Archive of Invisible Senses
An archival table layered with documents, sensory notes, and museum-like historical materials.

A Digital Sensory History Exhibition

Archive of Invisible Senses

Mental Illness, Religion, and Sensory Stigma

精神疾病、宗教与感官污名

This digital exhibition explores how mental illness has been perceived through sight, sound, smell, touch, and sacred space across different historical periods. Rather than treating stigma as only an idea or belief, this project asks how stigma was felt, seen, heard, smelled, touched, and spatially organized.

Enter the Archive Open Database Explore the Five Senses Open Archive Desk

Start Here

Choose Your Path Through the Archive

Current path: Not selected

Object Hotspots

Explore the Archive Desk

Move through the archive desk directly. Click a glowing point, test a text or image fragment, and let the interface suggest which sensory lens might be most relevant.

Choose a glowing point The archive desk will suggest a sensory lens, related evidence, and a research action.

Research Question

Curatorial Statement

Sensory Lenses

Five Sensory Lenses

Curated Archive

Archive Entries

Prototype entries for educational use. Further primary-source verification required.

Research Trail

Build a Research Trail

Your research trail helps you trace how different senses produced different forms of stigma across history.

Compare Entries

Compare Sources and Stigma Mechanisms

Select two prototype entries to compare period, sensory lens, source type, authority, and stigma mechanism.

Mini Exhibition Builder

Build Your Mini Exhibition

A good mini-exhibition does not just collect objects. It makes an argument.

一个好的小展览不只是收集材料，而是提出一个观点。

Archive Passport

Exploration Progress

Your Archive Passport tracks how widely you have explored the exhibition.

Completed 0 / 10

Mystery of Interpretation

What Counts as Evidence?

Choose the strongest interpretation. If your answer is not the strongest one, the feedback will explain another possible reading.

Sensory Lens Mixer

Generate a Research Question

Combine a sense, context, and authority to form your own historically grounded question.

Historical Path

Historical Timeline

Concept Map

How Concepts Connect

Hover a node to trace related terms. Click one to read its interpretive note.

Select a concept to see how it helps explain sensory stigma.

Authority Map

Who Interprets the Body?

Click an interpreter to see what sensory evidence they often privilege and what perspectives may be missing.

Select an authority to inspect its interpretive power.

Terms

Bilingual Glossary

Source Lab

Practice Reading Sensory Evidence

Two Voices

How Interpretation Changes

The same sensory event can mean different things depending on who has authority to interpret it.

Then / Now Reflection

Historical Category, Ethical Reading

Methodology

How to Read Sensory Stigma

From Belief to Embodied Perception

This project studies not only what people believed, but how they perceived others through bodies, spaces, habits, and sensory expectations.

From Medical Categories to Sensory Evidence

Historical mental distress was often judged through voices, odors, gestures, spatial behavior, and visible difference before modern diagnostic language dominated.

From Archive to Exhibition

The website combines historical sources, interpretation, and visitor interaction as a digital humanities prototype rather than a final scholarly database.

Ethical Note

The exhibition avoids sensationalizing mental illness and emphasizes historical context, critical reading, and respect for patient experience.

Ethical Reflection

Studying stigma without reproducing it

This project studies historical stigma without reproducing it. Terms such as “madness,” “insanity,” or “possession” are used as historical categories, not as labels for people today. The exhibition asks viewers to examine how societies created fear and exclusion through sensory interpretation.

本项目研究历史中的污名，但不希望复制污名。“疯癫”“精神错乱”“附身”等词语在这里作为历史概念使用，而不是对当代个体的标签。本展览希望观众思考：社会如何通过感官解释制造恐惧、排斥和控制。

Visitor Reflection

Which sense shaped stigma most powerfully?

Which sense do you think has been most powerful in shaping stigma against mental illness: sight, sound, smell, touch, or sacred space? Why?

Reflection Checkpoint

My Reflection Notebook

Choose a prompt, write 1-2 sentences, and save it into your notebook.

Learning Output

My Reflection Notebook

This panel gathers your research questions, saved prompts, source notes, visitor reflection, checkpoints, and mini-exhibition thesis.


          

        

      


      

        

          

            
Curator Prompt

            
Daily Question

          

          

            

            

              
              
              
            

          

        

      


      

        

          

            
Future Development

            
Project Blueprint

          

          

            
01
Collect Primary Sources
Religious texts, asylum reports, photographs, medical writings, films, and news reports.

            
02
Write Exhibition Labels
150-250 word interpretive labels for each archive entry.

            
03
Build a Bilingual Glossary
Key terms in sensory history, religious history, and medical humanities.

            
04
Invite Student Contributions
Allow classmates to contribute mini archive entries or reflections.

            
05
Develop into a Digital Humanities Project
Add citation system, source database, interactive map, and peer-reviewed bibliography.