Registering the Invisible in Fin-de-Siècle Europe 10 views

Although the turn of the century is often called “the frenzy of the visible,” representing invisible phenomena was a contested site where the very possibilities of representation were called into question. This was a moment when scientists, artists, and occult mediums each grappled with questions like: how do we depict the invisible? And what does it mean to represent something beyond vision? Historicizing these questions and the object-driven attempts to answer them, this dissertation analyzes three distinct yet overlapping areas of rupture with the visible spectrum: sound, the body, and the supernatural by focusing on late-nineteenth-century European technologies such as photography, X-rays, and sound recording devices. Each of these devices registered invisible phenomena through mechanical or automatic means in an attempt to offer visual representations of invisible or unseen phenomena like spirits, bones, or sounds. Through a series of case studies, this project reveals the limitations of pictorial representation during an age of rapid scientific advancement. A study of developments in the technologies of visualization serves to question what it meant to “represent” outside of mimetic picturing in the fin-de-siecle (1880s-1910s) period. As an interdisciplinary project, both in its objects of study and its methodology, this dissertation uses intermedial scientific, religious, and creative works in its examination of late nineteenth-century visual culture. As a visual culture project, it also treats exhibited artworks and other artifacts, including scientific text illustrations, visual experiments, and graphical or schematic renderings of phenomena equally. Despite their purported accuracy, the emergent media used during this time were unpredictable in their depictions and in their applications. In foregrounding their unpredictability, even unruly nature, this thesis denaturalizes early technologies that have appeared fitfully in the history of art, science, and visual culture.

PHD (Doctor of Philosophy)

nineteenth century; intermedial; photography; works on paper; visual culture; British art; European art; science and technology

English

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2026-07-28