LAUSR

The 1900 World’s Fair congregated a large number of attractions that revolutionised the tradition of panorama. These attractions were complex devices: often, they incorporated highly technological advances and played a vital role in the emergence of an entertainment culture. In this paper, I attempt to reconstruct three of these devices through an examination of archival material: the Mareorama, which followed the tradition of simulating a journey; the Globe Celeste, which was similar to today’s planetariums; and the Phono-cinema-theâtre, which, following the example of the Theâtroscope, was based on the representation of a stage performance. All three of these combined visual, sound and scenic effects. I will try to interpret how the visual experience was complemented by other sensory stimuli, such as sounds and smells, as well as by the immersive nature of the devices. My aim is to investigate what these attractions, as material objects, may have contributed to overcoming a merely visual conceptualisati...