Virtual Reality Avant la Lettre: Loutherbourg and the Origins of Urban Spectacle 1

Abstract

Michael Booth's essays and books on Victorian theatre provided a formative and comprehensive set of scholarly works examining the origins of realism on the Victorian stage. Using Booth's arguments about the evolution of theatrical realism, this essay probes the notion of virtual reality and its impact on the spectator to examine the Eidophusikon – an invention of the artist, scene designer and engineer, Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg. This essay examines this phenomenon in terms of how the urban spectacle plays out within it, the fundamental role of technology and science in its success, and the paradoxical play of realism and imagination in how his work was received by audiences experiencing its immersive effects in the age of panoramas and post-Newtonian ideas of light, sight and viewing.