The variantology of the transmedial between Spain and Latin America: Public entertainment and media hybridisation in the 18th and 19th centuries

Abstract

The present article, which draws on the progress of the first phase of the research project “Diseño transmedia para experiencias de apropiación de archivos culturales” (Transmedia design for experiences of appropriation of cultural archives), aims to add to the contemporary discussion on the subject of transmediality by reviewing and reconstructing some intermedial practices for the hybridisation and convergence of media, knowledge, art and technology from the 18th and 19th centuries, which were characterised by integrating a large array of devices in different types of spectacle, including those known as philosophical toys. All of this as proof of the mixing of media that occurred before the so-called convergence culture. For such purpose, this research uses an archaeological and, more specifically, a variantology perspective of media aimed at mapping connections and tensions between specific media trajectories that developed locally and regionally thanks, in this case, to the exchanges between Spain and Latin America.