Experimental Theoretical Framework
Interpretation of Robertson's Fantasmagorie from F. Marion's L'Optique (1867)
Phantasmagoria, the dark light.
Originally experimented with in medieval times, Necromancers conjured ceremonies using concave mirrors and lanterns, in hopes of creating an image through projection of ghosts, gods or demons alike. Seeking the thrills of these spectres rippled through time eventually evolving into the 18th century “Phantasmagoria”. These illusory images, animated by the flame within a machine called the Lanterne Magique (Magic lantern) would offer rousing and imaginative entertainment to those daring enough to witness what happens in the dark zone.
Inspired by these necromancers and charlatans I would like to attempt at constructing my own flame, a theoretical framework where reality is stratified. There are five zones that make up its anatomy; 1.Luminous Zone, 2.Non-Luminous Zone,
3.Dark Zone, 4.Blue Zone and the 5.Non-Luminous veil,
.Anatomy of the Flame.
The Luminous Zone, presents the most visible part of the flame, it is the immediate, perceptible reality shaped by collective consensus.
It fundamentally has sway over the shared human experience, history, and empirical observation and functions as the dominant narrative for the notion of “what is real”. You could compare it to Plato’s cave shadows, Baudrillard’s hyperreality or the phenemonlogical “lifeworld”(Husserl).
Within the Dark Zone, material reality still exists but is completely outshined by the Luminous zone, a space where material reality persists but remains obscured, unacknowledged, or suppressed. It will contain truths, events, or phenomena that exist but are not illuminated by collective consciousness. Resonating with Jung’s “Shadow” of the unconscious or the repressed, Foucault’s "subjugated knowledges", the disqualified/silenced knowledge or the Lacanian Real, an unmediated realm that resists representation. Ultimately, it is an inaccessible force.
The Blue Zone functions as cosmic or metaphysical interference, an outside influence beyond human understanding or comprehension. It represents the unknowable, the divine, or forces outside rational understanding (the "Veil of Isis"). Aligning with Kant’s noumenon, an independant reality that exists outside of our sensory experience, Lovecraftian cosmic horror or mysticism.
Non-Luminous Zone is the nothingness, a void absent of form, meaning or perception. Not only is it darkness, but complete, utter nothingness (similar to Ginnungagap in norse mythology or the Primordial void in the Kabbalah, or the Heideggerian "nothing"). It serves as the ground from which reality emerges or dissolves.
And lastly, the Non-Luminous veil is the reaction to reality as we know it or the simulacrae of reality. It mimics reality but operates through mediation, artifice, or ideological distortion (Baudrillard’s simulacra, Nietzsche’s perspectivism). It is a veil of secrecy seperating you from the truth of the realm of dreams, propaganda, or hyperreality.
My framework isnt just for analysis, but is a generative toolkit for creating and understanding new work.
I suggest letting the flame guide you in exposing the influences and metaphors through the use of a stratified reality to better help us understand and interpret a world which is accelerating to extreme mass confusion and post-normal times.
Severo da Ravenna, Siren Candleholder, c. 1510-1530