S3 Ep6: Seeing Voices, Margaret Watts Hughes, and the Science of the Invisible

Emma and Christy discover Margaret Watts Hughes's beautiful 'voice figures', a series of images made through the direct action of her voice between 1885 and 1904. In this episode, we discuss the earliest sound recordings, scientific 'instruments' (it's a pun), cat pianos, severed ears, occult science, seaweed scrapbooks, women in STEM, logos and the word of God, visualising the invisible, the Little Mermaid, clairvoyant research, 'thought forms' and the death agonies of pigeons, science and feeling, and why sonic media is always already haunted.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE IMAGES WE DISCUSS, as well as complete show notes, references, and suggestions for further reading.

MEDIA DISCUSSED
Margaret Watts Hughes, Impression Figure (c. 1904), courtesy of Cyfarthfa Castle Museum and Art Gallery
Margaret Watts Hughes, Tree Form (before 1904)
Portrait miniature example: Nicholas Hilliard, Queen Elizabeth I(1572)
Anna Atkins, Dictyota Dichotomy (Forkweed) (1848)
Illustration from Margaret Watts Hughes, ‘Visible Sound: Voice-Figures’, Century Magazine (1891)
Margaret Watts Hughes's eidophone
Example of page from an algae or seaweed scrapbook by Eliza A. Jordan (1848)
Georgiana Houghton, Glory Be to God (1864)
‘Phonautography of the human voice at a distance’ (lines of recorded sound generated by Scott de Martinville’s ‘phonautograph’, 1857)
The graphic method: Étienne-Jules Marey's sphygmograph (a predecessor of modern EKG machines, 1881)
Louis Bertrand Castel’s ‘ocular harpsichord’ (1725)
Isaac Newton's colour spectrum and musical scale analogy (1675)
The cat piano (illustration from La Nature, 1883)
The ‘ear phonograph’ of Alexander Graham Bell and Clarence J. Blake (1874), 2018 model by the Science Museum
Jan Van Eyck, detail from Annunciation (c. 1434–36)
Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi, detail from The Annunciation showing raised gold lettering (1333)
Hippolyte Baraduc, two cameraless photographs showing various feelings ('restless desire to have phenomena of the hereafter'; 'mental sadness'), 1894–1913
‘The Music of Gounod’, illustration from Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater's Thought Forms (1901)
‘Aspiration to Enfold All’, illustration from Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater's Thought Forms (1901)
‘Radiating Affection’, illustration from Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater's Thought Forms (1901)
‘The Intention to Know’, illustration from Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, Thought Forms (1901)
Illustration from Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater's Occult Chemistry (1908)

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‘Drawing Blood’ cover art © Emma Merkling, image courtesy of the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive, and Aesthetic Surgeons
All audio content © Emma Merkling and Christy Slobogin
Intro music: ‘There Will Be Blood’ by Kim Petras, © BunHead Records 2019. We’re still trying to get hold of permissions for this song – Kim Petras text us back!!