Seeing Things by Amanda Shubert touches on a topic that may be of interest to the magic-minded. The book explores, according to its blurb, “how Victorians experienced the virtual images created by modern optical technologies—magic lanterns, stereoscopes, phenakistoscopes, museum displays, and illusionistic stage magic,” and how “interactions with these devices gave rise to a new virtual aesthetics—an understanding of visual and perceptual encounters with things that are not really there.”
Shubert expands on the premise in an interview with Madison Magazine: “The question my book asks is: When, how, and why did this experience of seeing things that are not there become part of daily life—a kind of illusion we enjoy, but are not tricked by?” She also shares that she became interested in optical technologies and toys after reading a “haunted mirror” reference in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. From there, she played with historical optical toys to understand them and researched how the scientific community at the time “emphasized the importance of seeing and enjoying optical illusions without being deceived by them,” and how the “virtual spectatorship we engage in today have their origin in these Victorian aesthetic practices and beliefs.” Heady stuff.
Courtesy of Cornell University Press