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Josef Svoboda «Laterna Magika» | Laterna Magica
Josef Svoboda, «Laterna Magika», 1958
Laterna Magica | Photography | © Josef Svoboda
 


 
Josef Svoboda «Laterna Magika» | Laterna MagicaJosef Svoboda «Laterna Magika» | Laterna MagicaJosef Svoboda «Laterna Magika» | Laterna Magica

Categories: Theatre | Sound | Film

Works by Josef Svoboda:

Diacran| Polyecran


Brussels | Belgium | direkctor of the performance: Alfréd Radok | Concept: Josef Svoboda | Director: Alfréd Radok, Assistenz: Milos Forman
 

 Josef Svoboda
«Laterna Magika»

From the moment of its inception, it has not been clear whether Laterna Magika (LM) is film, theater or a brand-new media performance show. First introduced in the Czechoslovak pavilion at the 1958 World Expo in Brussels, this entity combined ballet, theater, several film projections, and sound background. [...] LM transformed the concept of virtual and physiological time. The medium of virtual time included a real actor with whom the spectator could identify and thus gain a direct paradigm on which to model his own behavior, should his physical body ever find itself in a virtual interactive space. [...] It was a highly synchronized program, coordinated to the last detail, with everyone having his exact spot in a precisely marked space.

(source: Havránek, Vit in: Future Cinema. The cinematic Imaginary after Film, exhib. cat., Shaw, Jeffrey and Weibel, Peter (eds), The MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.), London, 2003, p. 102.)