JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
A while ago I wrote about a brief connection that I saw in a photographic view of the 19′ tunnel section of the Hudson River tunnel with the 1815 stage set by Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841) for Mozart’s Magic Flute1. Its just the initial reaction to the perspective pulled up the Schinkel more than anything else, except maybe for a non-existent underground image from Jan Vredeman de Vries’ book on perspective. That said, the set design I’m thinking of features the arrival of the Queen of the Night/Königin der Nacht, so perhaps this association isn’t too meshuga…excepting the ripped-to-shreds lust for revenge that the Queen of the Night sings about, which hasn’t much to do with digging a tunnel.
Perhaps this is an association that can be made for any tunnel being dug and illuminated in the 19th century, as I stumbled upon another example of this association, a photograph2 in another NYC tunnel–this one the tunnel under construction under the East River for the East River Gas Company, 1894. It is a little antithetical that these similarities are seen between an image of starry vault surrounding the Earth while the photos depict a lighted tube surrounded by Earth, a sort of alpha and omega of endless light…a contraction of environment filled with light compared to a contraction of the limitless night sky as seen as a theatrical set. (I understand that there aren’t a long series of lights in the tunnels, just that it looks so because of the no-doubt heavy-duty light source and its reflections on the odd surfaces/bolts/etc. the metal tubing surfaces…and that is a riff in itself.)
In any event, I like these images, and so I’ll share the newest of my finds here this morning.
