The World in A Box: For a (Curious) History of Virtual Reality

CMRS Italian Studies Distinguished Visiting Scholars Lecture

This lecture by Professor Massimo Riva (Italian, Brown University) presents a pilot project of the Brown University Digital Publications Initiative, supported by the Mellon Foundation: a digital monograph focused on Italy as an imagined country, and illustrious or forgotten figures from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Italian art, history and culture. Six tales, or case histories, that are also episodes of a larger narrative which describes the role played by curious optical devices such as the mondo nuovo, the magic lantern, the moving panorama, stereoscopic photography, in shaping our peculiar conception of a “virtual reality,” foreshadowing technologies and forms of entertainment we are familiar with, in our digital present.

Please click this link to register to attend.

No fee. Limited seating.

Sponsored by the Franklin D. Murphy Chair in Italian Renaissance Studies.