ABSTRACT
Since 1923, the Carl Zeiss optical manufacturing company in Jena had begun producing machines for its newly developed projection planetariums worldwide. Both phantasmagoric illusion and pedagogical tool, the projection planetarium was a hybrid object with affinities to Dutch astronomer Anton Pannekoek’s methodological approach towards the visual representation of the Milky Way Galaxy. His approach to preparing this representation of the Milky Way emphasized the subjectivity of perception, and the means by which our visual understanding of the galaxy are governed by a range of influences and contingencies. This chapter examines the remobilization of historical concepts of phantasmagoria in contemporary artist Jeronimo Voss’s work in relation to Pannekoek’s pioneering studies on the representation of the night sky.
