Noam Elcott

The moderns mobilised artificial light to conquer the dark, disenchant the night, and create new media and art. Less familiar is the history of artificial darkness. In the middle of the nineteenth century, physiologists cleaved blackness from darkness, inventors patented photographic darkrooms, and impresarios extinguished the lights in their theatres. By the late nineteenth century, darkness was controlled in theatres using the velvet light traps known as ‘black screens’. These dark places helped to shape modern art, media, and their subjects.

Conference