« Now you see him, now you don’t » : Electronic (Absent) Presence and H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man
Event details
| Date | 14.10.2015 |
| Hour | 16:15 |
| Speaker |
Keith Williams, University of Dundee Bio: Dr Williams's research interests include: literature and culture of the pre-1945 period; special emphasis on H.G. Wells and James Joyce; interdisciplinary interests, especially in writing and cinematicity, documentary and reportage. He is currently supervising a doctoral research project on 'The Gendering of the Visual: Katherine Mansfield and Visual Culture'. |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
In the late nineteenth-century, the growing interface between humans and technology with potential to radically alter the conception of physical presence was strongly reflected in the early fiction of H.G. Wells. His imaginative speculations about the impact of new discoveries on the electromagnetic spectrum are particularly significant in the transformation of visual presence in The Invisible Man (1896). Its protagonist renders himself transparent through a mysterious form of radiation beyond the newly discovered X-rays and with even more uncanny properties. The text also prefigures how reconstitution and transmission of the body and the voice through new electronic media would become a powerful and potentially dangerous force in the twentieth century.
This topical theme is picked up and expanded in the highly fraught context of the 1930s by the first sound film adaptation by James Whale, with its close association between invisible megalomaniac and new auditory media, especially radio. Moreover, this situation is even more saturating for us now: we live in world where electronic ‘tele-presences’ are taken for granted everywhere in our mundane lives through a multitude of devices; where human agency is routinely displaced or acts at planetary distances; where invisible electronic forces rule the instantaneous flow of capital and information to an extent that would have seemed supernatural or inconceivable to our ancestors.
This topical theme is picked up and expanded in the highly fraught context of the 1930s by the first sound film adaptation by James Whale, with its close association between invisible megalomaniac and new auditory media, especially radio. Moreover, this situation is even more saturating for us now: we live in world where electronic ‘tele-presences’ are taken for granted everywhere in our mundane lives through a multitude of devices; where human agency is routinely displaced or acts at planetary distances; where invisible electronic forces rule the instantaneous flow of capital and information to an extent that would have seemed supernatural or inconceivable to our ancestors.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Organizer
- Dominique Kunz Westerhoff and Christian Indermuhle, dans le cadre du cours « Hommes / Machines »