Musica Magica
Ruth Baumer & Günther Holzhey
Musica Magica
Based in Germany but touring internationally.
Profile: Together with the audience, Ruth Baumer and Günther Holzhey, better known as 'Musica Magica', are putting the impact of this old medium to the test. Current habits of reception are deliberately put into question. The presence of the projectionist, the staging with sound and music, the magic of the hand-painted images and the poetry of the old photographic series - they all enthral the audience. The same goes for the historical content. Is it possible to make social, political or philosophical questions of the past understood, and will this put into perspective those issues we are so fervently discussing today?
Programmes include:
The world becomes more beautiful with each passing day
The programme centres on a 19th century travelling lanternist. In his youth, he created beautiful hand-painted religious images and told bible stories. He then became an educationalist, demonstrating the new heliocentric view of the world using a small projectable planetarium.
Mr. Harvey travels to an unknown country
In the 1900s, the English ethno-photographer William Harvey was travelling through Germany, capturing his observations in beautiful black and white slides. Over time, war and the industrial revolution completely changed Germany's rural areas and cities.
The evening features highlights of the development of photographic art in the 1900s. }
The magical land of the pyramids
In the 19th century, ancient Egypt was rediscovered and marvelled at like an unknown continent. Artists, architects and writers were irresistibly drawn to the country on the Nile. During their travels, sometimes undertaken at great personal hardship and peril, they captured this fascinating and so very different world in books and words.
Based on these writings, the lanternists had glass pictures painted and then composed stories to go with the pictures. They spread the myth and exoticism of the Orient to even the most remote places, getting the masses excited and firing their imagination. Musica Magica is following in the footsteps of these early media makers.
More information in English here: ruthgunter.html or in German here: http://www.musicamagica.de/museum_augenblick.htm
If you are interested in talking to Ruth and Günther about a Magic Lantern lecture, please use our Contact Us form.
