Experiences
Healing Scars
In order to simulate how opaque black paint blocked light, I created edited versions of Carpenter and Westley’s entire scriptural lecture set. The first step in this process was to photograph the slides on a light box in order to get an illuminated image. I then brought that photo into Adobe Photoshop so that I could remove any part of the image that would not have been lit by the lantern. Since many of the scriptural scenes were badly damaged, I also digitally repainted the slides in order to imagine what they might have looked like earlier in their working life.[1]The process relied on Photoshop’s layering features, sampling, and blending tools to create the most seamless transition between the original paint and the parts that I added. This layering technique meant that the structure of the Photoshop file mimicked the physical layering of paint on the original slide. Because they were painting on glass, slide makers had to paint the details first, then add the background colors. In Photoshop, the layers with the most detail were closest to the original image. Though the digital structure of the image paralleled the physical object, my workflow for digital painting was the exact opposite of those used by the original slide makers. For each image, I added a base layer of color first, and then added the detail before blending those layers into the original image. This enabled me to see what the more detailed layers would look like with background color.
Animated the slides
Though I could have created gifs that transitioned between images automatically, I opted to insert the edited images into a PowerPoint presentation with black backgrounds. As the forerunner of audiovisual educational technologies, the visual vocabulary of the lantern show has been remediated into the transitions that come standard with any digital presentation software, including the fly in and the dissolving view. In fact, the lantern’s contribution to visual technologies is evidenced by the fact that we still refer to the basic building blocks of a presentation as a slide, even though we no longer have to insert pieces of glass or acetate into a projector. Once this powerpoint presentation was built, I then used a screen recording program to capture me progressing through the slides. This option gave me the most control over the timing of the slides and mimicked the liveness of a conference presentation or a lantern show.While digitally-assisted experimental archaeology enabled me to recreate these effects without a working projector and without damaging the original slides, I discovered that it is easy to overlook details that are unique to the lantern because I am so accustomed to the affordances of PowerPoint and digital screens. As I was creating the animation of Abraham, I realized that the images would not have been illuminated as they marched off the screen. This is because the lantern illuminated a circle in the center of the screen whereas a digital projector is capable of filling the entire screen. In the videos below, you’ll notice a slight difference in the figures' entrances and exits.
I have left the main scriptural sets as they are for the sake of exposing the iterative process at work, but I will correct this issue in the next iteration of the project.
Immersive page design
To further emphasize the total darkness needed to operate an improved phantasmagoria lantern, I used Scalar’s interface to add my own CSS to change the style of the page. I removed the grey borders at the edge of the page, made the background black, and rendered the text white. I also adjusted the colors of hyperlinks and alternate spellings so that they would be more visible. The black background matched the black that I had used in the PowerPoint, making for a seamless transition between the video of the slide and the webpage. The lack of visual cue remediates the erasure of visible boundaries between the audience and the world represented on screen in the context of the lantern show. For an extended discussion of the sequence of black-background pages in the Williams’ chapter, click here.[1] For a step-by-step guide, click here.
