The Spectacle Of Illusion

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The Spectacle of Illusion

Author : Matthew Tompkins
Publisher : Distributed Art Publishers (DAP)
ISBN 13 : 9781942884378
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (843 download)

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Book Synopsis The Spectacle of Illusion by : Matthew Tompkins

Download or read book The Spectacle of Illusion written by Matthew Tompkins and published by Distributed Art Publishers (DAP). This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 'The Spectacle of Illusion', professional magician-turned experimental psychologist Dr. Matthew L. Tompkins investigates the arts of deception as practised and popularised by mesmerists, magicians and psychics since the early 18th century. Organised thematically within a broadly chronological trajectory, this compelling book explores how illusions perpetuated by magicians and fraudulent mystics can not only deceive our senses but also teach us about the inner workings of our minds. Indeed, modern scientists are increasingly turning to magic tricks to develop new techniques to examine human perception, memory and belief.0Beginning by discussing mesmerism and spiritualism, the book moves on to consider how professional magicians such as John Nevil Maskelyne and Harry Houdini engaged with these movements ? particularly how they set out to challenge and debunk paranormal claims. It also relates the interactions between magicians, mystics and scientists over the past 200 years, and reveals how the researchers who attempted to investigate magical and paranormal phenomena were themselves deceived, and what this can teach us about deception. 00Exhibition: Wellcome Collection, London, UK (11.04.-15.09.2019).

The Spectacle of Illusion

Author : Matthew Tompkins
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780500022429
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (224 download)

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Book Synopsis The Spectacle of Illusion by : Matthew Tompkins

Download or read book The Spectacle of Illusion written by Matthew Tompkins and published by . This book was released on 2019-04 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Spectacle of Illusion, professional magician-turned experimental psychologist Dr. Matthew L. Tompkins investigates the arts of deception as practised and popularised by mesmerists, magicians and psychics since the early 18th century. Organised thematically within a broadly chronological trajectory, this compelling book explores how illusions perpetuated by magicians and fraudulent mystics can not only deceive our senses but also teach us about the inner workings of our minds. Indeed, modern scientists are increasingly turning to magic tricks to develop new techniques to examine human perception, memory and belief. Beginning by discussing mesmerism and spiritualism, the book moves on to consider how professional magicians such as John Nevil Maskelyne and Harry Houdini engaged with these movements - particularly how they set out to challenge and debunk paranormal claims. It also relates the interactions between magicians, mystics and scientists over the past 200 years, and reveals how the researchers who attempted to investigate magical and paranormal phenomena were themselves deceived, and what this can teach us about deception. Highly illustrated throughout with entertaining and bizarre drawings, double-exposure spirit photographs and photographs of spoon-bending from hitherto inaccessible and un-mined archives, including the Wellcome Collection, the Harry Price Library, the Society for Physical Research, and last but not least, the Magic Circle's closely guarded collection, the book also features newly commissioned photography of planchettes, rapping boards, tilting tables, ectoplasm, automata and illusion boxes. Concluding with a modern-day analysis of the science of magic and illusion, analysing surprisingly weird phenomena such as ideomotor action, sleep paralysis, choice blindness and the psychology of misdirection, this unnerving volume highlights how unreliable our minds can be, and how complicit they can be in the perpetuation of illusions.

Empire of Illusion

Author : Chris Hedges
Publisher : Knopf Canada
ISBN 13 : 0307398587
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis Empire of Illusion by : Chris Hedges

Download or read book Empire of Illusion written by Chris Hedges and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2009-07-28 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer prize–winner Chris Hedges charts the dramatic and disturbing rise of a post-literate society that craves fantasy, ecstasy and illusion. Chris Hedges argues that we now live in two societies: One, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. In this “other society,” serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins. In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Hedges navigates this culture — attending WWF contests as well as Ivy League graduation ceremonies — exposing an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion.

Illusions in Motion

Author : Erkki Huhtamo
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262018519
Total Pages : 461 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Illusions in Motion by : Erkki Huhtamo

Download or read book Illusions in Motion written by Erkki Huhtamo and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-02-22 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the cultural, material, and discursive history of an early manifestation of media culture in the making. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, huge circular panoramas presented their audiences with resplendent representations that ranged from historic battles to exotic locations. Such panoramas were immersive but static. There were other panoramas that moved—hundreds, and probably thousands of them. Their history has been largely forgotten. In Illusions in Motion, Erkki Huhtamo excavates this neglected early manifestation of media culture in the making. The moving panorama was a long painting that unscrolled behind a “window” by means of a mechanical cranking system, accompanied by a lecture, music, and sometimes sound and light effects. Showmen exhibited such panoramas in venues that ranged from opera houses to church halls, creating a market for mediated realities in both city and country. In the first history of this phenomenon, Huhtamo analyzes the moving panorama in all its complexity, investigating its relationship to other media and its role in the culture of its time. In his telling, the panorama becomes a window for observing media in operation. Huhtamo explores such topics as cultural forms that anticipated the moving panorama; theatrical panoramas; the diorama; the "panoramania" of the 1850s and the career of Albert Smith, the most successful showman of that era; competition with magic lantern shows; the final flowering of the panorama in the late nineteenth century; and the panorama's afterlife as a topos, traced through its evocation in literature, journalism, science, philosophy, and propaganda.

Society Of The Spectacle

Author : Guy Debord
Publisher : Bread and Circuses Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1617508306
Total Pages : 164 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (175 download)

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Book Synopsis Society Of The Spectacle by : Guy Debord

Download or read book Society Of The Spectacle written by Guy Debord and published by Bread and Circuses Publishing. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Das Kapital of the 20th century,Society of the Spectacle is an essential text, and the main theoretical work of the Situationists. Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960's, in particular the May 1968 uprisings in France, up to the present day, with global capitalism seemingly staggering around in it’s Zombie end-phase, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism, and everyday life in the late 20th century. This ‘Red and Black’ translation from 1977 is Introduced by Notting Hill armchair insurrectionary Tom Vague with a galloping time line and pop-situ verve, and given a more analytical over view by young upstart thinker Sam Cooper.

Citizen Spectator

Author : Wendy Bellion
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 080783890X
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Citizen Spectator by : Wendy Bellion

Download or read book Citizen Spectator written by Wendy Bellion and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this richly illustrated study, the first book-length exploration of illusionistic art in the early United States, Wendy Bellion investigates Americans' experiences with material forms of visual deception and argues that encounters with illusory art shaped their understanding of knowledge, representation, and subjectivity between 1790 and 1825. Focusing on the work of the well-known Peale family and their Philadelphia Museum, as well as other Philadelphians, Bellion explores the range of illusions encountered in public spaces, from trompe l'oeil paintings and drawings at art exhibitions to ephemeral displays of phantasmagoria, "Invisible Ladies," and other spectacles of deception. Bellion reconstructs the elite and vernacular sites where such art and objects appeared and argues that early national exhibitions doubled as spaces of citizen formation. Within a post-Revolutionary culture troubled by the social and political consequences of deception, keen perception signified able citizenship. Setting illusions into dialogue with Enlightenment cultures of science, print, politics, and the senses, Citizen Spectator demonstrates that pictorial and optical illusions functioned to cultivate but also to confound discernment. Bellion reveals the equivocal nature of illusion during the early republic, mapping its changing forms and functions, and uncovers surprising links between early American art, culture, and citizenship.

The Illusion of Power

Author : Stephen Orgel
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520341872
Total Pages : 110 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (23 download)

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Book Synopsis The Illusion of Power by : Stephen Orgel

Download or read book The Illusion of Power written by Stephen Orgel and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Elegant, deeply learned, and intellectually adventurous, its implications extend far beyond the boundaries of the Stuart and Caroline masque. It is an indispensable, exploration of political art and aestheticized politics. . . . a classic."--Stephen Greenblatt, University of California, Berkeley "A triumph of scholarship, insight, and explication, Oregel's book is truly a classic in the field of Renaissance studies. Anyone interested in Renaissance culture will find here a masterful analysis of its celebration of royal power."--Coppelia Kahn, Brown University "As knowing of art, theatrical and political history as it is sensitive to poetry, Orgel's book is learned, lively, and beautifully clear."--John Hollander, Yale University "A foundational text for the New Historicist Perspective in English Renaissance literary and cultural studies . . . as informative and suggestive as it was when new; in the clarity and grace of its writing, the breadth and precision of its arguments, the aptness and resonance of its examples, it is unsurpassed as an introduction to the dialectic of theatrical illusion and state authority--of play and power--in the culture of Elizabethan and Stuart England."--Louis Montrose, University of California, San Diego

Creating the Illusion (Turner Classic Movies)

Author : Jay Jorgensen
Publisher : Running Press
ISBN 13 : 0762458070
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (624 download)

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Book Synopsis Creating the Illusion (Turner Classic Movies) by : Jay Jorgensen

Download or read book Creating the Illusion (Turner Classic Movies) written by Jay Jorgensen and published by Running Press. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marilyn Monroe made history by standing over a subway grating in a white pleated halter dress designed by William Travilla. Hubert de Givenchy immortalized the Little Black Dress with a single opening scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. A red nylon jacket signaled to audiences that James Dean was a Rebel Without a Cause. For more than a century, costume designers have left indelible impressions on moviegoers’ minds. Yet until now, so little has been known about the designers themselves and their work to complement and enrich stories through fashion. Creating the Illusion presents the history of fashion on film, showcasing not only classic moments from film favorites, but a host of untold stories about the creative talent working behind the scenes to dress the stars from the silent era to the present day. Among the book’s sixty-five designer profiles are Clare West, Howard Greer, Adrian, Walter Plunkett, Travis Banton, Irene, Edith Head, Cecil Beaton, Bob Mackie, and Colleen Atwood. The designers’ stories are set against the backdrop of Hollywood: how they collaborated with great movie stars and filmmakers; how they maneuvered within the studio system; and how they came to design clothing that remains iconic decades after its first appearance. The array of films discussed and showcased through photos spans more than one hundred years, from draping Rudolph Valentino in exotic “sheik” dress to the legendary costuming of Gone with the Wind, Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, Bonnie and Clyde, Reservoir Dogs, and beyond. This gloriously illustrated volume includes candid photos of the designers at work, portraits and wardrobe tests of stars in costume, and designer sketches. Drawing from archival material and dozens of new interviews with award-winning designers, authors Jay Jorgensen and Donald L. Scoggins offer a highly informative, lavish, and entertaining history of Hollywood costume design.

Beautiful Illusion

Author : Christie Nelson
Publisher : She Writes Press
ISBN 13 : 1631523996
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Beautiful Illusion by : Christie Nelson

Download or read book Beautiful Illusion written by Christie Nelson and published by She Writes Press. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the march of boots echoes from overseas, all nations that border the Pacific and beyond are invited to build pavilions on Treasure Island at the Golden Gate International Exposition, an event dedicated to the pursuit of world peace and brotherhood. Meanwhile, Lily Nordby, smart, strong-willed, and feisty, lands a job at the Examiner and is given a once-in-a-lifetime assignment covering the Exposition. There she meets Tokido Okamura, the host of the Japanese Pavilion—and despite being highly suspicious of his true purpose on the island, she’s swept up in a whirlwind of powerful emotions that lead her into unknown territory. Brilliant and enigmatic Woodrow Packard, a Mayan art scholar at the Expo, prefers remaining aloof and alone. But his infatuation and deepening relationship with Lily thrusts him into the limelight. He asks himself, could someone as smart and beautiful as she return the love of a man who is a dwarf? In an attempt to prevent Lily from spiraling into danger, Woodrow intercedes to help her uncover her family’s past—but when fate intervenes, they are both pulled into a destiny they could never have imagined. Mixing fact and fiction with a dash of noir, Beautiful Illusion is a story of love and deception that explores what happens when human hearts collide as the world is plotting war.

Grand Illusion

Author : Gabriela Cruz
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0190915056
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (99 download)

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Book Synopsis Grand Illusion by : Gabriela Cruz

Download or read book Grand Illusion written by Gabriela Cruz and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new and groundbreaking historical narrative, Grand Illusion: Phantasmagoria in Nineteenth-Century Opera explores how technical innovations in Paris transformed the grand opera into a transcendent, dream-like audio-visual spectacle.

Disappearing Tricks

Author : Matthew Solomon
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252076974
Total Pages : 214 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis Disappearing Tricks by : Matthew Solomon

Download or read book Disappearing Tricks written by Matthew Solomon and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work revisits the golden age of theatrical magic and silent film to reveal how professional magicians shaped the early history of cinema. The author treats cinema and stage magic as overlapping practices that together revise our understanding of the origins of motion pictures and cinematic spectacle.

Experiencing the Impossible

Author : Gustav Kuhn
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 026203946X
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Experiencing the Impossible by : Gustav Kuhn

Download or read book Experiencing the Impossible written by Gustav Kuhn and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the scientific study of magic reveals intriguing—and often unsettling—insights into the mysteries of the human mind. What do we see when we watch a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat or read a person's mind? We are captivated by an illusion; we applaud the fact that we have been fooled. Why do we enjoy experiencing what seems clearly impossible, or at least beyond our powers of explanation? In Experiencing the Impossible, Gustav Kuhn examines the psychological processes that underpin our experience of magic. Kuhn, a psychologist and a magician, reveals the intriguing—and often unsettling—insights into the human mind that the scientific study of magic provides.Magic, Kuhn explains, creates a cognitive conflict between what we believe to be true (for example, a rabbit could not be in that hat) and what we experience (a rabbit has just come out of that hat!). Drawing on the latest psychological, neurological, and philosophical research, he suggests that misdirection is at the heart of all magic tricks, and he offers a scientific theory of misdirection. He explores, among other topics, our propensity for magical thinking, the malleability of our perceptual experiences, forgetting and misremembering, free will and mind control, and how magic is applied outside entertaiment—the use of illusion in human-computer interaction, politics, warfare, and elsewhere. We may be surprised to learn how little of the world we actually perceive, how little we can trust what we see and remember, and how little we are in charge of our thoughts and actions. Exploring magic, Kuhn illuminates the complex—and almost magical—mechanisms underlying our daily activities.

Entertaining the Third Reich

Author : Linda Schulte-Sasse
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780822318248
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (182 download)

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Book Synopsis Entertaining the Third Reich by : Linda Schulte-Sasse

Download or read book Entertaining the Third Reich written by Linda Schulte-Sasse and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Nazi cinema

Magic, Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography

Author : Albert A. Hopkins
Publisher : DigiCat
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 509 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (596 download)

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Book Synopsis Magic, Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography by : Albert A. Hopkins

Download or read book Magic, Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography written by Albert A. Hopkins and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-09-16 with total page 509 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Magic, Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography" by Albert A. Hopkins. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

The Age of Illusions

Author : Andrew Bacevich
Publisher : Metropolitan Books
ISBN 13 : 1250175097
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (51 download)

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Book Synopsis The Age of Illusions by : Andrew Bacevich

Download or read book The Age of Illusions written by Andrew Bacevich and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking and penetrating account of the post-Cold war follies and delusions that culminated in the age of Donald Trump from the bestselling author of The Limits of Power. When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Washington establishment felt it had prevailed in a world-historical struggle. Our side had won, a verdict that was both decisive and irreversible. For the world’s “indispensable nation,” its “sole superpower,” the future looked very bright. History, having brought the United States to the very summit of power and prestige, had validated American-style liberal democratic capitalism as universally applicable. In the decades to come, Americans would put that claim to the test. They would embrace the promise of globalization as a source of unprecedented wealth while embarking on wide-ranging military campaigns to suppress disorder and enforce American values abroad, confident in the ability of U.S. forces to defeat any foe. Meanwhile, they placed all their bets on the White House to deliver on the promise of their Cold War triumph: unequaled prosperity, lasting peace, and absolute freedom. In The Age of Illusions, bestselling author Andrew Bacevich takes us from that moment of seemingly ultimate victory to the age of Trump, telling an epic tale of folly and delusion. Writing with his usual eloquence and vast knowledge, he explains how, within a quarter of a century, the United States ended up with gaping inequality, permanent war, moral confusion, and an increasingly angry and alienated population, as well, of course, as the strangest president in American history.

Green Illusions

Author : Ozzie Zehner
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 0803243367
Total Pages : 462 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (32 download)

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Book Synopsis Green Illusions by : Ozzie Zehner

Download or read book Green Illusions written by Ozzie Zehner and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We don’t have an energy crisis. We have a consumption crisis. And this book, which takes aim at cherished assumptions regarding energy, offers refreshingly straight talk about what’s wrong with the way we think and talk about the problem. Though we generally believe we can solve environmental problems with more energy—more solar cells, wind turbines, and biofuels—alternative technologies come with their own side effects and limitations. How, for instance, do solar cells cause harm? Why can’t engineers solve wind power’s biggest obstacle? Why won’t contraception solve the problem of overpopulation lying at the heart of our concerns about energy, and what will? This practical, environmentally informed, and lucid book persuasively argues for a change of perspective. If consumption is the problem, as Ozzie Zehner suggests, then we need to shift our focus from suspect alternative energies to improving social and political fundamentals: walkable communities, improved consumption, enlightened governance, and, most notably, women’s rights. The dozens of first steps he offers are surprisingly straightforward. For instance, he introduces a simple sticker that promises a greater impact than all of the nation’s solar cells. He uncovers why carbon taxes won’t solve our energy challenges (and presents two taxes that could). Finally, he explores how future environmentalists will focus on similarly fresh alternatives that are affordable, clean, and can actually improve our well-being. Watch a book trailer.

Afflicted Powers

Author : Retort (Organization : San Francisco, Calif.)
Publisher : Verso
ISBN 13 : 9781844670314
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis Afflicted Powers by : Retort (Organization : San Francisco, Calif.)

Download or read book Afflicted Powers written by Retort (Organization : San Francisco, Calif.) and published by Verso. This book was released on 2005-06-17 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Afflicted Powers is an account of world politics since September 11, 2001. It aims to confront the perplexing doubleness of the present - its lethal mixture of atavism and new-fangledness. A brute return of the past, calling to mind now the Scramble for Africa, now the Wars of Religion, is accompanied by an equally monstrous political deployment of (and entrapment in) the apparatus of a hyper-modern production of appearances."--BOOK JACKET.