Laser cutters and 3D printers revive century-old a magic lantern show of Erewhon at the Edinburgh Fringe

Cory Doctorow 9:52 am Thu Aug 16, 2018

James Coutts writes, "Indiana University Victorian Studies PhD candidate Mary Borgo Ton assembled an international group of artists/makers, a media archaeologist, laser cutters and 3D printers to create magic lantern slides that have not been made in 100 years for a show running in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe called Erewhon: "An antique magic lantern projector, an iPhone and a live musical score shine a new light on Samuel Butler’s classic sci-fi novel. A Victorian explorer discovers a colony of refugees; time travellers from the 21st century escaping their dependence on its technology. This delightful neo-historical head-scratcher playfully welds future, past and present into a glittering bracelet of time."

The slides in Erewhon are animated by 3D-printed gears and laser-cut acrylic embedded in laser-cut wooden frame. Tinkercad, a free 3D modeling software, helped Mary to prototype early versions of the rackwork mechanism on using UITS’s Ultimaker.

Lasers and plastics and slides, oh my! [Mary Borgo Ton/Magnetic North]

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