A D V E N T U R E S in C Y B E R S O U N DRobertson's Phantasmagoriaalt: Phantasmagorie and Fantasmagorie or Fantasmagoria and based largely on excerpts from the 'Dead Media Project' by Bruce Sterling
Phantasmagoria (Phan*tas`ma*go"ri*a) n. [NL., from Gr. a phantasm + an assembly, fr. to gather: cf. F. phantasmagorie.]
1. An optical effect produced by a magic lantern. The figures are painted in transparent colors, and all the rest of the glass is opaque black. The screen is between the spectators and the instrument, and the figures are often made to appear as in motion, or to merge into one another.Websters Dictionary, 1913 http://www.bibliomania.com
phantasmagoria A shifting scene of real things, illusions, imaginary fancies, deceptions and the like. A show of optical illusions in which figures increase or decrease in size, fade away, and pass into each other. The World Book Dictionary
Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits
"I am only satisfied if my spectators, shivering and shuddering, raise their hands or cover their eyes out of fear of ghosts and devils dashing towards them; if even the most indiscreet among them run into the arms of a skeleton."So spoke 'Robertson', (Etienne-Gaspard Robert) a Belgian who travelled round in Europe during the first decade of the 18th century, with his special shows in which he used many techniques solely with the aim of 'scaring people to death'.
 Robertson's Phantasmagoria
also... From The Female Thermometer: 18th-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny by Terry Castle, Oxford University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-19-508097-1 also referring to...Seraphin's 'Ombres Chinoises'; Guyot's 'smoke apparitions'; Lonsdale's 'Spectrographia'; Meeson's 'Phantasmagoria'; the 'Optical Eidothaumata'; the 'Capnophoric Phantoms'; Moritz's 'Phantasmagoria'; Jack Bologna's 'Phantoscopia'; Schirmer and Scholl's 'Ergascopia'; De Berar's 'Optikali Illusio'; Brewster's 'Catadioptrical Phantasmagoria' and 'Pepper's Ghost'.
In March 1798 a Belgian inventor, physicist, and student of optics named Etienne-Gaspard Robert presented what he called the first Fantasmagorie at the Pavillon de l'Echiquier in Paris. [1] Born in Liege France, Robertson, (his adopted stage name) and whose long and unusual career reflects the excitement and instability of his epoch, was both a brilliant eccentric and a tireless self-promoter. He first came to public notice in 1796 when he proposed to the Directoire a scheme for burning up the British fleet with a gigantic Miroir d'Archimede, an assemblage of mirrors designed to concentrate solar rays on a distant object until the object caught fire. This particular plan was never put into action, but 'Citizen' Robertson carried out a number of other public-spirited ventures in the years that followed. He experimented with galvanism and gave popular demonstrations in physics and optics in the 1790s and early 1800s. He was best known, however, as a balloon aeronaut, setting an altitude record in a Montgolfière in Hamburg in 1803. He later accompanied the Russian ambassador to China, where he demonstrated ballooning technique in the 1820s. Robertson's Phantasmagoria grew out of an interest in magic, conjuring, and optical effects. As he recalled in his Memoires Recreatifs, Scientifiques and Anedotiques of 1830-34, he had been fascinated in youth with the conjuring device known as the Magic Lantern, invented by Athanasius Kircher in the seventeenth century. Kircher's device, from which all our modern instruments for slide and cinematic projection derive, consisted of a lantern containing a candle and a concave mirror. A tube with a convex lens at each end was fitted into an opening in the side of the lantern, while a groove in the middle of the tube held a small image painted on glass. When candlelight was reflected by the concave mirror onto the first lens, the lens concentrated the light on the image on the glass slide. The second lens in turn magnified the illuminated image and projected it onto a wall or gauze screen. In darkness, with the screen itself invisible, images could be made to appear like fantastic luminous shapes, floating inexplicably in the air. from page 144
In the 1770s a showman named Francois Seraphin produced what he called Shadow Plays, or Ombres Chinoises, using a magic lantern at Versailles; another inventor, Guyot, demonstrated how apparitions might be projected onto smoke.[2] Robertson began experimenting in the 1780s with similar techniques for producing fantomes artificiels. He soon devised several improvements for the magic lantern, including a method for increasing and decreasing the size of the projected image by setting the whole apparatus on rollers. Thus the 'ghost' could be made to grow or shrink on front of the viewer's eyes. Robertson recognized the uncanny illusionist potential of the new technology and exploited the magic lantern's pseudonecromantic power with characteristic flamboyance. He staged his first Fantasmagorie as a Gothic extravaganza, complete with fashionably Radcliffean decor. An observer described the scene at the Pavillon de l'Echiquier:
"The members of the public having been ushered into the most lugubrious of rooms, at the moment the spectacle is to be begin, the lights are suddenly extinguished and one is plunged for an hour and a half into frightful and profound darkness; it's the nature of the thing; one should not be able to make anything out in the imaginary region of the dead. In an instant, two turnings of a key lock the door: nothing could be more natural than than one should be deprived of one's liberty while seated in the tomb, or in the hereafter of Acheron, among shadows."Robertson then emerged, spectrelike, from the gloom, and addressing the audience, offered to conjure up the spirits of their dead loved ones. A long newspaper account (cited in his memoirs) recorded the somewhat comical scenes that followed on one of these early occasions:
"A moment of silence ensued; then an Arlesian-looking man in great disorder, with bristling hair and sad wild eyes, said: 'Since I wasn't able... to reestablish the cult of Marat, I would at least like to see his face.Then Robertson poured on a lighted brazier two glasses of blood, a bottle of vitriol, twelve drops of aqua fortis, and two numbers of the journal Hommes-Libres. Immediately, little by little, a small livid, hideous phantom in a red bonnet raised itself up, armed with a dagger. The man with the bristling hair recognized it as Marat; he wanted to embrace it, but the phantom made a frightful grimace and disappeared. A young fop asked to see the apparition of a woman he had tenderly loved, and showed her portrait in miniature to the phantasmagorian, who threw on the brazier some sparrow feathers, a few grains of phosphorus and a dozen butterflies. Soon a woman became visible, with breast uncovered and floating hair, gazing upon her young friend with a sad and melancholy smile. A grave man, seated next to me, cried out, raising his hand to his brow: 'Heavens! I think that's my wife!' and ran off, not believing it a phantom anymore." Robertson, it should be allowed, disclaimed the accuracy of this account and accused its author, Armand Poultier, of trying to get him in trouble with the authorities...This particular exhibition, Poultier had written,...concluded with an old royalist in the audience importuning Robertson to raise the shade of Louis XVI. To this indiscreet question, Robertson responded very wisely:
"I had a recipe for that, before the eighteenth of Fructidor, I have lost it since that time: it is probable I shall never find it again, and it will be impossible from now on to make kings return in France."This inflammatory story was false, Robertson complained in his memoirs, but nonetheless the police temporarily closed down the phantasmagoria and forced him to decamp for Bordeaux, where he remained for over a year. from page 146
When He (Robertson) returned to Paris he began producing even more elaborate and bizarre spectacles in the crypt of an abandoned Capuchin convent near the Place Vendome. Here, amid ancient tombs and effigies, Robertson found the perfect setting for his optical spectre-show, a kind of sepulchral theatre, suffused with gloom, cut off from the surrounding city streets, and pervaded by (as he put it) the silent aura of des mysteres d'Isis. His memoirs, along with a surviving Programme Instructif from the early 1800s, provide a picture of a typical night in the charnel house. At seven o'clock in the evening spectators entered through the main rooms of the convent, where they were entertained with a preliminary show of optical illusions, trompe l'oeil effects, panorama scenes, and scientific oddities. After passing through the Galerie de la Femme Invisible (a ventriloquism and speaking-tube display orchestrated by Robertson's assistant 'Citoyen Fitz-James'), one descended at last to the Salle de la Fantasmagorie. Here, the single, guttering candle was quickly extinguished, and muffled sounds of wind and thunder (produced by 'les sons lugubres de tamtam') filled the crypt. Unearthly music emanated from an invisible glass harmonica. Robertson then began a somber, incoherent speech on death, immortality, and the unsettling power of superstition and fear to create terrifying illusions. He asked the audience to imagine the feelings of an ancient Egyptian maiden attempting to raise, through necromancy, the ghost of her dead lover at a ghastly catacomb: There, surrounded by images of death, alone with the night and her imagination, she awaits the apparition of the object she cherishes. What must be the illusion for an imagination thus prepared ![3] At last, when the mood of terror and apprehension had been raised to a pitch, the spectre-show itself began. One by one, out of the darkness, mysterious luminous shapes, some seemingly close enough to touch, began to surge and flit over the heads of the spectators. In a Petit Repertoire Fantasmagorique Robertson listed some of the complex apparitions he produced on these occasions. Several, we notice, specifically involved a metamorphosis, or one shape rapidly changing into another, an effect easily achieved by doubling two glass slides in the tube of the magic lantern over one another in a quick, deft manner. Thus the image of The Three Graces, turning into skeletons. But in a sense the entire phantasmagoria was founded on discontinuity and transformation. Ghostly vignettes followed upon one another in a crazy, rapid succession. The only links were thematic: each image bore some supernatural, exotic, or morbid association. In selecting his spectral program pieces Robertson drew frequently upon the 'graveyard' and Gothic iconography popular in the 1790s. Thus the apparition of 'The Nightmare,' adapted from Henry Fuseli, depicted a young woman dreaming amid fantastic tableaux; a demon pressing on her chest held a dagger suspended over her heart. In The Death of Lord Lyttleton, the hapless peer was shown confronting his famous phantom and expiring. Other scenes included Macbeth and the Ghost of Banquo, The Bleeding Nun, A Witches' Sabbath, Young Interring his Daughter, Proserpine and Pluto on their Throne, The Witch of Endor, The Head of Medusa, A Gravedigger, The Agony of Ugolino, The Opening of Pandora's Box. Interspersed among these were single apparitions familiar from the earlier phantasmagoria shows, often the bloody 'revolutionary' spectres of Rousseau, Voltaire, Robespierre, and Marat. Robertson concluded his shows with a rousing speech and a macabre 'coup de theatre'.
"I have shown you the most occult things natural philosophy has to offer, effects that seemed supernatural to the ages of credulity,' he told the audience; 'but now see the only real horror... see what is in store for all of you, what each of you will become one day: remember the Phantasmagoria."And with that, he relit the torch in the crypt, suddenly illuminating the skeleton of a young woman on a pedestal. from page 148
Phantasmagoria shows rapidly became a staple of London popular entertainment. Mark Lonsdale presented a Spectrographia at the Lyceum in 1802; Meeson offered a phantasmagoria modeled on Philipstal's at Bartholomew Fair in 1803. A series of Optical Eidothaumata featuring 'some surprising Capnophoric Phantoms' materialized at the Lyceum in 1804. In the same year the German conjurer Moritz opened a phantasmagoria and magic show at the King's Arms in Change Alley, Cornhill, and in the following year, again at the Lyceum, the famous comedian and harlequin Jack Bologna exhibited his Phantoscopia. Two 'Professors of Physic,' Schirmer and Scholl, quickly followed suit with an Ergascopia. In 1807, Moritz opened another phantasmagoria show at the Temple of Apollo in the Strand, this one featuring a representation of the raising of Samuel by the Witch of Endor, the ghost scene from Hamlet, and the transformation of Louis XVI into a skeleton. In 1812 Henry Crabb Robinson saw a 'gratifying' show of spectres, their 'eyes etc' all moving, at the Royal Mechanical and Optical Exhibition in Catherine Street. In De Berar's Optikali Illusio, displayed at Bartholomew Fair in 1833, Death appeared on a pale horse accompanied by a luminous skeleton. How realistic were the 'ghosts'? Strange as it now seems, most contemporary observers stressed the convincing nature of phantasmagoric apparitions and their power to surprise the unwary. Robertson described a man striking at one of his phantoms with a stick; a contributor to the Ami des Lois worried that pregnant women might be so frightened by the phantasmagoria that they would miscarry. One should not underestimate, by any means, the powerful effect of magic-lantern illusionism on eyes untrained by photography and cinematography. from page 150
Better images and a more complex technology were required. Brewster's own solution was the Catadioptrical Phantasmagoria, an apparatus of mirrors and lenses capable of projecting the illuminated image of a living human being. 'In place of chalky ill-drawn figures, mimicking humanity by the most absurd gesticulations,' he wrote, 'we shall have phantasms of the most perfect delineation, clothed in real drapery, and displaying all the movements of life.
 The 'Pepper's Ghost Illusion You may wish to download a slightly larger version
In the renowned show of Pepper's Ghost, exhibited at the Royal Polytechnic Institution in London in the 1860s, just such an apparatus was used to great effect. Wraithlike actors and actresses, reflected from below the stage, mingled with onstage counterparts in a phantasmagorical version of Dickens' The Haunted Man on Christmas Eve, 1862.
"The apparitions, wrote Thomas Frost, not only moved about the stage, looking as tangible as the actors who passed through them, and from whose proffered embrace or threatened attack they vanished in an instant, but spoke or sang with voices of unmistakable reality."from page 151
I have quoted rather extensively from Chapter 9 of Professor Castle's work, but no mere ascii can do justice to its many remarkable period illustrations, including a priceless depiction of Robertson's audience beset by phantom devils and in a stampeding panic.
Footnotes (1) On Etienne-Gaspard Robert's colorful career, see his Memoires recreatifs, scientifiques, et anecdotiques d'un physicien-aeronaute (Paris 1830-34). I have used the modern reprint, introduced by Philippe Blon, 2 vols. ( Paris, 1985 )(...) Stendhal describes one of Robertson's provincial shows in his Memoires d'un touriste ( 1838 ), in the section entitled, Nivernais, le 18 avril. (2) There are a number of nineteenth-century writings on the history and uses of the magic lantern. See, for example, letter 67 of Sir David Brewster's Letters on Natural Magic (London, 1833), or the anonymous manuals from later in the century, The Magic Lantern: How to Buy and How to Use It. Also How to Raise a Ghost ( London, 1866 ) and The Magic Lantern: Its Construction and Management (London, 1888). For a modern account of Kircher's invention and its role in the history of cinematography, see Martin Quigley, Jr., Magic Shadows: The Story of the Origin of Motion Pictures ( New York, 1960 ). (3) A surviving program from early 1800 entitled Fantasmagorie de Robertson, containing a list of experiments and illusions performed at the Cour des Capucines, is located in the University of Illinois library.
Robertson's Final Phantasmagoria Paris' Pre-Lachaise cemetery was designed as a 'walk-about cemetery,' a notion based on the English-style gardens which were so fashionable during the Romantic era. It was established in 1804 in a 17 hectare park, and its layout was conceived by the architect Brongniart. It is here that the tomb of Etienne-Gaspard Robertson can be found, built several months after his death in 1837 and designed by Girardin, the architect. Very early on, Robertson developed a form of stage-show based on known light projection systems, such as Kircher's lantern. It was an impressive spectacle for its time, using sophisticated effects. The theme of death particularly fascinated the public. More than death and its skeletons, however, Robertson was adept at making the most of the 'resurrection' theme, through the projection of portraits of the deceased, some of them public figures, or specially requested projections for inconsolable families. He made such virtual reincarnations credible through procedures which bore witness to his talent as a technician. Able to combine his knowledge as a man of science with his artistic sensibility, he has often been considered as one of the forerunners of cinema, indeed of the audio-visual media as a whole. He was a true director who knew how to use constantly updated special effects: the diffusion of incense, mysterious sound effects, the importance of light in reproducing the climatic effects of daylight, contre-jour, etc, and above all, the beginnings of a sound-track... with the help of a ventriloquist "able to make the dead speak" and the use of a harmonica with a high-pitched sound resulting from the chiming of glass bells. Robertson's monument looks like an invitation to an 'imaginary voyage.' Although it has no chapel, it is imposing in size, measuring four metres in height. Two bas reliefs, located on the sides of the monument, evoke the physicist's tumultuous life. The first is a reminder of Robertson the aerostat specialist. It shows a small boy, leaning on a safety barrier, watching attentively before a crowd of people as an aerostat lifts up into the sky. The second is more curious. Guarded by two owls, it depicts two symmetrical groups which appear to be confronting one another: a group representing the dead and another representing the living move back to make way for a floating winged skeleton playing a trumpet. This bas relief is anecdotal, evoking a scene from a phantasmagorical show. Unlike the surrounding tombs, there is no trace of a portrait of the physicist and the theme of death is given a high profile. Above the two bas reliefs and at the base of the half-draped sarcophagus which tops the monument, a row of young girls' heads alternate with winged skulls. These somewhat disconcerting figures are a reminder of those unfailingly successful phantasmagorical themes wherein woman is a character representative of Love and Death, holding the secret of the great mystery of our origins. This is no longer the standardized image of the neo-classical woman, but a virtual image. Could the winged skeleton playing a trumpet, hovering above the scene of the last judgement, be a reference to the trumpet-playing automaton which Robertson liked so much? Or does it, in a wider sense, evoke the phantasmagorist's attraction to automatons? Robertson had bought from the famous musician J. Maelzel a trumpet-playing android which could play as well as a musician. On the monument, the automaton has disappeared: he is nothing more than a skeleton, proving that even a machine can die and that the instrument alone survives, thanks to the universal nature of music. Etienne Gaspard Robertson at Père Lachaise Cemetery by David Liot, Musee des Arts et Metiers: La Revue, Sept. 1994, n 8, p.57-61
Paris, 1797, the streets are still stained red from the handiwork of Madame Guillotine. In the area known as Batingnolles, a small group of men and women step nervously through a graveyard. They quietly enter the cloisters of the Convent of the Capucines, pass through an ancient door, down into the crypt. Inside the sombre place, weakly illuminated by a sepulchral lamp, others are already waiting seated on the tombs. The atmosphere is intense, all faces are grave, people speak in lowered voices. A pale gaunt man enters and addresses them...
"The experiment which you are about to see must interest philosophy. The two great epochs of man are his entry into life and his departure from it. All that happens can be considered as being placed between two black and impenetrable veils which conceal these two epochs, and which no-one has yet raised"He looks round solemnly...
"But the most mournful silence reigns on the other side of this funerary crepe: and it is to fill this silence, which says so many things to the imagination, that magicians, sibyls and the priests of Memphis employ the illusions of an unknown art, of which I am going to try to demonstrate some methods under your eyes"He spreads wide his arms
"I have offered you spectres, and now I am going to make known shadows appear"Suddenly the dim light is extinguished, in the perfect blackness the voice booms...
"Citizens and gentlemen I have promised that I will raise the dead, and I will raise them"There is the sound of rain, of thunder, a funeral bell tolls, calling the shades from their tombs and a strange music, sweet and penetrating. Lightning furrows the vault in every direction, in the distance, seemingly beyond the confines of the crypt, a figure appears. It is the Grim Reaper, Death himself, scythe in one hand, the sands of time in the other. Death slowly approaches, closer and closer, A woman screams and Death disappears suddenly into the darkness. Other hideous spectres appear and disappear. The ghost of Robespierre attempts to rise from his tomb, lightning strikes, turning both ghost and tomb to dust. Diogenes, lamp in hand and other famous people from the other side of the Styx, show themselves. The three graces appear in all their beauty, but their flesh withers leaving three skeletons in their place. The head of the Gorgon, Medusa, fills the room. Demons and ghost dance around the walls. Smoke seeps from a coffin in the centre of the crypt, materialising into the form of a young woman, then is blown away. Supernatural spectacles follow one after another, at last Robertson speaks once more...
"I have gone through all the phenomena of the phantasmogria. I have unveiled the secrets of the priests of Memphis, showed you what is occult in physics; but it remains for me to offer you one, which is only too real. Those of you who have perhaps smiled at my experiments, beauties who have experienced a few moments of fear, here is the only truly terrible spectacle, the one wholly to be feared: Strong men, frail men, monarchs and subjects, believers and atheists, beautiful and ugly, here is the lot which awaits you, this is what you will be one day. Remember the Phantasmagoria."The light reappears and in the middle of the vault the skeleton of a young woman stand on a pedestal. The Phantasmagoria of Etienne Gaspard Robertson, was the sensation of post-revolutionary Paris. His multimedia Gothic horror show thrilled his audiences, his theatre an ancient chapel was dressed up and decorated to great effect, in the same way that theme parks do today, getting people to participate before the show had even started. Other showmen started to produce Phantasmagoria shows in England and America. There is some evidence that Paul de Philipsthal who presented a show at London's Lyceum Theatre in 1801, may have originated the form. However no-one it seems before or after has presented such a show with such panache. Robertson used a number of magic lanterns to produce his various effects. Some were used to back project on to a large screen, thus keeping the lantern hidden from the audience, these large lanterns were known as Fantascopes and ran backwards and forwards on wheels; a device attached by pulleys to the wheels kept the lens focused. Assitants placed among the audience had small lanterns strapped to their chests, which allowed "spectres" to be projected in unusual places. Other effects were produced by projecting on to smoke and the use of a Megascope to project models and puppets. Source: http://adamsresidence.fsn.net
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