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通灵者的工作没有什么不同：他们的任务是重振过去，这些过去的人工遗迹可能会让当代观众感到垂死、过时、与当前的关注脱节。根据1875-1947年AHRC研究网络在英国流行文化的研究结果，该项目旨在通过揭示和从他们的神秘使用历史中获取创造性灵感，为科学博物馆集团和参议院图书馆的藏品带来新的生命。通过创新和沉浸式的公众参与和创造性的节目，它将通过揭示它们在19世纪和20世纪初席卷英国的唯心主义者、神秘主义者和新思想运动中的核心作用，吸引和鼓励新的观众以不同的方式思考摄影、广播和电报等技术的历史；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，因为我们认识到它不仅依赖于传统或文本形式的魔法信仰，而且依赖于最新形式的媒体使用、技术实践和大众娱乐。《媒介的媒介》是由这样一种信念驱动的，即现代英国神秘学实践的历史是最好的理解，不仅仅是通过传统的印刷来源，形成了英国原始流行文化网络的焦点，而是通过复制，环境沉浸，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、看到和制作文化技术；他们将学习如何操纵数码相机来再现唯心主义摄影师所倡导的光谱图像；使用报纸和录音机来复制家庭密码装置；聆听由现代艺术家改编的超凡脱俗的声音和特效的幽灵录音；见证一个典型的维多利亚时代的ssamance，并了解其最常见的现象是如何由专业操纵的家用物品产生的。这些活动将允许用户产生和测试关于现代神秘主义的新形式的知识，这些知识通常在书面记录中没有明确表达，并且还会激发人们对档案文物的新兴趣，这些文物可能在视觉上看起来不吸引人或未经训练的眼睛无法接近。总的来说，SMG和SHM拥有全国最广泛的技术文物收藏-相机，电报，收音机等-用于英国流行文化的传播。然而，这些物品在英国现代精神景观中的关键作用，除了学术专家社区之外，仍然鲜为人知，理解也很差。通过根据它们神秘的使用历史重新解释它们，这个项目将扩大并吸引这些机构的新观众，同时也比以前更丰富地了解英国流行的文化。由PI教授Christine Ferguson， CI博士Efram Sera-Shriar和PDRA博士Matt Tompkins设计和领导，活动计划和创意表演将在资助期的前九个月进行，并制作图像，最终将选定的活动制作成专业电影纪录片，并上传到项目网站。通过这些特定站点和数字输出，该项目可以实际地期望将原始网络结果的受众扩展到6000多个用户。TMM将通过参与时收集的反馈表格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推荐信，并与目标用户社区的代表（包括摄影协会、博物馆专业人士、播客、广播表演者和通灵者）开展活动后的焦点小组。这些数据将与参与的机构共享，并用于为它们未来的合作和共同制定资助投标提供种子。

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.