The Light in the Background is the Sun includes four sections of text and image, entitled Pioneering, Metamorphoses, 37 Red Hats, and Ventriloquisms. In Pioneering, you will read about the ancient Magic Lantern, how it has been used historically, and how its re-use can inform contemporary media. You will read about the epic, Pioneer, which explores the device and re-invents its use along side Jitter-rendered and live-capture video.



"Living in the Lantern:

The Projectionist as Our Media Predecessor



Let us shift the magic lantern from its accepted relevance as a “proto-cinematic machine” and look at it in the genealogy of contemporary multimedia installation art. It is not feature-length narrative cinema which simultaneously engages the body and mind, as the images on the screen are a distant, known illusion. Artists create multimedia experiences which expand the idea of interface beyond a single screen and into the space of the viewer. This offers the opportunity for dwelling within the moment of the object-media event."



In Metamorphoses, read about the Blue Boar and the story of my 10th-great-grandmother Mary Bradbury's 1692 Salem Witch trial, and the interactive installation and video works by the same name.



"Cabbage: I saw Ms. Bradbery

Houseleeks: As I daily Do.

Potato: Enter Our Patch to pick Tubers for Stew

Radish: She had gathered an armful of potato and radish

Onion: When a brown boar trot by looking wild and maddish

Foxglove: The fast-passing boar filled the old woman with fright. She fell on her back and she lay there all night. With her RUMP on the tansy And her HEAD by the teasel. That horse spooked the boar. He’s a perjuring weasel."



37 Red Hats describes a 2008 trip to Beijing in which I visited and documented every Pizza Hut restaurant in the city.



Ventriloquisms are other works, video, interactive, performative, and collaborative, which deal with "electronic puppetry"



I hope that you will enjoy this book and the work. Please continue the conversation by email, or on my blog: victoriabradbury.blogspot.com



Happy Reading!