After an extensive tour throughout Europe, including venues such as Amsterdam, London and Brussels, the French entrepreneur and magician Henri Robin arrived in Paris in 1862, where he opened a new theatre on the legendary Boulevard du Temple. His arrival remarkably coincided with the destruction of this renowned hub of popular visual culture as it was cleared to make way for Hausmann's far-reaching program of urban modernisation. Nonetheless, Robin started providing scientific entertainment for audiences to be both beguiled and informed, and managed to do so very successfully throughout the following five years. His evening shows consisted of a mix of astronomical sciences, magic and the evocation of ghosts. This article addresses Robin's career in relation to the changing ideas of theatricality and his remarkable persistence in commingling astronomy and magic within a theatrical context. It will show that Robin's initial concept of theatricality is concretized in his explicit demonstration to the spectator that they were at the theatre, and that this was indeed the place where the wonders of the heavens could pry open the matter of their own understanding. Correspondingly, Robin's career fizzled out during the Second Empire, when scientific activities were dispersing rapidly across different public sites, altering and reshaping the appeal of the physiques amusantes. The rise of professional conférences alongside the waning appeal of what the critic Théophile Gaultier termed 'ocular spectacle,' eventually forced theatre and astronomy into fixed and discreet domains. As such, the story of Henri Robin and his science-based spectacles articulates major shifts in the various relationships between art and science, and theatre and astronomy.
Abstract:Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a frequent chronic dysrythmia with an incidence that increases with age (>40). Because of its medical and socio-economic impacts it is expected to become an increasing burden on most health care systems. AF is a multi-factorial disease for which the identification of subtypes is warranted. Novel approaches based on the broad concepts of systems biology may overcome the blurred notion of normal and pathological phenotype, which is inherent to high throughput molecular arrays analysis. Here we apply an internal contrast algorithm on AF patient data with an analytical focus on potential entry pathways into the disease. We used a RMA (Robust Multichip Average) normalized Affymetrix micro-array data set from 10 AF patients (geo_accession #GSE2240). Four series of probes were selected based on physiopathogenic links with AF entryways: apoptosis (remodeling), MAP kinase (cell remodeling), OXPHOS (ability to sustain hemodynamic workload) and glycolysis (ischemia). Annotated probe lists were polled with Bioconductor packages in R (version 2.7.1). Genetic profile contrasts were analysed with hierarchical clustering and principal component analysis. The analysis revealed distinct patient groups for all probe sets. A substantial part (54% till 67%) of the variance is explained in the first 2 principal components. Genes in PC1/2 with high discriminatory value were selected and analyzed in detail. We aim for reliable molecular stratification of AF. We show that stratification is possible based on physiologically relevant gene sets. Genes with high contrast value are likely to give pathophysiological insight into permanent AF subtypes.
This paper analyzes from a pragmatic postphenomenological point of view the performative practice of CREW, a multi-disciplinary team of artists and researchers. It is our argument that this company, in its use of new immersive technologies in the context of a live stage, gives rise to a dialectics between an embodied and a disembodied perspective towards the perceived world. We will focus on W (Double U), a collaborative interactive performance, where immersive technology is used for live exchange of vision. By means of a head mounted omni-directional camera and display the fields of vision of two participants are swapped, which enables the participants to perceive the world through another person's point of view. This intermedial experience brings a classic dichotomic perception of space to falter: material reality as a 'live' condition can no longer be opposed to a virtual mediated reality. In the shifting moment between the embodied and the perceived world, on the fracture between what one sees and what one feels, the distinction between live and mediated is blurred, moreover, can no longer be made. The perception of the body is pushed to the extreme, causing a most confusing corporal awareness, a condition that intensifies the experience and causes an altered sense of presence. In a dynamic cognitive negotiation, one tends, however, to unify the divergent ontologies of the 'real' and the 'virtual' to a meaningful experience. In this respect, we refer to recent neurological experiments such as the 'rubber hand illusion' in order to clarify the spectator's tendency to fuse both ontologies and to embody a coherent image-world.
Magic and Science in the Nineteenth-century Culture of Spectacle: Henri Robin in the Low Countries. The theatre of modernity served to illuminate scientific insight and discovery in a spectacular way. Astronomy, physics, and experiments with electricity were at the heart of a popular genre that became known as ‘physiques amusantes’ (amusing physics). These shows occupied a middle ground between entertainment and science, between showing and doing. They were often staged by magicians, who presented themselves as ‘professors’ and awed audiences at local fairgrounds, world’s fairs, and popular theatres. One such figure was Henri Robin (1811–1974). Reviews and images dating from Robin’s time in Belgium and the Netherlands and his own memoirs of his time in Paris reveal that he found himself at the crossroads of a number of key developments. In particular, Robin’s theatre practices shed light on the changing nature of spectacle in the latter half of the nineteenth century. His shows succeeded in maintaining a precarious balance between spectacle-driven entertainment and scientific learning, between visually-oriented fairground amusement for the masses and educational fare for the new bourgeoisie. This article will discuss the complex relationship between aesthetic and didactic concerns in Henri Robin’s theatre shows, their remarkable blend of science and magic, and their effect on audiences. At the same time, we will demonstrate that the spectacle of modernity in the Low Countries resulted in part from the international mobility of showmen such as Robin.
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