Ken Jacobs and his wife have lived and worked in the same top-floor loft in TriBeCa since the mid-1960s, when the artist was developing his Nervous Magic Lantern – a unique, live-projection artform using a modified film projector without film, but with various masks, filters, and rotating patterned discs. By manually adjusting these elements, Jacobs creates constantly shifting fields of light, shadow, and colour that produce vivid illusions of depth, movement, and three-dimensionality without 3D glasses or digital technology. The experience is immersive and hypnotic: audiences sit in a darkened space while slowly changing, dreamlike images seem to pulse, breathe, and recede into deep space. Jacobs calls it “cinema without film” and is – as you can imagine – fertile ground from which to conjure accompanying sonic dreamlands.

Courtisane Festival, Gent on April 6, 2014
Projections: Ken & Flo Jacobs
Sound: Aki Onda
excerpt, digital editing by Nisi Jacobs

Soundtrack available at https://boomkat.com/products/in-the-depth-of-illusion-a-soundtrack-for-nervous-magic-lantern