El viaje inmóvil. La experiencia del Mareorama en la Exposición Universal de París 1900

Abstract

At the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900, new amusement machines and apparatus incorporated the most innovative technologies. One of them was the Mareorama, a huge structure that simulated the deck of a ship.In this article I will examine, first, the World Fairs from the spatial angle to examine the geographical propositions and the interpretive keys to “read” the world mounted in the nineteenth-century universal exhibitions. Secondly, I analyze the Mareorama as an object and as a practice of modernity, focusing on the ways in which scientific techniques were used to create shows based on conventions of simulation and illusion: the public's interest was not captured by knowing the mechanisms of functioning of the devices nor the sophisticated technical explanations, but by suspending credibility and allowing oneself to be surprised by the ways in which these developments challenged the ordinary perception of the senses.

Keywords

• modernity
• World Fairs
• Paris 1900
• Mareoarama
• visual studies