Blog

Laterna Magika in Prague: how Radok and Svoboda joined film and live actors at Expo 58, the censor and the exile, Wonderful Circus and the company’s story.

La Fura dels Baus, from Moià street theatre to Accions, Suz/o/Suz and the 1992 Olympic ship: how the Catalan troupe herded its audience through found spaces.

The history of the moving panorama: Banvard’s three-mile Mississippi, the scrolls that survive, Henry Box Brown’s Mirror of Slavery and today’s crankies.

The history of the cabinet of curiosities: what a Wunderkammer was, Rudolf II and Ole Worm, how cabinets became public museums, and the modern revival.

The history of Muzak, from Squier’s wired radio and Stimulus Progression to elevator music jokes, Satie’s furniture music and Brian Eno’s Music for Airports.

Alternate reality game history: The Beast, Majestic and I Love Bees, the payphone games that never admitted they were games, and a 1983 theatre forecast.

Winchester Mystery House history: who Sarah Winchester was, how the San Jose house grew, how the ghost legend was built, and what her biographer found.

Whole Earth Catalog history: Stewart Brand’s access to tools, the 1972 National Book Award, CoEvolution Quarterly and the WELL on the Sausalito waterfront.

The War of the Worlds broadcast of 1938: what aired on CBS, what the papers claimed, what ratings and letters show, and how the panic myth was made.

The Mills Tape Music Center from 1966: the Rockefeller grant, Pauline Oliveros’s first year, Robert Ashley’s public studio, computers and the archive.

The history of headphones, from 1880s operator harnesses and Nathaniel Baldwin’s kitchen-built Navy headset to Koss stereo, the HD 414 and noise cancelling.

Futurist synthetic theatre explained: the 1915 manifesto and its war aims, Russolo’s intonarumori, Balla’s Fireworks and the 2009 San Francisco reconstruction.