Ken Jacobs’ Nervous Magic Lantern

Ken Jacobs moves secretively in the halfdark that surrounds his apparatus. (“I’m terrible at keeping secrets,” he later admits to the assembled crowd.) Every ten minutes or so, Flo Jacobs exchanges one of what might be a dozen or so miniature flying saucers with her husband, who feeds the elaborately adorned platters into a large, mysterious box. As overflowing with uncontainable luminosity as’s whatsit, this contraption is Jacobs’ Nervous Magic Lantern, a legendary device known to sculpt painted light into tangible space.