Friday 25 October: Natalie Woodhead

INTO THE SUBLIME: THE EIDOPHUSIKON REIMAGINED

For starters, a dolphin foetus. Tiger skull. Elephant heart. Penguin skeleton. A jar of moles. All but shoved in your face as you enter the Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL.

For main course, just across the room, a deep-dive into a coral reef. Swarmed by curious angelfish, turtles and sharks, you learn how bomb-fishers are bombing our precious reefs to smithereens. Then you discover how scientists are finding ways to thwart the destroyers and remake what’s being lost. And the beautiful fish return, along with the painstakingly restored coral reef. A happy ending brought to us by Virtual Reality headset.

For dessert, we leap backwards two-and-a-half centuries for some analogue tech at Swedenborg House. The Eidophusikon . Invented by 18th-century artist and alchemist, Philip James de Loutherbourg, the Eidophusikon was a magical augmented reality in the form of a small mechanical theatre.

Opening in Leicester Square in 1781, it was described as ‘Moving Pictures representing Phenomena of Nature’. Members of the public paid shillings to see shipwrecks, cataclysmic storms and volcanoes, sunrises and sunsets, moonlight images – all brought to life using mirrors and pulleys, controlled lighting, magic lantern slides, coloured silk filters, clockwork autometer, 3-D models, beautifully painted scenes on transparencies, and homemade sound systems (sounds of thunder, for example, were made using hidden sheets of thin copper). A diorama drama-rama where every element operated seamlessly as one.

TV shows today are a plastic-coated pill we thoughtlessly swallow, but none of them would have happened if not for the Eidophusikon – this hand-reared, hand-prepared, handcrafted elaborate feast whipped up by a mystagogue so secretive, he ordered his papers burned after his death.

What a banquet. Thank you, Bloomsbury Festival 2024.

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