Resumen de Technologies of illusion: de Loutherbourg's Eidophusikon in eighteenth-century London
As one of the earliest examples of technology-driven visual entertainment, de Loutherboug's Eidophusikon clearly prefigures modern cinema. But understanding the attraction's cultural and historical significance as an eighteenth-century object requires consideration of such apparently disparate subjects as theatrical scenography, clockwork automata, theories of the natural world, occult metaphysics, "plein air" oil sketching, landscape painting, and the production of immersive viaual entertainments. This essay argues that the Eidophusikon's aesthetic and philosophical complexity -its seamless incorporation of mechanistic, empirical and spiritualistic theories of nature- reveals something distinctive about the place of art and technology at the end of the eighteenth century.
