Participation
Ways to take part
We are not asking anyone to prove anything extraordinary. We are trying to assemble better documented material than we can gather alone.
Path one
Send us an earlier source
Most of the reports in this archive reach us through an editor, a translator and a press, and for many of them we have not found the earliest surviving version. If you know of a manuscript, an edition, a scan or a catalogue entry that stands closer to the event than what we cite, that is the single most useful thing you can send us.
Telling us that a passage we quote is mistranslated, misdated or misattributed is equally welcome, and rather more so if you can say what it should be.
Path two
Tell us about a place
Several of these reports are attached to places anyone can still visit - a cave, a mountain, a field, a chapel, a museum room. We would like accounts from people who have stood in them: the date, the time of day, the weather, the light, how many people were there, how close you got, and how long you stayed.
Say what you noticed before you say what you made of it, and keep the two apart. Nothing unusual happened is a complete and useful answer, and it is the one we expect most often.
Path three
Suggest an object
We are interested in physical things that outlive their witnesses: clocks, violins, violas, cellos, viols, organs, tuning forks, music boxes, statues, reliquaries, historical scientific apparatus, and other objects whose histories can be reconstructed and whose present states can be measured.
You may suggest an object you do not own, have never touched, and will never be allowed near. That is a normal and useful suggestion.
01
What a contribution is for
A single recording that nobody can account for is worth almost nothing. The same recording, inside a large collection of ordinary recordings made under described conditions, is worth a great deal more - because the collection is what tells you how unremarkable the odd one really is.
This means the request is deliberately dull. We would rather have four hundred recordings of nothing much, each with its weather written down, than four remarkable ones. A collection assembled because its members seemed interesting has no denominator, and an archive without a denominator is a machine for manufacturing significance.
It also means the archive is worth building even if the project's larger question turns out to be empty. That is not a consolation prize. It is the reason the work is defensible in the first place.
Object
A thing that exists and can be found again.
Observation
Someone present, recording, lawfully.
Metadata
Where, when, how, and what else was happening.
Comparison
Against many others recorded the same way.
Interpretation
Which usually reads: none assigned.
02
What participation does not confer
Contributing observations, documentation, materials, workshop time, or criticism does not automatically confer ownership, experimental authority, access rights, interpretive authority, or control of future project governance. Suggesting an object does not create permission for anyone - including us - to contact, visit, inspect, handle, record, or operate it.
You keep ownership of anything you send. Submitting a recording gives this project permission to store it, examine it, produce technical previews of it, and include it in the comparison archive. It does not transfer copyright and it is not a licence for anyone else to do as they like with your file.
03
A note on what this actually is
Object suggestions reach us by email: there is no account to create, no form to fill in, and nothing is stored on your behalf until you choose to write to us.