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Curating Ocean Ecology at the Natural History Museum: Miranda Lowe and Richard Sabin in conversation with Pandora Syperek and Sarah Wade
Curators Miranda Lowe and Richard Sabin discuss a major redisplay at the Natural History Museum, London, featuring ‘Hope’ the blue whale skeleton, in relation to extinction narratives, ideals of authenticity, anthropomorphism and the crossover of art and science.
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Editorial
Editorial Issue 05
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Technologies of Romance: looking for ‘object love’ in three works of video art
This article applies the author’s experience as an artist working with video and photography, plus his recent research and publishing on the theme of Technologies of Romance, to the work of three contemporary artists using video. It explores video art for its potential to collect and transmit affective images and to act itself as an ‘object’ capable of communicating sentiment and sensuality. The article develops a current increase of interest within the author’s cultural and academic environment in evaluations of affect, emotion, love, intimacy, etc. in art theory, history and museum studies. In doing so the author’s own Technologies of Romance theme develops its investment in theories of history into a dialogue with the Science Museum and with processes of museology.
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Technologies of Romance: Mineralogy: a digital account
An article suggesting that the digital revolution is reliant upon a sustained colonial project that was also central to the industrial era. Minerals are central to western techno-capitalist societies in digital devices such as smartphones and this paper looks at the legacy of resource extraction in the Congo.
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Mobilising the Energy in Store: stored collections, enthusiast experts and the ecology of heritage
This article considers the role of enthusiast experts as key actors within the ecology of public heritage, helping to keep stored museum collections ‘alive’ through their unique research practices, which we argue are ultimately beneficial across the wider museum sector.
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Problem/science/society
The economic aim of commercialisation of science has drawn attention to particular innovations. Science communicators and the public participate in this process. However, there are technologies that scientists and the public already value, that they could apply to global problems.
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Sputnik and the 'scientific revolution' - what happened to social justice?
The relationship between science and the public has come a long way since the 1950s and the launch of Sputnik 1. But have we achieved the deep-seated changes in economic and social attitudes that must underpin any real ‘scientific revolution’?
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The Cosmonauts challenge
This paper investigates how the development of new contacts and partnerships has contributed not only to the loan of material of historic significance to the Science Museum’s exhibition, but more broadly changes perceptions about Russia and its space programme in the western world.
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Thinking things through: reviving museum research
How can invigorating research be reseeded in science museums? I believe that their investigative agendas can be rejuvenated through a focus on material culture, approached as authentic, singular opportunities for heightened aesthetic delving, and this marshalled through a programmed range of experiences, intelligences and disciplines.
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Threading through history: the vertical transmission of Davy, Faraday and Tyndall’s lecture demonstration practices
How can physical actions of performance be passed on through generations? This article highlights possible routes of transmission from lecture-demonstrations of nineteenth-century scientists at the Royal Institution to Science Museum Guide Lecturers in the 1950s, on to the performance practices of contemporary Explainers.