« L’âme humaine se meut et luit »

A few days ago, I accompanied Ms Noir to the Wellcome Library. The Library is a fabulous resource: while Helen researched for her upcoming show (see below), I spent the day investigating spirit photography and mediæval gem lore. EXHIBIT: Hyppolite Baraduc, early photographer of the soul and its emanations. Here, he describes his technique (quoted in Invention of Hysteria: Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of the Salpetriere): Baraduc. I love your images. Are your books available in English? I hesitate to look. May you remain, as do your fêted photographs of the soul, somewhere in my imagination, as water is …

Tech Tree/Virtual History

I’ve been obsessing, quietly, about what retro tech says to me. In my current mood, what I think it tells me, is something to which I’ve alluded previously — that once you (we) heft a particular tool and make it a part of your (our) extended being, a world of possibilities closes down around the other potentialities. It’s interesting looking back to the tech that failed, to see some other possibilities, many of which have never been explored subsequently. Or at least an excuse for geek nostalgia. Any such exploration is half taxonomy (or tech tree, as its known in …