The World in A Box: For a (Curious) History of Virtual Reality

CMRS Italian Studies Distinguished Visiting Scholars Lecture

This lecture by Professor Massimo Riva (Italian, Brown University) presents a pilot project of the Brown University Digital Publications Initiative, supported by the Mellon Foundation: a digital monograph focused on Italy as an imagined country, and illustrious or forgotten figures from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Italian art, history and culture. Six tales, or case histories, that are also episodes of a larger narrative which describes the role played by curious optical devices such as the mondo nuovo, the magic lantern, the moving panorama, stereoscopic photography, in shaping our peculiar conception of a “virtual reality,” foreshadowing technologies and forms of entertainment we are familiar with, in our digital present.

Sponsored by the Franklin D. Murphy Chair in Italian Renaissance Studies.