Noam Elcott, associate professor in the department of art history and archaeology at Columbia University, shed some light on the history of “artificial darkness.”

Playing off of American avant-garde film artist Anthony McCall’s 2001 exhibition “Into the Light,” Elcott titled his talk “Anthony McCall: Into the Dark.” He explained to a room of about 50 people the influence and qualities of darkness in film.

Elcott used McCall’s work, which is recognized in part for its emphasis on the manipulation and manipulative power of light, to illustrate what he called the “three modalities” to artificial darkness: “cinematic darkness,” “phantasmagoric darkness” and “black screen.”

Before beginning his slideshow, Elcott noted that the talk was not to be an in-depth analysis of McCall’s work.

“It’s really almost a fusion of two separate projects of mine,” Elcott said. “One is this long, media anthology of art history on artificial darkness, and the second is the works of Anthony McCall.”

Elcott explained that “cinematic darkness” is the controlled darkness found in movie theaters worldwide.

“The central feature of cinematic darkness is its capacity to make the spectator vanish in favor of the image,” Elcott said.

Accompanying his description of cinematic darkness were slides featuring images of theaters and operas constructed with this modality in mind. The eyes of the audience are to be focused upon the spectacle, Elcott said, with production well concealed. Both spectacle and spectator are meant to be “invisible.”

“Phantasmagoric darkness,” Elcott’s second modality, rendered an image with a ghostly presence. Unlike cinematic spectacles, Elcott said, phantasmagoria instituted no division between spectators and images.

Elcott explained the use of a “magic lantern” in this form of theater, used to project images from behind a translucent screen located in, of course, a darkened space.

Phantasmagoria is associated primarily with ghosts, Elcott said. Smoke and a lantern are used to facilitate the projections, making it so that “ghosts and spectators assembled in one and the same dark space.”

While some philosophers have criticized this art form, claiming that the images created could be mistaken for reality, Elcott argued, “The beauty is in the veiling.”

Elcott’s final modality, “black screen,” describes transforming humans into images. He explained that it was not truly a screen, but a 10-meter-deep cavity draped in black velvet.

The images placed before the black screen, Elcott said, had to be clad in white in order to appear before the darkness. Some body parts or fragments would be draped in black, rendering them invisible to the camera.

Elcott’s representation of the three modalities, paired with McCall’s work and illustrations, explained film’s artistic deception throughout history.

“Darkness in its different modalities mediates between spectators and images,” Elcott said, “and radically changes both.”

Kevin Hatch, an assistant professor of art history at BU, introduced Elcott as both a published professor and a former classmate from their graduate studies at Princeton University.

According to Hatch, Elcott is the recipient of Fulbright, Mellon, DAAD and other fellowships. Elcott is presently working on a book-length study, “Artificial Darkness: An Art and Media History,” which his talk was based on.