Shadow Plays: Virtual Realities in an Analog World
by Massimo Riva, Professor of Italian Studies
Shadow Plays explores popular forms of entertainment used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to transport viewers to a new world, foreshadowing present-day virtual, augmented, and extended reality experiences (VR, AR, and XR). Typically studied as part of the pre-history of cinema or the archaeology of media, analog technologies such as the mondo nuovo or cosmorama, the magic lantern, the moving panorama, and the stereoscope evoked shadow-copies of our world long before the advent of digital technologies and exercised a powerful pull on minds and imaginations. Through six case histories and eight interactive simulations, Massimo Riva explores themes of virtual travel, social surveillance, and utopian imagination, shedding light on illustrious or, in some instances, forgotten figures and inventions from Italy’s past. Arguing for the continuity of experience and imagination, Riva adopts the term virtual realism, an experience marked by the virtualization of the real and the realization of the virtual. At a time when the gap between simulation and reality is getting ever smaller, a cultural-historical exploration of the pre-history of virtual reality can help us better understand the present in light of the past while exploring the past using the tools forged in the present.
Learn about the author.
Winner of the 2023 Prose Award by the Association of American Publishers
Finalist for the 2024 American Council of Learned Societies Open Access Book Prize
The digital format was ideal for my project, which traces a genealogy of virtual reality through case studies of analog optical devices that foreshadow our contemporary digital tools. The 3D models and interactive simulations of the analog artifacts we designed and built helped me make my argument and the reader’s experience much more compelling. I look forward to adopting my digital monograph in my team-taught course on immersive experiences, analog and digital.
Supported by the Mellon Foundation and, at Brown University, the Office of the Vice President for Research
