To Outer Space, to Cyberspace. The online life of obsolete media.

"To Outer Space, to Cyberspace. The online life of obsolete media." I had the pleasure to curate a small online exhibition with a big title for the Museum of Post Digital Cultures. Featuring among many other things  two very different golden records, the photo archive from one of the earliest computer animation labs (previously featured here), the NASA etc., and the whole is sort of dedicated to Laurie Spiegel and Lillian Schwartz. I might add one or two things, and there will be a stream performance on March 4th featuring Synkie, the open source reinvention of an analog modular video synthesizer. 
Click here: http://www.postdigitalcultures.ch/current

Commodore CBM users

From: Lexikon der modernen Elektronik, Commodore-Edition, Munich 1980
The second to last picture actually shows the start of the Euronet-System DIANE by the president of the European Parliament. DIANE ("Direct Information Access NEtwork") seems to have been a pre-WWW online information network (not sure if it was a part of the Internet, couldn't find much information).

The Funkhaus Nalepastrasse and the Subharchord

I had the chance to attend an amazing event in Berlin recently. It was about the history of the Subharchord and took place at the Funkhaus Nalepastrasse.
The Funkhaus Nalepastrasse (architect: Franz Ehrlich) was the home of the radio broadcasting organisation of East Germany from 1956 to 1990. In its heyday, 3000 people worked there.
Its core are top notch recording studios for big and small orchestras, still known for their acoustics and in use (in need for some restoration though).
The Subharchord was a proto-synthesizer developed in the GDR in the 1960s. Based on the Trautonium (1930), it continued the pre-war history of electronic instruments in Germany.
In the context of the CTM festival 2013, its developer Gerhard Steinke talked about the instrument, film maker Ina Pillat showed excerpts of her forthcoming documentary about it (see video above), and two newly commissioned compositions for the instrument were played (by Biosphere and Frank Bretschneider). Furthermore, US-composer Frederic Rzweski talked about his experience of working with the Subharchord in East Berlin in the middle of the cold war, crossing the border from West to East Berlin every day. He also said that the fact that he worked with technology from the other side of the iron curtain made it difficult to play the resulting piece in the west. Nobody believed that something good could come from there. The event was also a gathering of GDR engineers involved in the project and the building. It was good to see that their work got some appreciation after having been largely dismissed for a long time after the fall of the Wall because they had created their top out-put in the wrong country.
Here are some (mobile phone-) pictures I took during the event.

Since 2008, there's a Futuro House (architect: Matti Suuronen, produced in Finland 1968-73) next to the Funkhaus. That's a whole different story, but was a nice addition to my afternoon of time travel. More information about this particular Futuro House here.

Compiler*04 Replay

I was invited to compile a DVD for the Compiler series and chose videos by Keller Kosmas (Aids-3D), Alden Volney, Sabrina Ratté / Boxcutter, Aleksandra Domanovic, John Michael Boling / Javier Morales, Paul Slocum, Oliver Laric, Kari Altmann, Harm van den Dorpel, Guthrie Lonergan, Beni Bischof, Marisa Olson / Tanlines, Körner Union / Larytta, Goldin+Senneby / Hinrich Sachs / Ethidium Gould / Jochen Schmith, Patrick Ward
The graphic design is by Dan Solbach.

Not entirely Dispokino style, but I thought I'd let you know nevertheless.
More information here.
The most Dispokino related video on the DVD is probably this one by Sabrina Ratté (I hope you all know her amazing blog too):

TV ident month: sporty Italians

Sporty, jazzy Italians.




Bonustrack (sporty disco Italians):

I love video feedback and don't mind semi-cheesy disco funk, but don't you think the VHS-glitch makes this much better?

TV ident month: When color had to be announced

The future according to Phaeax

Take a close look at this picture and think about past, present and future.
Phaeax
Phaeax

Chilton Computing photo archive

Ancillary Equipment Room
Julie Bryant, John Baldwin, Eric Thomas, S I Milne, Murial Herbert 11.06.68

Scanning Lab 26.07.68

Susan Hockey Font Defining on the VT15 31.10.72

Think Room. M Beran, Institute of Hydrology, Wallingford
and Stuart Smith, Univ of Southampton (right) 00.01.73

Chess on the 360/195. Alex Bell, Geoff Lambert, Peter Kent,
 John Birmingham and J Waldron 01.11.74

CAD Centre Stand. Peter Lever (later ICL) on left 09.09.76

Families Day 06.06.78

DCS Systime 5000 used for Unix Development-
Gill Dancey and Liz Krausselar 01.01.80

Arrival First ICL PERQ- Bob Hopgood points out the label 17.02.82

Joe Roberts Retirement
Bob Hopgood makes the Presentation 30.04.84

Cray X-MP Computer 23.12.86

The photos in the archive of Chilton Computing (1961-2003) create a fascinating narrative, not only telling the history of a technology, but also of the people working with it. They have names, they are real people who get presents from their colleagues when they retire. They are excited when new machines arrive and when committees visit. They are always properly dressed (and quite often have impressive beards). We can also see them play chess, football or table tennis and enjoy the lab's own arts and crafts show.
I'm trying to avoid simple reblogging, but this post was made because this post on the wonderful Diamond Variations blog made me take a deep dive into the Chilton archive and I couldn't resist showing some of my favorite photos here. I hope that counts.
The captions are the original ones from the archive.

Rolf Liebermann - Les Echanges

Rolf Liebermann composed this piece for the Swiss Expo (National exhibition) 1964. It was displayed as an installation in the pavillion for banking, trade, insurance, office-organisation etc. They wanted to "make the offices talk for themselves", as an "orchestra conducted by an electronic control unit". Liebermann worked for months with engineers. It included 16 typewriters, 18 calculator machines, 10 cash registers, 12 punching card machines, 8 telexes, 16 telephones, 1 fork lift and many other machines that were new at the time and are now obsolete.
It was also released on 7", including a "Jazzversion" on the b side, played by Daniel Humair (dr), Pierre Favre (dr) and George Gruntz (prepared piano).
The piece was also an important inspiration for the Swiss pioneer of electronic Jazz/Pop/Advertising music, Bruno Spoerri. He told me it was a motivation to seriously engage in electronic music.

Verbotene Früchte

Found these at the flea market recently. Lovely package design. This blog might be about obsolete and obscure things, so why not start with something that's about to disappear? Bulbs are becoming forbidden fruits (bulbs are called "Glühbirnen" - "glow pears" in German)...