Questions of Shadow, Play, Ghosts & Transgression

When we collaborate with students in our Lumiere Ghosting discussions and in the development process for the CompuObscura, we often divide into small groups focused on some of the project's primary themes. These themes then serve as starting points for the questions that we ask each other throughout the term. These themes have also served as the basis for the development of different physical structures our architecture students created for the CompuObscura.

I. Shadow Play & Live Theater—All modern moving-picture media are built upon the ideas and narratives developed for live theatrical presentation and shadow puppet play. The keys to these elements are the human voice, the motion of the human form, the abstraction of shadow and the shifting metaphors of interactive visual signs. Lumiere Ghosting wants to make specific reference to this history of live theater and shadow puppets in the design of the CompuObscura device.

II. Film as Sideshow—When film first began it was a documentary format. Filmmakers went into a community, shot footage, developed it, then showed it in the evening in make-shift theaters. Some of these “theaters” were nothing more than a tree with a sheet hanging from a branch as a screen. Other theaters were more like carnival sideshow tents that could be put up for the day, then taken down and moved to the next town in a bag. This early format was short, ephemeral, and often directly connected to the environment in which the images were shot. Lumiere Ghosting wants to make specific reference to this history of the temporary, side-show nature of early film in the design of the CompuObscura device.

III. Camera Obscura & the Occult—The idea of the camera obscura has been with us since the times of Plato (see the allegory of the cave from The Republic for an idea of this) and was often used as part of the visual arts. From the very beginning, the projection of moving images through a camera obscura format has been associated with the supernatural and has often been part of magic and sorcery. During the 1800s camera obscuras became a popular form of entertainment as people became more and more accustomed to attending “theaters.”

After the novelty of going into a camera obscura just to see an image projected into the room from outside faded, camera obscura operators began connecting their camera obscuras with séances (to also adapt to the late 1800s fascination with the occult). Actors outside the device would perform as “ghosts,” their images where then drawn into the camera obscura to be projected down onto a table top around which people were sitting, holding hands, trying to summon the dead. Mist or smoke was often introduced into the room, along with various scents, vibrations, and sounds to enhance the experience.

This was all quite fake by today’s standards, and even many of the participants at the time were aware of the falseness of the experience, and yet, many still also believed (or wanted to believe) in what they were seeing and hearing. Lumiere Ghosting wants to make specific design reference to this history of the connection between the occult, ghosts, and the “beyond” with the modern manifestations of the projected moving image.

IV. The Effects of Globalization—Globalization has been with us as long as we have been able to travel. It has been limited in scope, however, by the mediums we used for travel and for cross-cultural communication. Global economic markets, the phone and television systems, satellites, and the Internet have vastly accelerated the process. Many cultures now fear they will be leveled into boring, meaningless uniformity by the press of corporate-state driven generic images, concepts, and technologies that seem to be all around us. The Lumire Ghosting Project is interested in this concept of cultural leveling, as well as cultural transmission and interaction through the medium of the moving image, and the effects of globalization are represented or referenced in the physical as well as virtual aspects of the CompuObscura.

What role does transgression play in the Lumiere Ghosting Project and in the CompuObscura?

The desire to participate in an act of transgression, voyeurism, and magic, combined with the suspicion that what you are about to see might change your life is what draws us toward film and to the presentation of the moving image (Dalle). Early film often was shown at festivals or as part of a type of sideshow, and so was always surrounded by the mystique of transgression combined with an element of technological magic. As we have become more accustomed to the film viewing process and as it has become such an ever present part of our culture, modern theaters have become more like vending machines and less like "theaters," doing their best to obliterate the sense of occasion and novelty from the cinematic experience. Many large budget Hollywood movies also drive out a lot of this novelty as they compete to present bigger and louder spectacle. And so, movies often no longer contain magic for many viewers (Helfand). Since televisions live in our homes, as an extra family member, they too have completely lost their sense of novelty and danger. The carnival mystique and the sideshow nature of the CompuObscura's external and internal design, therefore, is an attempt to reunite the image viewing process with transgression, suspicion and magic.

During the early days of the Internet, the sense of being allowed into areas that were previously forbidden was certainly an important lure of the environment and its attendant technologies for the average user (Hoveyda). Even today, people talk about places they have found on the Internet, or stumbled across and return to often, sometimes when they feel that no one is looking. The Internet is vast while also being intensely private; net technology allows millions to publicly view the supposedly private live actions of people living a dorm room which is continually on show through an open web cam, for example. The Internet also allows viewers, surfers and "participants" to continually play with the concepts of identity, secrecy, and transitive persona (on the Internet, no one knows you're a dog). Therefore, the act of viewing images and visiting hard-to-find web sites on the Internet still generates some of the same feelings of transgression and seduction that were a vital part of viewing early films which (like surveillance cameras and web cams of today) allowed viewers to view the events of the everyday without having to actually take part in those events and thereby "reveal" themselves (Levy).

The CompuObscura builds upon the sense of the "unknown" and the "forbidden" in how it captures sections of the hidden Internet and the media stream around us, and puts it on special display, only allowing a few people at a time to see the images inside the device and share the experience the same way camera obscura visitors interacted 100 years ago.

What does it feel like to "experience" the CompuObscura?

The common response to this question is that audience members are not slowed down or interrupted by the technology of the room. Participants are free to move around without any wires or heavy technology attached to them. In tune with our interest in history and early film, the experience of interacting with images in the CompuObscura will be much like the process of viewing images in camera obscuras in the 1800s or like seeing some of the early Lumiere brothers' films when they were first shown—participants come together in a dark room, in a small group, to see something magical, something slightly surreal, they are there to experience something that will stay with them for days and weeks afterward. Audience members don't need to make any special preparation to be part of the event; they don't need to "make" it happen by bringing some technology with them, they just need to be present and have their eyes open. One of the important aspects of being a participant in a camera obscura in the 1800s, or being an audience member at the first showing of a new Lumiere film was the sense of doing something special, something out of the ordinary. In many ways, being at at an early film event was like taking part in a festival or being part of a carnival. Participating in the CompuObscura should make audience members feel that they are doing something a bit cheesy that is also, at the same time, slightly scary and transgressive.

In the final manifestation of the CompuObscura, audience members will slowly find themselves surrounded by darkness and shadows as they move through the device. At first they approach from the outside where the device should look pleasing, charming, festive—like a festival tent or a carnival ride. But as they get closer, they find there are slightly frightening elements in the design, elements in shadow that make visitors suspicious of what they will find if they get closer, but also interested to see what is inside. When participants enter the device they find themselves in a dimly lit pre-staging area, where they are told about the device itself and some of the ideas that go into it. This is similar to the pre-staging area where audience members in a carnival show interact with the Master of Ceremonies, who "sells" them on what they are about to see, gets them excited and eager to see what is just behind the curtain. Once the participants are "hooked" on the story of the device, then are then led into the interaction area which is darker than all the other areas encountered thus far.

Eventually they make out images on a wall and discover that one of those images they can see is a version of themselves, and that "virtual" versions of the participants are interacting with other images in a strange collage of different environments that look like real places, and yet, are also slightly displaced and distorted. The longer the participant stands there, the more she can see on the screen, and the more she is able to control the virtual version of herself in the room that she observes on the screen.

Eventually, the participants are encouraged to leave. One userful way to signal to participants that it is time to leave is to copy a standard motif from cinema—the "film" simply runs out. The CompuObscura therefore signals the end of the experience by simulating the projection of washed out film frames flickering across the screen, until the screen is filled with pure white light. As soon as the film runs out, all the lights in the room go up, the screen vanishes, and people find themselves just standing there, looking at each other, then an exit sign lights up and they leave.