Expositions displayed globes and panoramas engineered to mimic reality at human scale

Evidence

The remarkable realism of such displays made a strange civilisation into an object the visitor could almost touch. Yet to the observing eye, surrounded by the display but distinguished from it by the status of visitor, it remained a mere representation, the picture of some strange reality. Thus there were, in fact, two parallel pairs of distinctions, between the visitor and the exhibit, and between the exhibit and what it expressed. The representation was set apart from the real political reality it claimed to portray as the observing mind was set apart from what it observed. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 72 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: World exhibitions constituted a total machinery of representation standing for larger truths; Exhibits’ meticulous detail generated certainty of correspondence to reality; Every European public venue rendered the world to visitors as a pictured object (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• The realism of colonial displays doubled the distance between observer and observed #complicates (0.75) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 72