Laura Dunham
Beyond Site and Screen: The Magic Lantern and Effecting Change in New Zealand’s Built Environment, 1880–1950
The magic lantern’s role in shaping Aotearoa New Zealand’s built fabric is the subject of my Ph.D. research. For over three centuries this early form of image projection technology has been widely used to entertain and educate audiences across many different contexts, reflecting culture and various spaces and structures. The device operates by projecting the transparent images of glass lantern slides onto a screen, which are narrated by a performer/speaker/lecturer to an audience, and are often accompanied by other audio-visual effects. As an instrument for disseminating knowledge, the magic lantern was highly adaptable to the needs of its users and has recently been recognised by scholars for its prolific history in determining how audiences have consumed screen-based media, and how audiences have influenced it in turn. Focusing on the use of the magic lantern and lantern slides for architectural purposes, this study maps the medium’s work as a tool for carrying out architectural changes in New Zealand. It takes the 1880s as its starting point, when photographic lantern slides became more available, and ends with the 1940s, when the new 35mm slide format began to supersede the magic lantern. A series of architectural proposals are investigated to gauge how the magic lantern was utilised by people, organisations, and institutions seeking to make changes in New Zealand’s built environment. Three contexts of its use are examined: the selection and production of architectural images made into lantern slides; lantern events and environments where the medium is used to communicate ideas about transforming architecture; and architectural lantern slides as intermediary objects used as tools for reference and for dissemination through other media. The study also asks how successful the medium was in the actualisation of architectural proposals, how it contributed to the development of an architectural culture (particularly architecture’s visual culture) within New Zealand, and scrutinises its part in mediating audiences’ (shifting) perceptions and interactions with the built landscape around them.
Supervisors
Christine McCarthy & Professor Joanna Merwood-Salisbury
Qualifications
University of Canterbury (MA, Art History)