Next Slide Please: The Magical, Scientific, and Corporate Discourses of Visual Projection Technologies

Abstract

This article examines the cultural history of slide projection technologies by focusing upon how such technologies acquire cultural meaning. The meanings acquired by these technologies emerge in areas as diverse as public and domestic entertainment, religion, science, and education. I identify three important discursive shifts impacting the complex cultural meaning of slide projection technologies: magic vision, scientific vision, and corporate vision. I argue that such divergent meanings are not simply located in technological advancement and narratives of progress, but rather are discursively constituted within a complex intersection of dominant understandings of vision, knowledge, and subjectivity.