ABSTRACT
The salesman's bold stance and fur-collared coat are visually compelling on the small screen and imbue the technical object of the sewing machine with subjective experience. The sewing machine's eloquence and mystery as a historical object help make the image of the salesman equally eloquent in communicating the goals of the 'Inventing Europe' project to peers. 'Europe' stands in part for a broader and emerging public expected to engage with the objects; demonstrating the 'European' value of collections via international projects. 'Inventing Europe' is a networked project, but it is also the project of a network: the Tensions of Europe research network. At the Science Museum, for example, the Science and Society Picture Library is a collective database with two other museums, aimed at commercial exploitation of the collections. As a number of scholars have noted, translating museum objects into digital objects for duplication, circulation and variation involves more than creating a digital version of the original.
