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Traumaskop
Eadweard Muybridge: Phenakistoscope disk (1893)
Event (completed)
Playing Tricks with Perception

11.02.2019 - 18:15 h to
11.02.2019 - 20:00 h
Location
Exzellenzcluster Matters of Activity, Zentraler Laborraum, 2. OG rechts
Sophienstraße 22a, 10178 Berlin

So-called optical toys such as thaumatropes, phenakistiscopes, kaleidoscopes, and stereoscopes were extremely popular in the nineteenth century. They served not only to entertain audiences, captivating the public as instruments of – voluntary or involuntary – deception, but also to study visual perception.

The lecture by Petra Löffler, media and cultural studies scholar at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, shows how playing tricks with humans’ visual perception can be used for science and research.