The archive reading. An original interpretation of the source plate, not a reproduction of it.
ENTITY 0102
The Extra
The uninvited second sitter. The lighting is wrong, and that is the entire argument on both sides.
- Held by
- not deployed
- On the floor
- not deployed
- Material House
- not deployed
- Chain
- Anvil (local) · not live
Entity Record: original fiction
Written for this project in response to the historical record below. It is not a historical claim and is never presented as one.
The extra is lit from the upper right. The sitter is lit from the left, by a window whose reflection is visible in her brooch. Two light sources, one exposure. The spiritualist press of the period offered this as proof that the second figure was not in the room. Everyone else offered it as proof of a second negative. The archive holds the record and both readings, and declines to choose between them, because the plate cannot settle it and neither can we.
The Extra. Photographic Extra of the Threshold realm, recorded with a Silver aura and a faint signal.
Written from
- The medium and date of the source: Albumen print on card mount, 1872
- The historical collection it belongs to: Spirit Photographs
- What the plate depicts, as described in the record's alt text
Historical Record
UnverifiedVerifiable information derived from the source. Everything here describes a real object and can be checked against the page it came from. Nothing in it is invented, and nothing in it was inferred from what the picture looks like.
- Source page
- not yet sourced
- Original title
- Cabinet portrait with extra
- Artist
- Studio unidentified
- Year
- 1872
- Medium
- Albumen print on card mount
- Collection
- Spirit Photographs
- Held by
- Science Museum Group
- Rights
- CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
- Credit
- Comparable items held by the Science Museum Group under a non-commercial licence. A non-commercial licence is NOT sufficient for this collection; a public-domain reproduction must be substituted before mint.
- Associated article
- not linked
Commercial spirit photography ran from the 1860s to the 1930s and was repeatedly and successfully prosecuted. Several of its best-known practitioners were caught with pre-prepared plates, and at least one confessed in detail. This context is not a footnote to the genre; it is the genre, and every record in Volume II carries it.
This record has not passed verification. Nobody has yet opened the source page, confirmed that the image, artist, year, collection and institution match it, or confirmed that the digital reproduction, not merely the underlying work, is free of restriction. Its crop has also not been reviewed by a person. It is blocked from mint metadata until that happens. See provenance and rights.
Classification: an ENTITY interpretation
Original fiction. An interpretive vocabulary the archive applies to a historical object. No value below is a finding about the world.
- Realm
- Threshold
- Primary phenomenon
- Arrival
- Anatomical manifestation
- Second Head
- Aura
- Silver
- Signal
- Faint
- Material affinity
- Consumer
- Material House
- House of Appetite
Living Record
Onchain state. It changes; the sections above do not.
Dormant
Filed, and nothing more. The record exists; nobody has been to it.
Contacted
Somebody has been to the source and come back with something.
Named
A true name has been established and attested. It is not necessarily the one on the plate.
Remembered
The record has been corroborated a second time, independently.
Manifested
The Entity has a material life: placed in a House and drawing against it.
The archive is not yet on chain, so the current status cannot be shown. Every record still reads in full.
Published at Contacted. That is the genesis value, not the current one.
Curatorial note
Fraud note required by the Volume II standing instruction and satisfied by the historical context field.
Metadata integrity
- Record hash
- 0xebf8c68d311d2f3b10cdddf7b2d3f7724adc162521e5ef95dc8c93201680bf06
- Token id
- 102 → content/entities/0102.json
- Plate checksums
- Published for every plate
The record hash is the sha256 of the canonical JSON as published. The Progression contract stores the same hash on every advance, so a holder can prove the text they were shown is the text the chain acknowledged.
