The ACMI, ‘The Story of Moving Image’ displayed magic lantern slides and projectors. During the 1920s, these slides allowed images to be stamped on the glass, which was later created on slides for children to enjoy. These photos, which were printed on glass slides, allowed scenes to come to life. Also present in the exhibition were mechanical magic lantern slides, which consisted of slipping slides containing images over one another to form an illusion of movement. With the improvement of technology, levers, and pulley systems movements like windmills were created. This is spoken about in the week 1 reading of Luke McKernan (ed.), ‘First Encounters’, in Picturegoers: A Critical Anthology of Eyewitness Experiences. In Chapter 2, Magic Lantern Kinetoscope discusses an exhibition of Edison’s viewpoint on kinetoscopes, in which he describes them as the ‘continuous film of photographic pictures’ and ‘the pictures are thrown successively on the screen with sufficient rapidity to produce the well-known kinetoscope or zoetrope effect of animated pictures’ (McKernan, 2022). As seen in image 1, this is a hand-painted trip slide magic lantern. The strip slide is a single sheet of glass with a slide made of wood. This magic lantern, along with other varying styles all required slides, for example, image 2 (hand-painted European magic lantern slides), to be inserted for images to be displayed to convey a story.
This exhibition made me think deeper and understand not only how the film itself was created but also how it developed. I also thought more about how unmade, partly imaged, or incomplete histories of the film are put together to create different media forms. For example, these lantern slides have helped artists embrace the art of these slides by incorporating them into their own artwork or providing projections as a display of history and art, holding a retro aspect as many artists like to produce vintage-quality art for their audiences. This can be seen as a ghostly trace, as it is the influence of cinema on society and the cultural imagination. These slides offered the concept of phantom cinema, as even without the physical screen or projection in sight, it still had the ability to manifest memories and dreams and to haunt our minds, as phantom cinema exists in our memory and imagination. The magic lanterns often displayed historical events or well-known figures in society at the time. Although the slides can be dated back to the 17th century, these slides can allow an audience to experience and connect with the slides in a different way. Therefore, leaving an impression and memory of ‘ghostly traces’ of the past, Magic Lanterns are often a story, music, or performance of illustrations; these are engaging to an audience’s imagination. After experiencing the slides, the audience will then have the memory of the slides to be able to form a phantom cinema in their minds where they can imagine it to keep the memory alive for the future.
Images
Image 1: European hand-painted panoramic magic lantern slides
Image 2: Hand-painted strip slide magic lantern with chimney
Reference
McKernan, L. (2022) ‘Chapter 2’, in Picturegoers: A critical anthology of eyewitness experiences. England, UK: University of Exeter Press, pp. 15–16.