TechStyle

Micro (Wo)men

BBC4's 'Micro Men' programme last night captured the imaginations of many nostaligic 1980s home computer enthusiasts. The Guardian reported today that it gained 2.3% of the ratings for viewers with digital TV.  Half a million viewers for BBC4 must be one of the highest ratings they've had.

I've already written about the programme and its relevance to the Science Museum's collections here as I spent a long time researching the influence of the team that built the BBC Micro. But I was wondering if anyone else noticed the super geeky twist at the end of the programme? The barmaid that called time in the Baron of Beef was in fact Roger/Sophie Wilson from Acorn. Oh what joys!

George Oates at NMM

cuttysark
Originally uploaded by TechStyle.

George Oates' talk on Tags at the National Maritime Museum on 19th April 2007 was a real joy. When you've been involved in creating something as great as Flickr its a real achievement not to come across as if you are bragging about the project, but George's presentation barely registered that she was pleased with the outcomes so far. Considered and insightful, her talk made you feel as if it must be really easy to go away and create something that simply reflects and supports human networks, yet if it were we'd all be doing it as well as Flickr.

Faust by Punchdrunk

Punchdrunk's Faust is yet another wonderful success for installation theatre. Part David Lynch, part Edward Hopper, part Wizard if Oz, the production transforms you to a series of magical places. Its not to be missed if you can get a ticket.

Punchdrunk specialise in situational theatre - taking over disused factories and festivals to transforms your experience of theatre. Previous productions have left me wanting more - the Firebird's ball, their 'encounter' at the Big Chill, etc... but this one (developed with the National Theatre)  had serious resources and therefore more detailed sets and a richer interaction. The use of smell was inspiring - moving through the forest that smelt of christmas trees, or the mothballs in the erie rooms. The acting made you feel elated (when is the last time you ran through the set chasing an actor because you wanted to see more?) and scared (yes - too scared to open a door for fear of what you would find on the other side) or embarrased that you might have walked into a room to see an 'encounter' between an actress and a member of the public (or were they?) that you might not be meant to see.

Punchdrunk are single handedly moving theatre into the genre of computer games. Wish you could walk into that room? well now you can. Will that character talk to you? If you are lucky you'll get a one-to-one where no one else knows quite what part of the plot you were told. But this time there is real sweat, real rooms, real light.

I can't wait for the next production and desperately want to get let them loose with the national computer collection!

KINETICA

Last weekend I went to the new Kinetica Museum in Spitalfields, which focuses in kinetic electronic and experimental art. Set to be one of the new spaces for new media art in London the opening display is The Amorphic Robot Works.

Walking round the display of hydraudic, pneumatic and computer automata as the warmed up for their musical interlude I was fascinated at how little mechanical art/toys/robots had come on from the 18th century mechanical chess playing Turk to Charles Babbage's dancing Silver Lady. Why do people continue to be so  intrigued by these relatively low-tech machines when technological ability has advanced so far? Or perhaps are we intrigued precisely because of the playful and rudimentary technology?

Look out for the next exhibition by Jasia Reichardt: 'From the Common Room to Cybernetic Serendipity' from the 17th October. Jasia curated the seminal 1968 ICA exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity which put computer arts on the map and brought Norbert Wiener's concept of cybernetics into the gallery.

New Baby!

She made us wait for her arrival, but Cecily Rose Blyth Chitty is finally here. Thanks to the calm influence of the wonderful midwives she was born, as we had hoped, at home  on the 6.06.06 at 3:04am weighing in at 7lbs. Her big sisters are over the moon and we couldn't be happier. 

Ten Silhouettes

David Batchelor's 'Ten Silhouettes' at Gloucester Road tube station are stunning. Panels of colour are broken up by steel and aluminium objects decommissioned from the Underground network. The effect is 10 alcoves that hark back to the austerity of a church whilst enlivening the dead space of a dark dead platform. They are not to be missed if you have the opportunity to be passing on the District line going East.

doors 8 revisited

doors8_holi_53
Originally uploaded by ma:kəs.

I've only just seen this review of the Doors 8 conference, but it seems to capture the woodstock of all conferences rather nicely.  Will 'work' ever be such fun again?

Internet history

Yesterday I went to hear Katie Hafner from the NY Times talk at the LSE about the endless paternity debates for the Internet and the role of government funding in innovation. Her book written with her husband was a big influence on me when it came out in 1996, so I was interested to hear where she'd moved on to. It seems shes now interested in - among other things - Digital Preservation, but she still wants to get the facts of the Internet paternity debate right.

Hafner gave a very personal account of her interviews with the 'men of the net' such as J.C.R. Licklider (download his two most important papers here), Larry Roberts, Paul Barran, Donald Davies and Vint Cerf.  She then reitterated Len Kleinrock's hang-up that he doesn't get enough of the credit, but agreed wholeheartedly with Davies' analysis that it was a very liberal interpretation of Kleinrock's dissertation to say it was packet switching, given that it only looked at one node. I must admit I'd always assumed that Donald Davies' paper in 1967 at the ACM Symposium on Operating System Principles was one of the seminal works in the area, and the only true debate was between Davies and Barran. And as they had no problem acknowledging that they'd both tapped into the zeitgeist at the same time, then neither should we.

Later the debate moved on to whether the creation of the Internet is an enditment of capitalism (at this point you can seamlessly interchange 'Internet' with any number of recent inventions - personal computer, computer games..) Why is it that someone at every seminar on the history of technology feels the need to go there, oh these forces for good that could only possibly have come from our own entrepreneurial and democratic structures. What do people think they were doing in the USSR when they created Tetris?!

European Design

I came across the European Design Show a day too early. I had come to see WEEE man, but he'd gone on tour that morning, so I had a sunny afternoon to kill and ended up at the Design Museum. I thought I'd be interested in the web design, computer games, graphics and ceramics, but was amazed when I was more taken aback by the array of cloud and jellyfish lights that made me want to just relax in a squishy sofa and admire the view.

Then there was the blacker than black black ink from the ever inventive National Physical Laboratory. Supposedly 25 times blacker than black paint its called Super Black. Yes, black is the new black. They have come a long way since the days of the Pilot Ace computer!

Not so surprising though that I was mainly taken in by 'The technology story', with products and processes from the Belgium company Materialise. They have developed software that applys the stereolithography and sintering processes invented in the 1980s to make prototypes for the automotive and aerospace industries, to the production of everyday plastic objects. Mass production or simple craft?

Flood

Flood
Originally uploaded by TechStyle.

So this is what happens when you mix electricity with water. I always knew I loved the idea of being a pyrotechnic. At the European design show Michael Cross and Julie Mathias converted a room into a beautiful installation that had me checking whether the legs of the metal table were rubber.