Reading Professor John Peppers Australian lecture tours 1879
- Slides: 11
Reading ‘Professor’ John Pepper’s Australian lecture tours (1879 -1882) as prototypical ‘celebrity scientist’ performances
Pepper’s ‘Ghost Effect’ Illustration from 'Magasin Pittoresque' 1869
John Henry Pepper (1870) Phontographer: Henry Maull (London)
Aims of the paper: To position Pepper within the scholarship on science and performance; To identify what science Pepper is performing in his lecture tours of Australia in the early 1880 s; To examine what values he and his performances are mobilising and exporting; To identify who is he performing it to and for; To ask: What is its relevance to us now?
Metempsychosis device floor plans From The True History of the Ghost, and all about Metempsychosis by John Pepper. Cassel and Co. , 1890.
Topics of Pepper’s Science Lectures: Torpedoes – slide projections Hot air ballooning – earliest and latest voyages Echler’s ‘portrait limner’ and the grimacescope Photographic exhibition of the British war in Afghanistan Eclipses and light (red coronas) which accompany them – slide projections Effect of the moon on tides – slide images taken from the Melbourne observatory Musical note vibrations rendered visible The magnesium parachute and military innovations of Captain Boxer Photographic Slide show of images of London – for homesick colonials Telephone Phonograph Microphone
Todd Sampson vs John Pepper
Brian Cox – dreamy/new romantic star-gazer
Michael Mosley – ‘Trust me, I’m a doctor!’
Credits/References: Shepherd-Barr, Kirsten, E. “‘Unmediated’ Science Plays: Seeing What Sticks”. Staging Science: Scientific Performance on Street, Stage and Screen. Martin Wills, Ed. Palgrave, 2016. Wills, Martin. ‘Introduction: Imaginative Mobilities. ’ Staging Science: Scientific Performance on Street, Stage and Screen. Martin Wills, Ed. Palgrave, 2016. Watt Smith, Tiffany. On Flinching: Theatricality and Scientific Looking from Darwin to Shell Shock. Oxford UP, 2014. Newspaper articles/reviews: Adelaide Observer, Saturday 4 September 1880, p. 28. The Argus, Friday 11 July, 1879, p. 8. The Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday 30 September, 1879, p. 5.
Todd Sampson vs John Pepper
