The Media of Mediumship (TMM): Encountering the Material Culture of Modern Occultism in Britain's Science, Technology, and Magic Collections

博物馆馆长的工作与灵媒没有什么不同：他们的任务是重振过去，在当代观众看来，过去的艺术品残余物可能会死气沉沉、过时，与当下的担忧脱节。这个项目借鉴了1875-1947年间英国流行的神秘文化研究网络的发现，旨在通过揭示科学博物馆集团和参议院图书馆的神秘使用历史并从它们的创作灵感中获得灵感，为科学博物馆集团和参议院图书馆的藏品带来新的生命。通过一个创新的、身临其境的公众参与和创造性的节目，它将吸引和鼓励新的受众以不同的方式思考摄影、无线电和电报等技术的历史，揭示它们在19世纪和20世纪初席卷英国的灵性、奥秘和新思想运动中的核心作用；同样，它将展示我们对英国另类灵性的理解可能会发生怎样的变化，认识到它不仅依赖于传统或文本形式的魔法信仰，还依赖于媒体使用、技术实践和流行娱乐的最新形式。《媒介的媒介》的驱动因素是这样一种信念，即最好地理解现代英国的神秘实践历史，不仅仅是通过形成英国原始流行神秘文化网络焦点的传统印刷来源，而是通过复制、环境浸入、创造性生产，以及在保护允许的情况下，默契参与。因此，它的观众将有机会听到、触摸、观看和制作非文化技术；他们将学习如何操纵数码相机来再现唯灵主义摄影师所推崇的光谱图像；使用报纸和磁带录音机来复制家庭侦察设备；听取现代艺术家重新调整用途的超凡脱俗的声音和特殊效果的幽灵录音；见证典型的维多利亚S，并了解如何通过熟练操纵家居物品来制造最常见的现象。这些活动将使用户能够产生和测试关于现代神秘学的新形式的知识，这些知识往往是书面记录中没有表达出来的，还将激发人们对档案文物的新兴趣，这些文物在视觉上可能看起来没有吸引力，或者是未经训练的人无法接触到的。总的来说，SMG和SHM拥有全国最广泛的技术文物-相机、电报、收音机等-用于传播英国流行文化。然而，除了学术专家群体之外，这些物品在英国现代精神景观中的关键作用仍然鲜为人知，知之甚少。通过根据它们神秘的使用历史重新解释它们，这个项目将扩大这些机构的受众，并吸引新的受众，同时也产生比以前更丰富的对英国流行神秘文化的认识。由PI教授Christine Ferguson、CI Dr Efram Sera-Shriar和PDRA Dr Matt Tompkins设计和领导的活动计划和创意表演将在资助期的前九个月进行，图像和最终将制作一部关于选定事件的专业电影纪录片，并上传到项目网站上。通过这些特定于站点的数字输出，该项目实际上可以预期将原始网络结果的受众扩大到6000多名用户。TMM将通过在参与时收集的反馈表和问卷来跟踪其影响；在项目的最后几个月，该项目还将收集主要参与者的证词，并与目标用户社区的代表一起开展活动后重点小组，包括摄影协会、博物馆专业人员、播客、电台表演者和灵媒从业者。这些数据将与参与机构共享，并用于为它们未来的合作和共同开发资金投标提供种子。

The job of the museum curator is not unlike that of the Spiritualist medium: their task is to reanimate a past whose artefactual remnants might strike contemporary viewers as moribund, obsolete, and disconnected from present concerns. Drawing upon the findings of the Popular Occulture in Britain, 1875-1947 AHRC research network, this project aims to bring new life to collections in the Science Museum Group and Senate House Library by revealing and taking creative inspiration from their histories of occult use. Through an innovative and immersive public engagement and creative programme, it will engage and encourage new audiences to think differently about the history of technologies such as photography, radio, and telegraphy by revealing their central role in the spiritualist, occultist, and new thought movements which swept through Britain in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; similarly, it will demonstrate how our understanding of alternative spirituality in Britain might change by recognizing its reliance, not simply on traditional or textual forms of magical belief, but on up-to-the-minute forms of media use, technological practice, and popular entertainment."The Media of Mediumship" is driven by the conviction that the history of occult practice in modern Britain is best understood, not simply through the traditional print sources that formed the focus of the original Popular Occulture in Britain network, but via replication, environmental immersion, creative production, and, where conservation allows, tacit engagement. As such, its audiences will have the opportunity to hear, touch, see, and make occultural technologies; they will learn how digital cameras may be manipulated to reproduce the spectral images championed by spiritualist photographers; use newspapers and tape recorders to replicate home-scrying devices; hear ghostly recordings of otherworldly voice and special effects repurposed by modern artists; witness a typical Victorian séance and learn how its most common phenomena were produced by expertly-manipulated household objects. These activities will allow users to produce and test new forms of knowledge about modern occultism that is often unarticulated in written records, and also stimulate fresh interest in archival artefacts that may appear visually unenticing or inaccessible to the untrained eye. Taken collectively, the SMG and SHM hold the nation's most extensive collections of the technological artefacts-cameras, telegraphs, radios, etc- used in the spread of British popular occulture. Yet the crucial role of these objects in Britain's modern spiritual landscape remains little known and poorly understood beyond academic expert communities. By re-interpreting them in light of their occult use history, this project will expand and newly engage audiences at these institutions, while also producing a much richer awareness of Britain's popular occulture than previously available. Designed and led by PI Professor Christine Ferguson, CI Dr Efram Sera-Shriar, and PDRA Dr Matt Tompkins, the event programme and creative performances will run over the grant period's first nine months, with images and, ultimately, a professional film documentary of selected events, being produced and uploaded on the project's website. Across these site-specific and digital outputs, the project can realistically expect to extend the audience for the original network's outcomes to 6,000+ users. TMM will track its impact through feedback forms and questionnaires gathered at the point of engagement; in its final months, the project will also gather testimonials from key participants and run post-event focus groups with representatives from target user communities, including photographic societies, museum professionals, podcasters, radio performers, and spiritualist practitioners. This data will be shared with participating institutions and used to seed their future collaborations and co-development of funding bids.