Full Description
This volume explores illusionism as a much larger phenomenon than optical illusion, magic shows, or special effects, as a vital part of how we perceive, process, and shape the world in which we live. Considering different cultural practices characterized by illusionism, this book suggests a new approach to illusion via media theory.
Each of the chapters analyses a specific kind of illusionistic practice and the concept of illusionism it entails in a given context, including philosophy, perception and cognitive theory, performance magic, occultism, optics, physiology, early cinema, cartomancy, spiritualism, architecture, shamanic rituals, and theoretical physics, to show the diversity of shapes that illusionism and illusions can take. The book provides detailed analyses of illusions within performance and ritual magic, philosophy, art history and psychology as well as a first approach to the study of illusions outside of these established fields. It aims to find ways of identifying and analysing a wider range of illusions in the humanities.
This multidisciplinary and comprehensive volume will appeal to scholars and students with an interest in media and culture, theatre and performance, philosophy, sociology, politics and religion.
This publication was supported by the Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar with funds from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
IKKM Books
Volume 47
An overview of the whole series can be found at
www.ikkm-weimar.de/schriften
Chapter 5 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 4.0 license https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003188278-8/vanishing-lady-railway-illusions-movement-1-katharina-rein?context=ubx&refId=fe124e6e-8290-43e9-9d48-753bad162c50
Chapter 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003188278-13/talking-rocks-illusory-sounds-projections-otherworld-julia-shpinitskaya-riitta-rainio?context=ubx&refId=3aa829a8-8c0b-4103-870a-6fe5a4393e71
Contents
Introduction, Part I: The Epistemology and Aesthetics of Illusions, 1. Optical Illusion and Standing Appearance in Kant and Johann Heinrich Lambert, 2. From Magic to Illusions: The Power of the Virtual, 3. Illusions, Magic and the Aesthetics of the Impossible, Part II: Illusions in Entertainment, 4. Magic and Illusion: From the Tarot to Playing Cards, 5. "The Vanishing Lady", the Railway, and Illusions of Movement, 6. Magic, Spiritualism and Cinema: Viewing Dispositives and Illusionist Spectacles in France in the Early Twentieth Century, 7. Deceptive Strategies in the Miniature Illusions of Close-Up Magic, Part III: Illusions of the Senses and the Mind, 8. Perspective, Illusory Space, and Communication: The Apotheosis of Saint Ignatius by Andrea Pozzo, 9. Talking Rocks, Illusory Sounds, and Projections of the Otherworld: Acoustics of Sacred Sites as a Magic Media in Shamanic Cultures, 10. The Vortex Atoms: On Illusions in Science and the Role of Mathematical Vision
