Noam M Elcott. 2016. Artificial Darkness: An Obscure History of Modern Art and Media. University of Chicago.
pp.4-5
Modern artificial darkness negated the negative // qualities ascribed to its timeless counterpart: divorced from nature and metaphor, highly controlled and circumscribed, it was a technology that fused humans and images.
p.5
More precisely, controlled artificial darkness negated space, disciplined bodies, and suspended corporeality in favor of the production and reception of images.
p.11
The invisibility engendered by artificial darkness required specific architectures, insensitivities to specific light spectra, specific physiological thresholds, or the reflectivity of specific paints.
But it was not medium specific. A matter of ontics rather than ontology, invisibility was among several qualities and subject effects endemic to artificial darkness that were not the product of any one medium but rather the product of heterogeneous elements assembled in a certain order— in short, the product of a dispositif.
Controlled darkness was almost always an arrangement, a dispositif, rather than a self- contained device.
Playing Against The Camera 