Science Museum Group Journal Issue 3

This issue of the Journal collects articles under the theme of ‘communications’. Two articles examine the making of the Science Museum’s permanent new communications gallery – Information Age – looking at experiments in participation and the challenges of display. Historical articles investigate the role of non-users in the development of telecommunications technologies and at the historical antecedents of modern citizen science. Others articles explore communication with audiences through a study of visitor expectations of the role of museums in science policy, and describe an effort to communicate with musicians and listeners from a bygone age of acoustic recording through a unique recording re-enactment.

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Creator (organisation)

Science Museum Group

Language

English

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Science Museum Group Journal

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CC BY 4.0

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8

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The Art and Science of Acoustic Recording: Re-enacting Arthur Nikisch and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra’s landmark 1913 recording of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
(2015-05-01)
Kolkowski, Aleks
;
Miller, Duncan
;
Blier-Carruthers, Amy
The Art and Science of Acoustic Recording was a collaborative project between the Royal College of Music and the Science Museum that saw an historic orchestral recording from 1913 re-enacted by musicians, researchers and sound engineers at the Royal College of Music (RCM) in 2014. The original recording was an early attempt to capture the sound of a large orchestra without re-scoring or substituting instruments and represents a step towards phonographic realism. Using replicated recording technology, media and techniques of the period, the re-enactment recorded two movements of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on to wax discs – the first orchestral acoustic recordings made since 1925. The aims were primarily to investigate the processes and practices of acoustic sound recording, developed largely through tacit knowledge, and to derive insights into the musicians’ experience of recording acoustically. Furthermore, the project sought to discover what the acoustic recordings of the past do – and don’t – communicate to listeners today. Archival sources, historic apparatus and early photographic evidence served as groundwork for the re-enactment and guided its methodology, while the construction of replicas, wax manufacture and sound engineering were carried out by an expert in the field of acoustic recording. The wax recordings were digitised and some processed to produce disc copies playable on gramophone, thus replicating the entire course of recording, processing, duplication and reproduction. It is suggested that the project has contributed to a deeper understanding of early recordings and has provided a basis for further reconstructions of historical recording sessions.
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Troublesome telephony: how users and non-users shaped the development of early British exchange telephony
(2015-05-01)
Kay, Michael
When exchange telephony was first marketed to the British public by the early telephone companies in the late nineteenth century it was as an intuitive technology requiring no specialist knowledge or training. This has gone unquestioned in subsequent telephone historiography but, as this article demonstrates, telephone instruments and systems were not always unproblematic or easy to use. Whilst other scholars have discussed important factors in the development and uptake of telephony, such as business economics and intellectual property, this article focuses on usage, and argues that difficulties in using telephone instruments and systems also influenced key changes in the operations of early British exchange systems. To understand these responses and developments it is necessary to look at the opinions and complaints of both users and non-users of telephone exchange systems. In investigating non-users as well as users, this article is influenced by the work of Sally Wyatt in Oudshoorn and Pinch’s (2003) edited volume regarding users and non-users of technologies. Recovering the reactions of such people is possible through extensive use of letters received by the telephone companies or published in the periodical press, and opinions voiced at select committee meetings investigating the state of the country’s telephone system. In recovering the difficulties early users and non-users faced when confronted with exchange telephone systems this article emphasises the importance of problematising the historical uptake of new technologies, and highlights how, in the case of early British telephony in particular, these problems can reveal specific facts both about historical telephone use-experience and about how exchange telephony spread around the country.
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Museums as brokers of participation: how visitors view the emerging role of European science centres and museums in policy
(2015-05-01)
Bandelli, Andrea
;
Konijn, Elly A.
Science centres and museums in Europe traditionally offer opportunities for public participation, such as dialogues, debates and workshops. In recent years, starting with the support of grants from the European Commission, the purpose of these initiatives is increasingly more connected with the policy making processes where science centres play a role as brokers between the public and other stakeholders. This article begins an investigation on how these two levels of participation – the participation of museums in policy, and the participation of visitors in museums – are related in seven European science centres and museums. The results suggest that science centres and museums are regarded by their visitors as potential platforms to facilitate public participation in policy, especially in countries where the general infrastructure for public participation in science is weak.
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Embedding plurality: exploring participatory practice in the development of a new permanent gallery
(2015-05-01)
Bunning, Katy
;
Kavanagh, Jen
;
McSweeney, Kayte
;
Sandell, Richard
Increasing numbers of museums and galleries worldwide have developed an array of working practices that might be termed ‘participatory’ or ‘co-creative’, which seek to involve visitors, non-visitors, community and interest groups with diverse forms of expertise and perspective in their activities. Frequently the central aim of such practices has been to strengthen relationships between a museum and its audiences through projects that are jointly conceived and developed with local communities. However, relatively little attention has been given to participatory practice within the work of larger institutions, particularly those with a national and international remit, reach and audience base, where participatory practices are adopted to enrich the development and content of new permanent displays (aimed at large and diverse audiences). Drawing on a single case study – the development of the permanent Information Age gallery at the Science Museum in London, which opened in 2014 – this paper aims to reflect upon the extent to which existing concepts, theories and approaches to participation and co-creation resonate with museum work of this kind. Unlike many participatory practices internationally, the range of projects and activities utilised in the development of Information Age were driven less by a desire to share authority and decision-making with communities outside the museum and more by a concern to foster involvement with diverse communities of interest in the making of a major gallery and to generate and embed plural perspectives on the objects and stories presented within it. This paper raises further questions around how participatory work is perceived, valued and shared across the sector.
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Information age? The challenges of displaying information and communication technologies
(2015-05-01)
Blyth, Tilly
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Editorial
(2015-05-01)
Franczyk, Jean
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Review: Cabinet of Curiosities: How disability was kept in a box
(2015-05-01)
Bartholomew, Joanne
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Old weather: citizen scientists in the 19th and 21st centuries
(2015-05-01)
Shuttleworth, Sally

Science Museum Group Journal Issue 3

Science Museum Group Journal Issue 3

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