The Italian Department invites you to the first event in its annual research seminar series, on 13 October at 6pm (G.H01).

 Prof. Massimo Riva (Brown University) will present material from his exciting new digital book Shadow Plays: Virtual Realities in an Analogue World (Stanford University Press, 2022). The book addresses a series of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century optical devices that foreshadow the immersive experiences of our digital times. 

In this talk, Prof. Riva will reconnect Paduan archaeologist Giambattista Belzoni's 1821 exhibit of an Egyptian Tomb at the Egyptian Hall in London to the showman’s early experiments and itinerant exhibitions as a “mountebank,” which included an illusionistic spectacle described as “a Real Phantasmagoria.” The presentation features the prototype of an immersive 3D model of “The Tomb” that will allow the public to experience what visitors of Belzoni’s exhibit experienced, two centuries ago. The work is based in part on research undertaken at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, which holds the Belzoni Collection.

Massimo Riva is Professor Italian Studies and Co-ordinator of the Virtual Humanities Lab at Brown University. He has pioneered digital Italian Studies since the 1990s. His collaborative digital projects include the Decameron Web, the Pico della Mirandola Project, and the Garibaldi Panorama and the Risorgimento Archive. An interactive version of the Garibaldi panorama on the Microsoft Surface was exhibited at the British Library in London, and in various museums and venues in Italy and Brazil. A version of the digital panorama is currently featured at the Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento of Turin, Italy, as part of the exhibit "Hero: Garibaldi Icona Pop".

All welcome.