Julia Thomas

Getting the Picture: Word and Image in the Digital Archive

This article is about looking: looking at images and the problematics of seeing and interpretation that this activity entails; and looking for images, in the sense of searching for the pictures that one would like to see. A significant development of the age of digital reproduction, of a technological environment that allows access to more visual images than ever before, is that these two ‘looks’ have become entangled. For the user of digital archives and databases, there has to be a way of finding and retrieving relevant images from a corpus of hundreds, even thousands, of images, which can then be seen and interpreted; while for the developer of these digital repositories, the interpretative process has always already begun: one has to analyse the images in order to determine how they can, or should, be searched. This article, then, is literally about ‘getting the picture’, of the new possibilities of searching for, across and within pictures that is opened up by recent technologies. However, it is also about the problems raised by this process. In particular, it explores the implications of textually describing, or ‘marking up’ images so that they can be searched.

Translation: From bench to brain – Using thevisual arts and metaphors to engage and educate

This article examines multidisciplinary public engagement projects that bring together developments in psychiatric research and practice with visual art and its use of metaphor. The article focuses on the art exhibition Translation: From bench to brain, which was the basis for further collaborations, illustrating how the learning nfrom the original event influenced subsequent projects. Combining art exhibitions with online documentation and resources, the projects explored not only medical and scientific themes, but also the wider social, cultural and ethical ramifications, specifically aspects of identity, risk and stigma. The activities demonstrate the value of a developmental approach to public engagement as a process, whereby projects build on previous activities and evolving multidisciplinary perspectives, networks and expertise.

Bringing Down the House: Restoring the Birthplace

As any literary tourist knows, Shakespeare’s birthplace stands in Henley Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, its ancient timbered beams evoking a sense of its history and uniqueness, its iconic status amongst other literary shrines. The property, the guide books confidently assert, was purchased by Shakespeare’s father, John Shakespeare, in 1556 and remained in the possession of the Shakespeare family until 1806. But this account tells only part of the story. While the property appears as a testament to its Tudor past, it silently erases another, far more recent, history. Shakespeare’s birthplace, I want to suggest, is, quite literally, a Victorian construct; the building that we see today and the tourist industry that has developed around it was created in the mid nineteenth century.1

From Trading Zones to Buffer Zones : Art and Metaphor in the Communication of Psychiatric Genetics to Publics

Psychiatric genetics has an awkward relationship with the public given its unshakeable connection to eugenics. Drawing from a five-year public engagement programme that emerged from an internationally renowned psychiatric genetics centre, we propose the concept of the buffer zone to consider how an exchange of viewpoints between groups of people—including psychiatric geneticists and lay publics—who are often uneasy in one another’s company can be facilitated through the use of art and metaphor. The artwork at the exhibitions provided the necessary socio-cultural context for scientific endeavours, whilst also enabled public groups to be part of, and remain in, the conversation. Crucial to stress is that this mitigation was not to protect the science; it was to protect the discussion.

Seeing a Difference: Spectacles of Otherness in Eighteenth-Century Illustrated Travel Books

Presents information on several Eighteenth-Century illustrated travel books. Travels Into Muscovy, Persia, and Part of the East-Indies, by Cornelius Le Bruyn; A Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, by Anders Sparrman; Observations on the River Wye, by William Gilpin; Travels Through Germany, by Johann Georg Keysler.