- Martyn Jolly is an Honorary Associate Professor at the Australian National University School of Art and Design. He co... moreMartyn Jolly is an Honorary Associate Professor at the Australian National University School of Art and Design. He completed his PhD on fake photographs and photographic affect at the University of Sydney in 2003. In 2006 his book 'Faces of the Living Dead: The Belief in Spirit Photography' was published by the British Library, as well as in the US and Australia. His work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Canberra Museum and Gallery. In 2006 he was one of three artists commissioned to design and build the Act Bushfire Memorial. In 2011 he undertook a Harold White Fellowship at the National Library of Australia and a Collection Scholar Artist in residence Fellowship at the Australian National Film and Sound Archive. In 2014 he received an Australian Research Council Discovery grant along with Dr Daniel Palmer to research the impact of new technology on the curating of Australian art photography. In 2015 he received an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant to lead the international project 'Heritage in the Limelight: The Magic Lantern in Australia and the World'. Since 2015 he has developed a series of collaborative magic lantern performances around Australia, available on the Heritage in the Limelight website. In 2020, with Elisa deCourcy he co-edited 'The Magic Lantern at Work: Witnessing, Persuading, Experiencing and Connecting'. and co-authored 'Empire, Early Photography and Spectacle: the Global Career of Showman Daguerreotypist J. W. Newland', both published by Routledge. His book, co-authored with Daniel Palmer,'' Installation View: Australian Photography Exhibitions 1848-2020', was published by Perimeter Editions in 2021. He is also researching Australian magazines, Australiana photobooks, colonial spectacle and modernity, and the history of Australian media art.edit
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condition—incarnated in this era’s fiction—that these theories can address with particular cogency. Rocío Riestra-Camacho’s essay on Australian young adult sports fiction was an unexpected delight and is one of the strongest essays in the... more
condition—incarnated in this era’s fiction—that these theories can address with particular cogency. Rocío Riestra-Camacho’s essay on Australian young adult sports fiction was an unexpected delight and is one of the strongest essays in the book. More striking is the absence of poetry. This is not just attributable to the aforementioned emphasis of the collection on currently dominant modes of fiction but to certain changes in Australian poetry. In the age of Les Murray, it would have been hard to leave him out. In terms of contemporary poets to whom the mode traced herein might be pertinent, Indigenous poets, such as Natalie Harkin and Alison Whittaker, most immediately come to mind. Jean-François Vernay has put together a dynamic and convincing collection that shows how Australian literature can speak to contemporary concerns while engaging theories that try to bridge the gap between the humanities and the sciences. This book is also an encouraging portent that there is still a place for this sort of edited collection in Australian literary study. In a tough time for the field, it is encouraging to hear these vibrant and engaged voices.
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Men’s magazines have formed a significant part of Australian illustrated magazine publishing since 1936. In this article, I broadly survey the field up until 1971, concentrating particularly on bikini and nude photography, which... more
Men’s magazines have formed a significant part of Australian
illustrated magazine publishing since 1936. In this article, I
broadly survey the field up until 1971, concentrating particularly
on bikini and nude photography, which defined the category. I
then focus on the period of the 1960s, when men’s magazines
were most relevant to Australia’s rapidly changing sexual politics
and its censorship debates. I reveal that, although they were by
their nature visually repetitious, far from being a marginal or
trivial category, they were deeply implicated in the development
of broader Australian visual culture and its sexual politics, and
fundamental to wider innovations in publishing, as well as the
careers of several important Australian photographers.
illustrated magazine publishing since 1936. In this article, I
broadly survey the field up until 1971, concentrating particularly
on bikini and nude photography, which defined the category. I
then focus on the period of the 1960s, when men’s magazines
were most relevant to Australia’s rapidly changing sexual politics
and its censorship debates. I reveal that, although they were by
their nature visually repetitious, far from being a marginal or
trivial category, they were deeply implicated in the development
of broader Australian visual culture and its sexual politics, and
fundamental to wider innovations in publishing, as well as the
careers of several important Australian photographers.
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Original sculptural installation as part of the exhibition, Shaping Canberra, ANU School of Art Gallery, 17 September - 19 Octobe
Australians were 'early adopters'; of magic lantern technology. From 1830 audiences in the colonial capitals, as well as out in the remote regions, became well acquainted with all aspects of the technology. Magic lanterns were... more
Australians were 'early adopters'; of magic lantern technology. From 1830 audiences in the colonial capitals, as well as out in the remote regions, became well acquainted with all aspects of the technology. Magic lanterns were incorporated into the programs of the big metropolitan theatres, and itinerant lanternists used local mechanics institutes, schoolrooms, and hotels for their dissolving view
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The development of the magic lantern and the circus parallel each other. Magic lantern culture and the circus evolved slowly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as showmen and performers tramped across Europe. In the... more
The development of the magic lantern and the circus parallel each other. Magic lantern culture and the circus evolved slowly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as showmen and performers tramped across Europe. In the nineteenth century, while the itinerant tradition continued, the magic lantern and the circus became a part of urban theatrical culture as entrepreneurs developed elaborate phantasmagoria exhibitions and circuses incorporated diverse acts into their shows. Both circuses and magic lantern shows developed organised entertainment spaces, mechanical apparatuses and performative conventions through which audiences experienced surprise, wonder and laughter. It is not surprising therefore that they shared iconography. The exaggerated gestures, dexterity and comic repertories of the circus performers made them the ideal subject matter for the animated transformations of mechanical glass slides. This chapter presents a curated selection of these slides drawn from pri...
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The development of the magic lantern and the circus parallel each other. Magic lantern culture and the circus evolved slowly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as showmen and performers tramped across Europe. In the... more
The development of the magic lantern and the circus parallel each other. Magic lantern culture and the circus evolved slowly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as showmen and performers tramped across Europe. In the nineteenth century, while the itinerant tradition continued, the magic lantern and the circus became a part of urban theatrical culture as entrepreneurs developed elaborate phantasmagoria exhibitions and circuses incorporated diverse acts into their shows. Both circuses and magic lantern shows developed organised entertainment spaces, mechanical apparatuses and performative conventions through which audiences experienced surprise, wonder and laughter. It is not surprising therefore that they shared iconography. The exaggerated gestures, dexterity and comic repertories of the circus performers made them the ideal subject matter for the animated transformations of mechanical glass slides. This chapter presents a curated selection of these slides drawn from private and public collections. The portfolio of images and sequences in the chapter will be contextualised by a discussion of the evolution of lantern and circus traditions in nineteenth-century colonial Australia, demonstrating connections and divergences between the two modes of entertainment, and their influence on contemporary media technologies.
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If, like me, you once went to an art school for your training as an artist, you might have found that some of the most valuable creative experiments you undertook weren't for your classes but for school balls and parties; and that... more
If, like me, you once went to an art school for your training as an artist, you might have found that some of the most valuable creative experiments you undertook weren't for your classes but for school balls and parties; and that some of the most memorable conversations you had, with either lecturers or fellow students, occurred at after-school drinking sessions rather than tutorials. Walter Gropius, the founder of the most famous art school of them all, knew this. He wrote into the Bauhaus's curriculum mandatory parties, for which both staff and students had to design decorations and costumes, as well as attend. These parties were part of the utopian current that so fundamentally animated the Bauhaus as a social ideal, and which animated the idea of the art school in general, both before the Bauhaus and since.
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A review of the 2009 Venice Biennale, which consisted of a large exhibition called 'Making Worlds' that was curated by Daniel Birnbaum, is presented. The show had several older artists such as Joan Jonas, who restaged her... more
A review of the 2009 Venice Biennale, which consisted of a large exhibition called 'Making Worlds' that was curated by Daniel Birnbaum, is presented. The show had several older artists such as Joan Jonas, who restaged her 'Reading Dante' project, as well as younger artists such as China's Chu Yun. The different nations represented in various pavilions included Britain, Russia and some Middle Eastern countries.
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A review of the 2009 Venice Biennale, which consisted of a large exhibition called 'Making Worlds' that was curated by Daniel Birnbaum, is presented. The show had several older artists such as Joan Jonas, who restaged her... more
A review of the 2009 Venice Biennale, which consisted of a large exhibition called 'Making Worlds' that was curated by Daniel Birnbaum, is presented. The show had several older artists such as Joan Jonas, who restaged her 'Reading Dante' project, as well as younger artists such as China's Chu Yun. The different nations represented in various pavilions included Britain, Russia and some Middle Eastern countries.
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If, like me, you once went to an art school for your training as an artist, you might have found that some of the most valuable creative experiments you undertook weren't for your classes but for school balls and parties; and that... more
If, like me, you once went to an art school for your training as an artist, you might have found that some of the most valuable creative experiments you undertook weren't for your classes but for school balls and parties; and that some of the most memorable conversations you had, with either lecturers or fellow students, occurred at after-school drinking sessions rather than tutorials. Walter Gropius, the founder of the most famous art school of them all, knew this. He wrote into the Bauhaus's curriculum mandatory parties, for which both staff and students had to design decorations and costumes, as well as attend. These parties were part of the utopian current that so fundamentally animated the Bauhaus as a social ideal, and which animated the idea of the art school in general, both before the Bauhaus and since.
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Abstract On the twenty-sixth of September 1917, during the Third Ypres Campaign on the Western Front in Flanders, Frank Hurley and Charles Bean began a long argument about photographic verisimilitude. Captain Frank Hurley, one of... more
Abstract On the twenty-sixth of September 1917, during the Third Ypres Campaign on the Western Front in Flanders, Frank Hurley and Charles Bean began a long argument about photographic verisimilitude. Captain Frank Hurley, one of Australia's newly appointed war photographers, wanted to combine several different negatives into a single battle tableau, and C. E. W. Bean, Australia's long-standing war correspondent and official war historian, prohibited it.
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List of abbreviations 5 Introduction: CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION 8 Chapter One: THE INVENTION OF SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY 12 Chapter Two: SPIRIT MATERIALIZATIONS 28 Chapter Three: PSYCHIC PHOTOGRAPHIC IMPRESSIONS 44 Chapter Four: ECTOPLASM 62... more
List of abbreviations 5 Introduction: CREDULITY AND SUPERSTITION 8 Chapter One: THE INVENTION OF SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY 12 Chapter Two: SPIRIT MATERIALIZATIONS 28 Chapter Three: PSYCHIC PHOTOGRAPHIC IMPRESSIONS 44 Chapter Four: ECTOPLASM 62 Chapter Five: THE RETURN OF THE DEAD 88 Epilogue: THE SPIRITS' LEGACY 140 Bibliography 146 Notes 152 Index 159
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... Download: http://www.experimenta.org/vanishingpoint/download CACHED: Download as a PDF. by Lisa Gye , Adrian Martin , Patricia Pringle , Inger Mewburn , MelindaRackham , Anita Callaway , Joel Zika , Vince Dziekan , Martyn Jolly. ...
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If the archival mode has been important over the last thirty years, it will only continue to become more important in the next thirty years. In the fifteen years since Lev Manovich wrote The Language of New Media, in which he identified... more
If the archival mode has been important over the last thirty years, it will only continue to become more important in the next thirty years. In the fifteen years since Lev Manovich wrote The Language of New Media, in which he identified the database with its operations of searching navigating and viewing as the new-media correlate to the novel and cinema with their operations of narrative storytelling, databases have only increased in scale, complexity and ubiquity — at an exponential rate, as is the case with all technologies. Archives are being uncovered or created at an unprecedented rate, digitized at an unprecedented rate and made searchable at an unprecedented rate. New ways of interrogating the archive, new ways of searching metadata and new ways of presenting iterations from the archive, such as more complex data visualizations, are being developed. At the same time photographs are manifesting themselves in a wider range of material substances — etched in stone or glass, pri...
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The media arts of the 21st century have a genealogy that includes such antecedents as the Phantasmagoria, the hippodromes (or spectacle theatres) and the Luna Parks of the 18th and 19th centuries. These were places where people went to be... more
The media arts of the 21st century have a genealogy that includes such antecedents as the Phantasmagoria, the hippodromes (or spectacle theatres) and the Luna Parks of the 18th and 19th centuries. These were places where people went to be engaged, fascinated and confounded by the spectacle of the illusion. It was at these places, alongside the freak shows and carnival rides, that spectators could see such technologically based forms of popular entertainment as the diorama, the stereo-scope, the praxiniscope and Pepper's Ghost. This is a genealogy of affective media – spectacular events that move us in surprising, unexpected and mysterious ways. Each of the essays in this collection draws our attention to the illusory and spectacular nature of media arts and the ways in which we are affected by them. Adrian Martin shows us how the films of GusVan Sant and Charlie Kaufman transcend the formal restrictions of plot and character and draw on a tradition of event and spectacle, where ...
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The increasing publication of books such as 'Dupain's Australians' (2003) and 'Australian Artists: Portraits by Greg Weight' (2004), aimed at projecting photographs of Australian faces as expressions of national... more
The increasing publication of books such as 'Dupain's Australians' (2003) and 'Australian Artists: Portraits by Greg Weight' (2004), aimed at projecting photographs of Australian faces as expressions of national identity is discussed. Several examples of portrait photographs are considered to highlight how they depict the true emotions and characteristics of Australians in unguarded moments.
For several years a collaborative team of composers, musicians, artists, performers and historians has recreated the immersive experience of magic lantern shows for contemporary audiences. As part of the Australian Research Council... more
For several years a collaborative team of composers, musicians, artists, performers and historians has recreated the immersive experience of magic lantern shows for contemporary audiences. As part of the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Heritage in the Limelight: The Magic Lantern in Australia and the World we have developed live performances physically combining new creative elements with actual historical magic lanterns and glass slides. In magic lantern shows audiences sat shoulder to shoulder in the dark and collectively experienced visual and aural effects as transforming images interacted with voice and music. This ubiquitous apparatus formed a fundamental archaeological substratum to the special effects of today’s media spaces. But for contemporary audiences inured to subsequently developed media thrills, the apparatus’s original experiential power can seem quaint and distant. Therefore, our intention has not been to ‘authentically’ reproduce an historical event, nor to simply add a ‘retro’ flavour to a contemporary multimedia performance, but to develop ways — ranging from algorithmic coding to microscopic glass painting —contemporary audiences can reconnect with the original ‘magic’ of the lantern. We have used various strategies, including elements of verbatim theatre, site specific re-enactment, and creative re-use, to encourage our audiences to reflect on the historical reality of the magic lantern show as an ‘experiential object’. Addressing the conference themes of ‘Photography, Cinema and Sound Archaeologies’, ‘Performance and Visual Media’, and ‘Cultural Heritage and the Digital Age’, I will examine the new strategies historians and museums need to develop as heritage becomes less tangible and more experiential. When historians are seeking to understand the immersive media experiences of the past in their historical and material specificity, and museum visitors are seeking to engage with their heritage in a more directly experiential way, what can be learnt from our creative, site specific, performances of historical immersive technologies?
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I want to talk about Hobart, the capital of the penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land, (now called Tasmania). In the 1840s new attractions produced wonder and awe in Hobart audiences through optics and staging.
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One of the words most commonly used in the many advertisements and playbills for spectacular attractions in the Australian Colonies was ’novelty’. The desire to take part in the latest innovations in entertainment had a particular... more
One of the words most commonly used in the many advertisements and playbills for spectacular attractions in the Australian Colonies was ’novelty’. The desire to take part in the latest innovations in entertainment had a particular urgency for colonial spectators on the frontier, who acutely felt the experience of being a long way from the metropolitan centres. As they developed in the Australian colonies, spectacular attractions — with their key 'circus' tropes of the exaggerated body of the acrobatic clown, mechanical ingenuity and illusion, and audience awe and wonder — were central to this perpetual demonstration of ‘The New’. Using case studies, I will discuss how the circus was central to Colonial Modernity. I will use colonial modernity to challenge the usual avant-gardist assumption that innovation or reaction to historical change begins at the centre and spreads to the periphery. I will argue that in many ways colonial audiences were ‘ahead’ of their metropolitan brothers and sisters in their spectatorship of spectacular entertainments.
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In many ways, the development of the magic lantern and the circus parallel each other. Magic lantern culture evolved slowly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as individual ‘savoyards’ tramped across Europe with lanterns on... more
In many ways, the development of the magic lantern and the circus parallel each other. Magic lantern culture evolved slowly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as individual ‘savoyards’ tramped across Europe with lanterns on their backs. In the nineteenth century, while the itinerant tradition continued to develop, the magic lantern also became a part of urban theatrical culture as entrepreneurs introduced elaborate phantasmagoria exhibitions and used the apparatus as part of increasingly complex ‘rational entertainments’. Both circuses and magic lantern shows developed new organised entertaining spaces, mechanical apparatuses, and performative conventions through which audiences experienced surprise, wonder, and laughter. It is not surprising therefore that they share much iconography.
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Australians were "early adopters" of magic lantern technology. From 1830 audiences in the colonial capitals, as well as out in the remote regions, became well acquainted with all aspects of the technology. Magic lanterns were incorporated... more
Australians were "early adopters" of magic lantern technology. From 1830 audiences in the colonial capitals, as well as out in the remote regions, became well acquainted with all aspects of the technology. Magic lanterns were incorporated into the programs of the big metropolitan theatres, and itinerant lanternists used local mechanics institutes, schoolrooms, and hotels for their dissolving view
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The optical projection of images has a long history. Technologies first developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries still exist, archaeologically embedded in today's digital PowerPoint presentations. This introductory chapter... more
The optical projection of images has a long history. Technologies first developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries still exist, archaeologically embedded in today's digital PowerPoint presentations. This introductory chapter outlines this broad history as a background for the individual chapters that follow. It identifies key moments of technological reconfiguration, working backwards from PowerPoint to the first inventors of the magic lantern. It unpacks the strange couplet 'magic lantern', which was in use from the mid-seventeenth century through to the early twentieth century, and examines the affective power for audiences of the magic lantern show. Each show brought together in a unique way still and animated, photographic and hand-painted slides, accompanied by music and songs, supported with formal recitations and informal extemporisations, and projected with both human manipulation and technical operation, all in an intimately shared domestic or public space. By focusing on the relationship between audience and the apparatus, as well as the glass slide as a material object, not just an image, the chapter draws out this book's themes of 'experiencing', 'connecting', 'persuading' and 'witnessing', and argues that further study of the magic lantern has much to offer historians, curators and artists.
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Installation View offers a significant new account of photography in Australia, told through its most important exhibitions and modes of collection and display. From colonial records to contemporary art, the book presents a chronology of... more
Installation View offers a significant new account of
photography in Australia, told through its most important
exhibitions and modes of collection and display. From colonial
records to contemporary art, the book presents a chronology
of rarely seen installation views from both well-known and
forgotten exhibitions, along with a series of essays that tell
the story of the individuals and institutions that have proved
essential to the public circulation of photographs. At once
specific and widely contextual in its scope, this long-term
research project from two of Australia’s leading scholars in the
field enriches our understanding of the diversity of Australian
photography by looking at what lies beyond the frame.
Installation View speaks not only to pictures, but to the people
and the places that nurture them.
photography in Australia, told through its most important
exhibitions and modes of collection and display. From colonial
records to contemporary art, the book presents a chronology
of rarely seen installation views from both well-known and
forgotten exhibitions, along with a series of essays that tell
the story of the individuals and institutions that have proved
essential to the public circulation of photographs. At once
specific and widely contextual in its scope, this long-term
research project from two of Australia’s leading scholars in the
field enriches our understanding of the diversity of Australian
photography by looking at what lies beyond the frame.
Installation View speaks not only to pictures, but to the people
and the places that nurture them.
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James William Newland’s (1810–1857) career as a showman daguerreotypist began in the United States but expanded into Central and South America, across the Pacific to New Zealand and colonial Australia and onto India. Newland used the... more
James William Newland’s (1810–1857) career as a showman daguerreotypist began in the United States but expanded into Central and South America, across the Pacific to New Zealand and colonial Australia and onto India. Newland used the latest developments in photography, theatre and spectacle to create powerful new visual experiences for audiences in each of these volatile colonial societies. This book assesses his surviving, vivid portraits against other visual ephemera and archival records of his time. Newland’s magic lantern and theatre shows are imaginatively reconstructed from textual sources and analysed, with his short, rich career casting a new light on the complex worlds of the mid-nineteenth century. It provides a revealing case study of someone brokering new experiences with optical technologies for varied audiences at the forefront of the age of modern vision. This book will be of interest to scholars in art and visual culture, photography, the history of photography and Victorian history.