The Theater of Electricity: Technology and Spectacle in the Late 19th Century

ISBN-13: 9783476059604 / Angielski / Twarda / 2023

Ulf Otto

Opis

The theater of modernity is based on aesthetic energies. Since the 1880s, however, it is electrical energies, generated from fossil fuels in power plants, that begin to circulate in the theater. Installed is a mysterious entity that is still traded as a life force and already stands for progress through technology. With the electrification of the theater, electrical industry becomes respectable and stagecraft modernistic. The backdrops, which only appear dusty in the spotlight, are disposed of, and the picture machine becomes spatial art. But more important are the institutional transformations that take place in hitherto unnoticed coalitions, continuities and competitions of technical and aesthetic things. Engineering knowledge, control techniques, and supply systems change how theater and society are interconnected. The interaction space of (inter)human corporeality of the 20th century turns out to be a technical constellation.

Spis treści

Introduction.- 1. Incandescence: electrical installations and their hygienic legitimation.- 2. Oxidation: material culture and industrialized theater.- 3. Regulators: control techniques and electroaesthetic expectations of salvation.- 4. Fabrication: atmospheres and their technical foundations.- 5. Attractions: Electricity exhibitions and their staging.- 6. Communication: electric media and telegraphic world theater.- 7. Industrial poetry: danced progress and civilization as kaleidoscope.- 8. Luminaries: figurations of technology and desirable projections.- 10. Force fields: Science theater and the spaces of electrical engineering.- 11. Conclusion: aesthetics of electricity.- Bibliography.- List of figures.

O autorze

Ulf Otto is Professor of Theater Studies with a focus on intermediality research at the LMU Munich.

Blurb

Since the 1880s, electrical energies started circulating in European theaters, generated from fossil fuels in urban power plants. A mysterious force, which was still traded as romantic life force by some and for others had already come to stand in for progress, entered performance venues. Engineering knowledge, control techniques and supply chains changed fundamentally how theater was made and thought of. The mechanical image machine from Renaissance and Baroque times was transformed into a thermodynamic engine. Modern theater turned out to be electrified theater. – Retracing what happened backstage before the Avantgarde took to the front stage, this book proposes to write the genealogy of theaters modernity as a cultural history of theater technology.

This book is a translation of the original German 1^st edition Das Theater der Elektrizität. Technologie und Spektakel im ausgehenden 19. Jahrhundert by Ulf Otto, published by J.B.Metzler, part of Springer Nature in 2020. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). The author has subsequently revised the text further in an endeavour to refine the work stylistically.