VOICES IN THE ETHER Communing with the Dead with Rhodri Hayward At Brompton Cemetery Chapel on Sunday 27th October 2019 at 1:00 pm The rise of spiritualism moved hand in hand with advances in telecommunications. The first “mediums” in mid nineteenth-century Europe and North America presented their successes as a pioneer act of spiritual telegraphy, opening up a channel of communication between the realms of the dead and the Victorian home. By the twentieth century, technological advances such as wireless radio, television and home computing provided new materials for imagining the afterlife and our interactions with it. The dead were understood as lost radio transmissions trapped in the ionosphere or quite literal 'home recordings' in which past lives were traced out in the magnetic properties of bricks and mortar. In an age in which we find ourselves 'ghosted' by potential internet friends, this talk will provide a whistle-stop tour of the way that technology has transformed our spiritual lives.
Rhodri Hayward
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