Electricity and Imagination

Throughout the nineteenth century the astonishing technical success of electricity had a great impact on the contemporary imagination. The Volta’s battery which impressed Napoleon, the telegraph system that linked Europe and United States and later the electric light and the x-rays fascinated not only physicists but also artists, men of letters and eclectic intellectuals. The lightning that gives life to the doctor Frankenstein’s creature in the Mary Shelley novel is the most known case. But also the photographs representing Duchenne de Boulogne’s studies of human facial expressions produced via electrical stimulation and the ‘futuristic’ arc lamp painted by Giacomo Balla are emblematic examples of reactions and interactions between technical development and artistic creativity. The aim of the seminar is to explore how, in a period that was later defined the age of electricity, both science and arts contribute to the representation of electrical technologies