SYMPOSIUM: Technologies of Romance

To mark publication of Technologies of Romance – Part II (the new book by Paul O’Kane), the Science Museum, eeodo artists’ publishers, and Central Saint Martins College, UAL, welcome you to attend a free, day-long symposium at the Science Museum. A diverse and dynamic range of artists, lecturers, historians, students and curators from various institutions will exchange ideas and contribute artworks, performances, videos and academic papers on the symposium’s title and theme, exploring the intersection of art and science. The event will conclude with a plenary session followed by drinks and book signing, then at 6.45 pm the museum opens its ‘LATES’ session, with drinks, DJs etc. which all our participants and audience are also welcome to attend. Please register for free at our eventbrite page if you would like to attend. 

CFP: Climate Hack - University of Cambridge Museums

Friday 19th - Sunday 21st January 2018

Over three days, four museums in Cambridge will be handing over control to teams of people to shake up how they share stories about climate change. From Friday morning to Sunday afternoon, participants will collaborate in multi-disciplinary teams to create a prototype museum installation or experience in one of our collections. The teams will be put together by the Climate Hack organisers to ensure that they each have the right combination of skills to bring a brilliant new idea to life – whether it’s a 3D interactive, an audio interpretation, an immersive experience or a hands on challenge, the choice is yours! At the end of the weekend the prototypes will be revealed for the public to play with and enjoy.

More information available online here.

Deadline for submission: 10pm, Sunday 26 November 2017

CASEBOOKS: Six contemporary artists and an extraordinary medical archive

The exhibition is accompanied by a series of events, beginning with the Private View on Thursday 16 March and the Artists and Curator Seminar on Friday 17 March. All events take place at Ambika P3 (opposite Baker Street tube). Details online and below.

 ———

CASEBOOKS: Six contemporary artists and an extraordinary medical archive
Jasmina Cibic, Federico Díaz, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Rémy Markowitsch, Lindsay Seers, Tunga

Private View: Thursday 16 March 2017, 6:30 - 8:30pm, Ambika P3, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS, Baker Street Station

Exhibition continues: 17 March - 23 April 2017

———

ARTIST & CURATOR SEMINAR

Fri 17 March 2017, 4 - 6 pm Ambika P3, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS, Baker Street Station. Book a place here.

The CASEBOOKS exhibition is one of the most collaborative projects to take place at Ambika P3. It brings together researchers on the Casebooks Project, based at the University of Cambridge, with the curatorial team at the University of Westminster. This seminar is an opportunity to explore the issues brought about by the exhibition from the perspective of the artists and the Ambika P3 curator. Artists will present their projects and a round table will be convened to discuss the following topics:

• How did the artists engage with the Casebooks Project ? 
• What are the levels at which audiences engage with the artworks and the historical and digital artefacts through the exhibition?
• Have the casebooks provided a common theme to the exhibition?
• Can a collaborative exhibition such as this create new links between art, history and science?

Participants: The panel will consist of the exhibiting artists or their representatives and Dr Michael Mazière, Curator of Ambika P3. The Seminar will be chaired by Dr Lauren Kassell, Director of the Casebooks Project.

4.00 – 4.15: Introductions Lauren Kassell Michael Mazière
4.15 – 5.15: Artists' presentations

Jasmina Cibic: Unforseen Foreseens; Federico Díaz: BIG LIGHT Space of Augmented Suggestion
; Mark Hellar: Lynn Hershman Leeson’s, Real-Fiction Botnik and Venus of the Anthropocene; Rémy Markowitsch: The Casebooks Calf; Lindsay Seers: Mental Metal
; Rana Saner: Tunga’s Me, You and the Moon

5.15 – 6.00: Round table and Q&A from the audience chaired by Lauren Kassell
6.00 – 6.30: Drinks


Visit our website for the latest updates to the Casebooks Project: A Digital Edition of Simon Forman's and Richard Napier's Medical Records.

Workshop - Magic Lanterns and Science

Programme:

9:30-10:15 - Coffee on arrival

10:15-10:30 - Introductory Comments. Sally Shuttleworth (University of Oxford) and Geoff Belknap (Leicester University), Constructing Scientific Communities Project.

10:30-12:00 - Panel 1: Approaches to Science and the Magic Lantern · Iwan Morus (University of Aberystwyth), 'Seeing the Light: Fact and Artefact in Victorian Lantern Culture' · Sarah Dellmann (Utrecht University), 'Images of Science and Scientists: Lantern Slides of Excursions from Utrecht University, NL (c. 1900-1950)' · Emily Hayes (Exeter University), 'Fashioned by physics: the 'scope and methods' of Halford Mackinder's geographical imagination'

12:00-1:00 - Lunch

1:00-2:30 - Panel 2: Magic Lanterns and Museums/Curation · Charlotte New and Meagan Smith (Royal Institution), 'Shedding light on yesterday: Highlighting the slide collections of the RI and relevant preservation' · Frank Gray (Screen archive South-east, Brighton), 'Working with Archive Collections: Development, Access and Historical Context'

2:30-3:00 - Coffee break

3:00-4:30 - Panel 3: Materiality of the lantern · Phillip Roberts (York University), 'Science and Media in the Industrial Revolution: Instrument Makers and the Magic Lantern Trade' · Kelly Wilder (De Montfort University), 'From Lantern Slides to Powerpoint: Photography and the Materiality of Projection' · Deac Rossell (Goldsmiths University), 'Changing Places: Tracking Magic Lantern Culture from Physics to Chemistry to Cinema'

4:30-4:45 - Closing Remarks. Joe Kember and Richard Crangle (Exeter University), Million Pictures Project.

6:15-7:15 - Drinks Reception

7:30-9:00 - Evening lantern show for the general public: · Jeremy Brooker, A Light on Albemarle Street: John Tyndall and the Magic Lantern

Further details here.

Frogs at the Whipple

Frog model, Wh.6599, image copyright Whipple Museum.

"Inspired by the arrival of our star amphibian at the museum, this summer the Whipple is going hopping mad! Frogs have been fundamental in scientific developments in cloning, in the discovery of the electrical signals from nerves, and have been used for hundreds of years by students learning about anatomy and dissection. Frogs provided the first reliable, non-deadly pregnancy test and have even been into space! We're celebrating their significant contributions to the history of science - keep checking back for more events and activities."

Summer at the Museums: Frogs in Focus

11am - 1pm and 2pm - 4pm, Tuesday 2nd August and Tuesday 16th August

Get up close and personal as we put our froggy friends under the microscope and recreate images that show why frogs have been the perfect scientific study buddies throughout history.

Drop in, all ages.

Summer at the Museums: Frog Leaps in Science

11am - 1pm and 2pm - 4pm, Tuesday 9th August and Tuesday 23rd August

Hop along to the Whipple to discover how frogs have made a splash in science and make your own jumping friend to take home!

Drop in, all ages.

Event - Public Health and Private Pain: A Night of Medical History and Drama

Thursday 5 May at 7pm, Museum of the History of Science, Broad Street, Oxford

Enter the Museum for a unique evening of performance and drama. Drawing from a rich variety of medical plays and historical material, the event will illuminate, provoke, and dramatize developments which have shaped ideas of the body from the 18th century to the present day. Join academics from across the University of Oxford, professional actors from the Pegasus Theatre and staff of the Museum of the History of Science as they show how these developments have been mapped not just by medical writing but by theatre, which has a long history of engaging with science and medicine.

Scenes and readings will include:

• Shelagh Stephenson, An Experiment with an Air-pump (1998)
• George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906)
• Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts (1881)
• A selection from the WWI poetry collection at Oxford by Sassoon and Owen
• An historical anti-vaccination song
• Joe Penhall, Blue/Orange (2000)

To book your free ticket, please register on Eventbrite here.

Talk - ‘Science Communication’

A talk by Dr Charlotte Sleigh, Reader in History of Science at the University of Kent, will be followed by a conversation between Dr Sleigh and Tilly Blyth, curator of the recently-opened gallery, ‘Information Age’.

Tuesday 31 March, 1 pm In the Patrons’ Room of the Smith Centre, at the Science Museum

The entrance to the Smith Centre is from Imperial College Road. Go north from the Museum entrance (i.e. to the right when facing the Museum), turn the corner on the left, and ring the bell at the entrance to the Smith Centre of the left. Please feel free to bring a lunch to eat, if you wish.

Everyone is welcome.

New online resources

A selection of things recently brought to my attention:

1. The Science Museum's Brought to Life website:

The Science Museum’s new history of medicine website has now been completed. In all it now present 4000 new images of artefacts from the collections linked to 16 specialised themes on medicine across time, written by staff and other professional historians of medicine. Each theme is associated with bibliographies and interactives suitable for teaching at several levels.

The themes are:

Belief and medicine; Birth and death; Controversies and medicine; Diagnosis; Diseases and epidemics; Hospitals;Mental health and illness; Practising medicine; Public health;Science and medicine; Surgery;Technology and medicine; Medical traditions;Treatments and cures; Understanding the body; War and medicine

Under a creative commons policy the images are available for download.

2. The New Light on Old Bones project:

New Light on Old Bones (NLOB) is an innovative, multi-disciplinary research project looking at the cultural, social, and historical context of natural science collections in two venues in North West England; Blackburn Museum, and Rossendale Museum.
The lead researcher is Mark Steadman, and the project board consists of Dr Samuel Alberti of The Manchester Museum, and David Craven and Dr Myna Trustram from Renaissance North West.
The project aims to provide museums with a toolkit of methods they can use to better interpret their collections.

3. The Victorianist blog:

The postgraduate website for BAVS.

4. Wellcome Medicine and Literature Guide

Includes details of how to research medicine and literature in the Wellcome Trust collections, and of online medicine and literature resources.