: ‘To this indiscreet question, Robertson responded very wisely: I had a recipe for that, before the eighteenth of Fructidor, I have lost it since that time: it is probable I shall never find it again, and it will be impossible from now on to make kings return in France.’

  “This inflammatory story was false, Robertson complained in his memoirs, but nonetheless the police temporarily closed down the phantasmagoria and forced him to decamp for Bordeaux, where he remained for over a year.”

  Source The Female Thermometer: 18th-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny by Terry Castle Oxford University Press, 1995 ISBN 0-19-508097-1

  Robertson’s Phantasmagoria

  From Bruce Sterling

  [More excellent material from Professor Terry Castle’s fine work. My hat is off to her for her meticulously detailed research on Etienne-Gaspard Robertson, a little- known titan of dead media.]

  “When he [Robertson] returned to Paris he began producing even more elaborate and bizarre spectacles in the crypt of an abandoned Capuchin convent near the Place Vendome. Here, amid ancient tombs and effigies, Robertson found the perfect setting for his optical spectre-show, a kind of sepulchral theatre, suffused with gloom, cut off from the surrounding city streets, and pervaded by (as he put it) the silent aura of ‘des mysteres d’Isis.’ His memoirs, along with a surviving ‘Programme Instructif’ from the early 1800s, provide a picture of a typical night in the charnel house. At seven o’clock in the evening spectators entered through the main rooms of the convent, where they were entertained with a preliminary show of optical illusions, trompe l’oeil effects, panorama scenes, and scientific oddities.

  “After passing through the ‘Galerie de la Femme Invisible’ (a ventriloquism and speaking-tube display orchestrated by Robertson’s assistant ‘Citoyen Fitz- James’), one descended at last to the ‘Salle de la Fantasmagorie.’ Here, the single, guttering candle was quickly extinguished, and muffled sounds of wind and thunder (produced by ‘les sons lugubres de Tamtam’) filled the crypt. Unearthly music emanated from an invisible glass harmonica.

  “Robertson then began a somber, incoherent speech on death, immortality, and the unsettling power of superstition and fear to create terrifying illusions. He asked the audience to imagine the feelings of an ancient Egyptian maiden attempting to raise, through necromancy, the ghost of her dead lover at a ghastly catacomb: ‘There, surrounded by images of death, alone with the night and her imagination, she awaits the apparition of the object she cherishes. What must be the illusion for an imagination thus prepared!’ [footnote: “A surviving program from early 1800 entitled ‘Fantasmagorie de Robertson,’ containing a list of experiments and illusions performed at the Cour des Capucines, is located in the University of Illinois library.’]

  “At last, when the mood of terror and apprehension had been raised to a pitch, the spectre-show itself began. One by one, out of the darkness, mysterious luminous shapes, some seemingly close enough to touch, began to surge and flit over the heads of the spectators.

  “In a ‘Petit Repertoire Fantasmagorique’ Robertson listed some of the complex apparitions he produced on these occasions. Several, we notice, specifically involved a metamorphosis, or one shape rapidly changing into another, an effect easily achieved by doubling two glass slides in the tube of the magic lantern over one another in a quick, deft manner. Thus the image of ‘The Three Graces, turning into skeletons.’

  “But in a sense the entire phantasmagoria was founded on discontinuity and transformation. Ghostly vignettes followed upon one another in a crazy, rapid succession. The only links were thematic: each image bore some supernatural, exotic, or morbid association. In selecting his spectral program pieces Robertson drew frequently upon the ‘graveyard’ and Gothic iconography popular in the 1790s. Thus the apparition of ‘The Nightmare,’ adapted from Henry Fuseli, depicted a young woman dreaming amid fantastic tableaux; a demon pressing on her chest held a dagger suspended over her heart. In ‘The Death of Lord Lyttleton,’ the hapless peer was shown confronting his famous phantom and expiring.

  “Other scenes included ‘Macbeth and the Ghost of Banquo,’ ‘The Bleeding Nun,’ ‘A Witches’ Sabbath,’ ‘Young Interring his Daughter,’ ‘Proserpine and Pluto on their Throne,’ ‘The Witch of Endor,’ ‘The Head of Medusa,’ ‘A Gravedigger,’ ‘The Agony of Ugolino,’ ‘The Opening of Pandora’s Box.’ Interspersed among these were single apparitions familiar from the earlier phantasmagoria shows, often the bloody ‘revolutionary’ spectres of Rousseau, Voltaire, Robespierre, and Marat.


  “Robertson concluded his shows with a rousing speech and a macabre coup de theatre. ‘I have shown you the most occult things natural philosophy has to offer, effects that seemed supernatural to the ages of credulity,’ he told the audience; ‘but now see the only real horror. see what is in store for all of you, what each of you will become one day: remember the phantasmagoria.’ And with that, he relit the torch in the crypt, suddenly illuminating the skeleton of a young woman on a pedestal.”

  Source The Female Thermometer: 18th-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny by Terry Castle Oxford University Press, 1995 ISBN 0-19-508097-1

  Phantasmagoria enters the mainstream

  From Bruce Sterling

  “Phantasmagoria shows rapidly became a staple of London popular entertainment. Mark Lonsdale presented a ‘Spectrographia’ at the Lyceum in 1802; Meeson offered a phantasmagoria modeled on Philipstal’s at Bartholomew Fair in 1803. A series of ‘Optical eidothaumata’ featuring ‘some surprising Capnophoric Phantoms’ materialized at the Lyceum in 1804. In the same year the German conjurer Moritz opened a phantasmagoria and magic show at the King’s Arms in Change Alley, Cornhill, and in the following year, again at the Lyceum, the famous comedian and harlequin Jack Bologna exhibited his ‘Phantoscopia.’ Two ‘Professors of Physic,’ Schirmer and Scholl, quickly followed suit with an ‘Ergascopia.’

  “In 1807, Moritz opened another phantasmagoria show at the Temple of Apollo in the Strand, this one featuring a representation of the raising of Samuel by the Witch of Endor, the ghost scene from Hamlet, and the transformation of Louis XVI into a skeleton. In 1812 Henry Crabb Robinson saw a ‘gratifying’ show of spectres, their ‘eyes etc’ all moving, at the Royal Mechanical and Optical Exhibition in Catherine Street. In De Berar’s ‘Optikali Illusio,’ displayed at Bartholomew Fair in 1833, Death appeared on a pale horse accompanied by a luminous skeleton.

  “How realistic were the ‘ghosts’? Strange as it now seems, most contemporary observers stressed the convincing nature of phantasmagoric apparitions and their power to surprise the unwary. Robertson described a man striking at one of his phantoms with a stick; a contributor to the Ami des Lois worried that pregnant women might be so frightened by the phantasmagoria that they would miscarry. One should not underestimate, by any means, the powerful effect of magic-lantern illusionism on eyes untrained by photography and cinematography.”

  “Better images and a more complex technology were required. Brewster’s own solution was the ‘catadioptrical phantasmagoria’, an apparatus of mirrors and lenses capable of projecting the illuminated image of a living human being. ‘In place of chalky ill-drawn figures, mimicking humanity by the most absurd gesticulations,’ he wrote, ‘we shall have phantasms of the most perfect delineation, clothed in real drapery, and displaying all the movements of life.’

  “In the renowned show of ‘Pepper’s Ghost,’ exhibited at the Royal Polytechnic Institution in London in the 1860s, just such an apparatus was used to great effect. Wraithlike actors and actresses, reflected from below the stage, mingled with onstage counterparts in a phantasmagorical version of Dickens’ ‘The Haunted Man’ on Christmas Eve, 1862. ‘The apparitions,’ wrote Thomas Frost, ‘not only moved about the stage, looking as tangible as the actors who passed through them, and from whose proffered embrace or threatened attack they vanished in an instant, but spoke or sang with voices of unmistakable reality.’”

  [We have quoted rather extensively from Chapter 9 of Professor Castle’s work, but no mere ascii can do justice to its many remarkable period illustrations, including a priceless depiction of Robertson’s audience beset by phantom devils and in a stampeding panic]

  Source The Female Thermometer: 18th-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny by Terry Castle Oxford University Press, 1995 ISBN 0-19-508097-1

  Robertson’s Final Phantasmagoria

  From Bruce Sterling

  “Paris’ Pre-Lachaise cemetery was designed as a ‘walk-about cemetery,’ a notion based on the English-style gardens which were so fashionable during the Romantic era. It was established in 1804 in a 17 hectare park, and its layout was conceived by the architect Brongniart.

  “It is here that the tomb of Etienne-Gaspard Robertson can be found, built several months after his death in 1837 and designed by Girardin, the architect.

  “Very early on, Robertson developed a form of stage- show based on known light projection systems, such as Kircher’s lantern. It was an impressive spectacle for its time, using sophisticated effects. The theme of death particularly fascinated the public. More than death and its skeletons, however, Robertson was adept at making the most of the ‘resurrection’ theme, through the projection of portraits of the deceased, some of them public figures, or specially requested projections for inconsolable families. He made such virtual reincarnations credible through procedures which bore witness to his talent as a technician.

  “Able to combine his knowledge as a man of science with his artistic sensibility, he has often been considered as one of the forerunners of cinema, indeed of the audio-visual media as a whole. He was a true director who knew how to use constantly updated special effects: the diffusion of incense, mysterious sound effects, the importance of light in reproducing the climatic effects of daylight, contre-jour, etc, and above all, the beginnings of a sound-track. with the help of a ventriloquist “able to make the dead speak” and the use of a harmonica with a high-pitched sound resulting from the chiming of glass bells.

  “Robertson’s monument looks like an invitation to an ‘imaginary voyage.’ Although it has no chapel, it is imposing in size, measuring four metres in height. Two bas reliefs, located on the sides of the monument, evoke the physicist’s tumultuous life.

  “The first is a reminder of Robertson the aerostat specialist. It shows a small boy, leaning on a safety barrier, watching attentively before a crowd of people as an aerostat lifts up into the sky.

  “The second is more curious. Guarded by two owls, it depicts two symmetrical groups which appear to be confronting one another: a group representing the dead and another representing the living move back to make way for a floating winged skeleton playing a trumpet. This bas relief is anecdotal, evoking a scene from a phantasmagorical show.

  “Unlike the surrounding tombs, there is no trace of a portrait of the physicist and the theme of death is given a high profile. Above the two bas reliefs and at the base of the half-draped sarcophagus which tops the monument, a row of young girls’ heads alternate with winged skulls. These somewhat disconcerting figures are a reminder of those unfailingly successful phantasmagorical themes wherein woman is a character representative of Love and Death, holding the secret of the great mystery of our origins. This is no longer the standardized image of the neo-classical woman, but a virtual image.

  “Could the winged skeleton playing a trumpet, hovering above the scene of the last judgement, be a reference to the trumpet-playing automaton which Robertson liked so much? Or does it, in a wider sense, evoke the phantasmagorist’s attraction to automatons? Robertson had bought from the famous musician J. Maelzel a trumpet- playing android which could play as well as a musician. On the monument, the automaton has disappeared: he is nothing more than a skeleton, proving that even a machine can die and that the instrument alone survives, thanks to the universal nature of music.”

  Source Etienne Gaspard Robertson at Pre Lachaise Cemetery by David Liot Muse des arts et mtiers: La Revue, Sept. 1994, n 8, p.57-61. MUSEE DES ARTS ET METIERS - 292, rue Saint-Martin - 75003 PARIS - FRANCE

  American Missile Mail

  From Greg Riker

  “Throughout its history, the Postal Service enthusiastically has explored faster, more efficient forms of mail transportation. Technologies now commonplace, railroads, automobiles, and airplanes, were embraced by the Post Office Department at their radical birth, when they were considered new-fangled, unworkable contraptions by many.

  “One such technology, howe
ver, remains only a footnote in the history of mail delivery. On June 8, 1959, in a move a postal official heralded as ‘of historic significance to the peoples of the entire world,’ the Navy submarine U.S.S. Barbero fired a guided missile carrying 3,000 letters at the Naval Auxiliary Air Station in Mayport, Florida.

  ‘Before man reaches the moon,’ the official was quoted as saying, ‘mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India or Australia by guided missiles.’

  “History proved differently, but this experiment with missile mail exemplifies the pioneering spirit of the Post Office Department when it came to developing faster, better ways of moving the mail.”

  Source: US Postal Service,

  McDonnell Douglas Laserfilm VideoDisc Player

  From Tom Howe

  Recently, 700 of these Laserfilm VideoDisc players turned up at a surplus firm for $39 each, postpaid in the continental US. These are new-in-the-box units that this firm is planning on stripping down for parts, if the units don’t sell intact. The units don’t include any software (two empty caddies are included), and I don’t know where to find even a single disc to use for playback demonstration; but these units may be of interest to collectors of dead VideoDisc formats. I purchased one and the following notes reflect my observations.

  The McDonnell Douglas Laserfilm VideoDisc Player This was the last and shortest-lived of the competing VideoDisc formats that emerged in the 1980’s.