Category — History

Sit­u­at­ed near the SW Sicil­ian coast is the town of Agri­gen­to, home of the so-called “Val­ley of the Tem­ples” (Valle dei Tem­pli), a ridge of land above the ancient city that is the site of a lin­ear clus­ter of (main­ly) Ancient Greek ruins, many of which are quite spec­tac­u­lar — the place is well worth a vis­it. It is a UNESCO World Her­itage site.

In addi­tion to the Greek and Byzan­tine remains, there is the Vil­la Aurea, which was home to 19th Cen­tu­ry British mil­i­tary offi­cer and archae­o­log­i­cal patron Alexan­der Hard­cas­tle, who financed, among oth­er things, the re-erec­tion of the pil­lars at the Tem­ple of Her­a­cles on the site.

Today, the Valle dei Tem­pli is not sim­ply a col­lec­tion of ancient sites: it’s also a loca­tion for mod­ern art which is dis­trib­uted among the ruins and else­where, such as in the Villa.

Thus it was that on a recent vis­it I encoun­tered this remark­able piece of stat­u­ary in the Vil­la Aurea gar­den, in bril­liant, shiny white mate­r­i­al show­ing a group of fash­ion­ably-dressed young peo­ple poised to kill one of their num­ber with var­i­ous weapons. What on Earth was this amaz­ing piece of work? There was no indi­ca­tion on or near the piece to indi­cate its ori­gin or significance.

After a sur­pris­ing­ly lengthy Inter­net search, I found the answer. It is a (small) part of a mul­ti­me­dia col­lec­tion of works by the Moscow-based art group “AES+F” titled Last Riot/Last Riot 2.

AES+F are named after their ini­tials: the group, found­ed in 1987, was orig­i­nal­ly AES — Tatiana Arza­maso­va, Lev Evzovich and Evge­ny Svy­atsky — but they were lat­er joined by pho­tog­ra­ph­er Vladimir Frid­kes — hence the “+F”.

Last Riot first appeared in 2007 at the Venice Bien­ni­al as a three-screen video pro­vid­ing win­dows into a high­ly detailed 3D vir­tu­al envi­ron­ment, inspired appar­ent­ly by the US Army video game “Amer­i­ca’s Army”, cre­at­ed to encour­age young peo­ple to enlist. You can see excerpts from it here:

AES+F say about the work:
“The vir­tu­al world gen­er­at­ed by the real world of the past twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry as the organ­ism com­ing from a test-tube, expands, leav­ing its bor­ders and grasp­ing new zones, absorbs its founders and mutates in some­thing absolute­ly new. In this new world the real wars look like a game on www.americasarmy.com, and prison tor­tures appear sadis­tic exer­cis­es of mod­ern valkyr­ias. Tech­nolo­gies and mate­ri­als trans­form the arti­fi­cial envi­ron­ment and tech­niques into a fan­ta­sy land­scape of the new epos. This par­adise also is a mutat­ed world with frozen time where all past epoch the neigh­bor with the future, where inhab­i­tants lose their sex, and become clos­er to angels. The world, where any most severe, vague or erot­ic imag­i­na­tion is nat­ur­al in the fake unsteady 3D per­spec­tive. The heroes of new epos have only one iden­ti­ty, the iden­ti­ty of the rebel of last riot. The last riot, where all are fight­ing against all and against them­selves, where no dif­fer­ence exists any more between vic­tim and aggres­sor, male and female. This world cel­e­brates the end of ide­ol­o­gy, his­to­ry and ethic.”

In addi­tion to the video, there are series of glossy white sculp­tures of which the exam­ple at the Vil­la is one, and remark­able still images fea­tur­ing the same weaponised, brand-name-dressed young peo­ple, in a kind of super­re­al­is­tic style that some­how echoes works of the Renais­sance as much as they do CGI-cre­at­ed videogame characters.

Here’s the stat­ue from the Vil­la in an art gallery set­ting (from the AES+F web site):

…and one of the images from the same source:

I would love to expe­ri­ence the orig­i­nal video as well as the oth­er pieces, espe­cial­ly giv­en my inter­est in vir­tu­al worlds. Kudos to the peo­ple who arrange the art exhi­bi­tions along the Valle dei Tem­pli for intro­duc­ing me — and many oth­er peo­ple I hope — to the stun­ning work of a fas­ci­nat­ing group of artists.

Vis­it the AES/AES+F web site
Last Riot on the AES+F web site

YouTube search for “Last Riot”

When­ev­er I’m in the NE of Eng­land, I try to get over to Beamish - “The Liv­ing Muse­um of the North”. It’s a won­der­ful place built around a road/tramway loop on which run vin­tage bus­es and trams.

On this occa­sion (20 Novem­ber) I was up for the week­end to go to Lumiere in Durham, so nip­ping over was a chance I could­n’t miss. It was fog­gy on leav­ing Durham but approach­ing Beamish the sun came out and it was gor­geous­ly sun­ny until the dri­ve home, when the fog closed in again.

Dif­fer­ent sites around the tramway loop recre­ate dif­fer­ent eras, each cre­at­ed from build­ings that have been lov­ing­ly trans­plant­ed from their orig­i­nal sites: the Town, for exam­ple, is Edwar­dian, with a Bank, a gor­geous Mason­ic Hall (rebuilt with the help of the Masons, appar­ent­ly), a Co-Op depart­ment store, sweet shop/factory and lots more. It also has an adja­cent Steam Rail­way and sta­tion and a steam-pow­ered fairground.

The Pit Vil­lage is per­haps some­what ear­li­er, and fea­tures a col­liery and a rel­a­tive­ly new addi­tion: a coal-fired fish & chip shop that uses beef drip­ping to cook with, result­ing in utter­ly tasty meals that you have to queue for twen­ty min­utes or so to get, it’s so pop­u­lar. Yet anoth­er area, Pock­er­ley, is more Geor­gian, with a Wag­gonway that fea­tures steam locos from the ear­li­est times and Pock­er­ley Old Hall. I’ve talked about Beamish before, here.

From this time of year until Christ­mas itself, Beamish is hav­ing a series of Christ­mas week­ends, includ­ing San­ta’s Grot­to some­where over by Pock­er­ley I think, com­plete with snow, an ice-rink in the Col­liery Vil­lage (above), and dec­o­ra­tions up in the Town.

I had to pop into some of the ter­raced hous­es, sev­er­al of which con­tain busi­ness­es, such as a solic­i­tor’s and a den­tist — the tor­ture cham­ber itself is shown below. In those days you would have had the option of (unreg­u­lat­ed) nitrous oxide (with a fair risk of death) or cocaine as anaes­thet­ics, the lat­ter effec­tive­ly remov­ing your short-term mem­o­ry, so things hurt but you did­n’t remem­ber it (rather like intra­venous Val­i­um it would appear, which I always loved as an adjunct to den­tal operations).

Anoth­er house includ­ed peri­od Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions in the front room.

Across the street is a lit­tle park, with a band­stand, and there was the Mur­ton Col­liery Band prepar­ing to play some suit­ably sea­son­al music, which they pro­ceed­ed to do beautifully.

Here’s some video of extracts from their programme:

The band was formed as the Mur­ton Gospel Tem­per­ance Blue Rib­bon Army Band in 1884, and play­ers were request­ed to wear a blue rib­bon on the sec­ond but­ton of their waist­coats. They became Mur­ton Col­liery band in 1895. When the col­liery closed, the band became self-sup­port­ing — and it still is today. They’re also one of the few remain­ing bands to con­tin­ue to call itself a ‘Col­liery Band’, and they still proud­ly march through the vil­lage dur­ing the Durham Min­ers Gala and Armistice Day. I don’t know about you, but brass band music and Christ­mas do seem to go togeth­er rather well.

There was time for a good wan­der around and trips on some of the trams — includ­ing a 1930s enclosed dou­ble-deck­er Black­pool tram, which is tech­ni­cal­ly a lit­tle late for their re-cre­ations but very impres­sive — and I had some good chats with the tramway staff, notic­ing that they wore the arche­typ­al “wheel and mag­net” emblem of British Elec­tric Trac­tion (lat­er to become the par­ent, sur­pris­ing­ly, of Red­if­fu­sion Tele­vi­sion) on their caps. The shop at Beamish should sell those cap badges — I would have bought at least one.

Final­ly it was time to head off on the 3+ hour home, and soon after get­ting back on the A1 the fog closed in, and it end­ed up tak­ing a good deal longer than that. But it was a great day out.

Wednes­day 2nd Novem­ber saw the 75th anniver­sary of the open­ing of the BBC Tele­vi­sion Service.

To com­mem­o­rate the event, the BBC held a spe­cial cel­e­bra­tion at Alexan­dra Palace, where the Ser­vice opened.

Orig­i­nal­ly, the inten­tion was to hold a spe­cial Open Day on the 2nd, at which mem­bers of the pub­lic would be able to vis­it the stu­dios and see audio-visu­al pre­sen­ta­tions. How­ev­er this was even­tu­al­ly moved to Novem­ber 5–6, leav­ing only an inter­nal BBC event hap­pen­ing on the actu­al day.

I man­aged to obtain an invi­ta­tion, for which my thanks to the ebul­lient Robert Seat­ter, head of BBC His­to­ry, and tech­nol­o­gy jour­nal­ist Bill Thompson.

The invi­ta­tion said “3:45 for 4pm” and as a result I found myself in the Alexan­dra Palace Tow­er end car park well in time for the off, giv­ing some time to take in the views over the city, expe­ri­ence the con­tin­u­al wind and enjoy some dra­mat­ic skies over this “Palace of the Peo­ple” locat­ed at the high­est point in North London.

When the BBC decid­ed on Ally Pal­ly as the site for the new BBC Tele­vi­sion Ser­vice in the wake of the Sels­don Report in 1936, the place was already decay­ing some­what. It’s a process that has con­tin­ued since BBC Tele­vi­sion left here sev­er­al decades ago, and although the team now fronting the Trust that runs the site today is incred­i­bly, and impres­sive­ly, enthu­si­as­tic and upbeat, there is no way it can be oth­er than an uphill strug­gle in these aus­tere times. But you can’t say they aren’t try­ing hard and I wish them every success.

The BBC still main­tains active offices in the block under the mast. But instead of enter­ing through the doors there, adja­cent to the GLC blue com­mem­o­ra­tive plaque on the wall, we were motioned into an entrance along to the left, up a met­al ramp and into what had orig­i­nal­ly been the Trans­mit­ter Hall. It may be not­ed that this was prob­a­bly not the first, but pos­si­bly the last, time that any­one had the bright idea of plac­ing a pair of pow­er­ful VHF trans­mit­ters and a pig­ging great set of trans­mit­ting anten­nae right next to a set of tele­vi­sion stu­dios full of sen­si­tive equipment.

Inside, the room had been dec­o­rat­ed with pan­els against the walls, each car­ry­ing infor­ma­tion and images of some aspect of Ally Pal­ly TV his­to­ry, and a free-stand­ing pho­to dis­play of his­tor­i­cal images, main­ly pro­vid­ed by the Alexan­dra Palace Tele­vi­sion Soci­ety. A jazz quar­tet played suit­able 1930s style music; servers glid­ed among the assem­bled invi­tees dis­pens­ing water, orange juice or Prosecco.

We had the chance to min­gle and chat, and I was very pleased to meet TV cook Zena Skin­ner, who prob­a­bly coined the phrase “Here’s one I made ear­li­er” — though in her case she real­ly had made it ear­li­er, her­self; I also met Pro­fes­sor Jean Seaton, the BBC’s Offi­cial His­to­ri­an and Pro­fes­sor of Media His­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­min­ster; and talked briefly to John Tre­nouth, Tech­nol­o­gy Advis­er to the BBC Col­lec­tion, whom I met dur­ing his time at what is now the Nation­al Media Muse­um in Bradford.

In the cen­tre of the room, a make-up table and lights were set up, where var­i­ous young women were being made up using the colours required by the Baird System.

When the BBC Tele­vi­sion Ser­vice was estab­lished, the Gov­ern­ment required two tele­vi­sion sys­tems to be used. On the one hand was the all-elec­tron­ic Mar­coni-EMI sys­tem, which offered 405 lines, and on the oth­er was the Baird electro­mechan­i­cal sys­tem which deliv­ered 240-line tele­vi­sion. Ear­ly on, it became evi­dent that the Mar­coni-EMI sys­tem was sig­nif­i­cant­ly supe­ri­or, but it had been Baird who had tire­less­ly pro­mot­ed tele­vi­sion as a con­cept, and lob­bied the GPO over licens­ing and the Gov­ern­ment to leg­is­late for a Tele­vi­sion Ser­vice. Baird high­light­ed the fact that his was a British inven­tion – though it could equal­ly legit­i­mate­ly be claimed that the Mar­coni-EMI sys­tem was British. Almost cer­tain­ly the Gov­ern­ment deci­sion, a typ­i­cal British com­pro­mise, was made at least in part to avoid sug­ges­tions that they were turn­ing down a British inno­va­tion, the deci­sion man­dat­ing the use of both sys­tems on an alter­nat­ing basis for six months before a choice was to be made before the two. The prob­lems expe­ri­enced with the tech­no­log­i­cal dead-end of the Baird mechan­i­cal scan­ning sys­tem result­ed in the deci­sion — in favour of Mar­coni-EMI — to be made after just three months.

Baird Tele­vi­sion actu­al­ly used two sys­tems. The fun­da­men­tal fea­ture of both was a “fly­ing spot scan­ner” in which, almost com­plete­ly counter-intu­itive­ly, the scene was scanned with a spot of light and pho­to­cells col­lect­ed the light reflect­ed from the sub­ject. The “Spot­light Stu­dio” used noth­ing more than this; the Inter­me­di­ate Film Tech­nique used a con­ven­tion­al film cam­era, exposed film from which was then passed imme­di­ate­ly through devel­op­er and high­ly poi­so­nous cyanide-based fix­er (par­tic­u­lar­ly nasty when it got loose), then scanned with a a fly­ing spot actu­al­ly under water. The fly­ing spot scan­ner was very sen­si­tive to red light, so if you were appear­ing in the Spot­light Stu­dio, you need­ed the spe­cial make up: black lip­stick, blue eye-shad­ow and a pale white face. Very neo-Goth. You checked it by look­ing through a red gel.

This was the make-up that was being applied to the young ladies at Ally Pal­ly on the 2nd. Appar­ent­ly the idea had orig­i­nal­ly been that BBC Lon­don would be send­ing a crew up to cov­er the par­ty, but they had pulled out and the job was left to an enthu­si­as­tic team from BBC News School Report.

Mean­while, we were treat­ed to wel­com­ing pre­sen­ta­tions: by the PR gen­tle­man from the AP team, and from Robert Seat­ter, who encour­aged us to relin­quish our glass­es and pro­ceed upstairs to Stu­dio A.

There were two main stu­dios at Ally Pal­ly orig­i­nal­ly, one above the oth­er. Stu­dio A was the Mar­coni-EMI stu­dio, while direct­ly above it was the Baird stu­dio, Stu­dio B. You can’t go into B today, because it’s rid­dled with asbestos and things are like­ly to fall on your head. But Stu­dio A is acces­si­ble. At one end of the room is a tableau rep­re­sent­ing the pro­duc­tion of the mag­a­zine pro­gramme Pic­ture Page, which ran from 1936–39 and 1946–52 and was ini­tial­ly pre­sent­ed by Joan Miller.

Around the room are assem­bled old TV sets, and var­i­ous exhibits in the room itself includ­ed an EMItron cam­era, which John Tre­nouth of the Nation­al Media Muse­um in Brad­ford kind­ly removed the lid of so we could have a look at the innards (sans tube).

In Stu­dio A we were treat­ed to a cou­ple of brief audio-visu­al pre­sen­ta­tions, the first assem­bled main­ly from clips from the film doc­u­men­tary Tele­vi­sion Comes To Lon­don, which was made to tell the BBC Tele­vi­sion Ser­vice sto­ry in 1936. Rebec­ca Kane, the MD of Alexan­dra Palace Trad­ing Ltd, intro­duced Michael Aspel, a news­read­er at AP dur­ing the peri­od when BBC Tele­vi­sion News was based here, to cut the cake.

And what a cake it was: made in the form of an old bake­lite tele­vi­sion with a pic­ture of Alexan­dra Palace on the screen, deli­cious­ly thick icing and suc­cu­lent innards. Very nice.

After that, we all wan­dered around Stu­dio A and chat­ted to each oth­er. I got into an amus­ing dis­cus­sion about the way in which the Tele­vi­sion Ser­vice closed down at the start of the Sec­ond World War, on Sep­tem­ber 1st, 1939 – about which a num­ber of myths have arisen, most of which are incor­rect (includ­ing the per­pet­u­a­tion of the main myth in Alan Yen­to­b’s Imag­ine doc­u­men­tary, re-shown on Wednes­day) – see The Edit that Rewrote His­to­ry on the Trans­d­if­fu­sion Baird site, which includes a num­ber of arti­cles on tele­vi­sion pri­or to 1955.

And then we grad­u­al­ly sloped off home.

See also:

The birth of tele­vi­sion: the “Baird” microsite at Transdiffusion

75 years on from BBC tele­vi­sion’s tech­nol­o­gy bat­tle — a nice piece by John Trenouth

BBC Cel­e­brates 75 Years of TV — Nick High­am vis­its Alexan­dra Palace

In this video, lead­ing British folk musi­cians Coope Boyes & Simp­son pro­vide the music in their unique and mov­ing acapel­la style with the song “Only Remem­bered”, as we view aspects of the unique exhi­bi­tion by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford’s First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive in the immer­sive 3D vir­tu­al world of Sec­ond Life.

The exhi­bi­tion sim­u­lates aspects of life in the trench­es on the West­ern Front dur­ing the 1914–1918 war and presents work by the “War Poets” of the period.

As vis­i­tors explore the sim­u­la­tion, they can lis­ten to the voic­es of vet­er­ans recount­ing their expe­ri­ences of the war, view orig­i­nal film footage and pho­tographs from the time, and learn about life on the West­ern Front, encoun­ter­ing some of the most pow­er­ful poet­ry in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture by see­ing the orig­i­nal man­u­scripts, turn­ing the pages of the poets’ war diaries and let­ters, and lis­ten­ing to readings.

The video is tak­en from the 10 Novem­ber 2009 episode of the TV series Design­ing Worlds, a week­ly live show cov­er­ing design and design­ers in vir­tu­al worlds, pro­duced by Prim Per­fect mag­a­zine and Treet.TV.

“Only Remem­bered” (Bonar/Sankey/Tams Voice Pub­lish­ing) is used by per­mis­sion and is tak­en from the album Pri­vate Peace­ful The Con­cert (No Mas­ters NMCD24) by Coope Boyes & Simpson.

For more infor­ma­tion, read this arti­cle on The First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive in Sec­ond Life.

I’d like to draw your atten­tion to the fol­low­ing press release regard­ing the open­ing of the Sec­ond Life pres­ence of Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty’s First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive. I was involved in record­ing some of the audio for this project, includ­ing sev­er­al poet­ry read­ings, tuto­ri­als and the intro­duc­tion and epi­logue to the instal­la­tion. More details here; video at foot of this article.

An excit­ing new project in inter­ac­tive edu­ca­tion will launch on 2nd Novem­ber 2009, draw­ing togeth­er the resources and exper­tise of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford, and the pos­si­bil­i­ties for immer­sion and inter­ac­tiv­i­ty offered by the vir­tu­al world of Sec­ond Life.

The First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive and the Learn­ing Tech­nolo­gies Group at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford have col­lab­o­rat­ed to bring togeth­er a wealth of digi­tised archival mate­r­i­al from the First World War into an envi­ron­ment that allows this pow­er­ful mate­r­i­al to be explored and expe­ri­enced in a rad­i­cal­ly new way.

“The aim of the ini­tia­tive is to place the poet­ry of the Great War in con­text,” explains Stu­art Lee, Lec­tur­er in Eng­lish at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford, “It allows the vis­i­tors to the exhi­bi­tion to visu­alise archival mate­ri­als in an envi­ron­ment that fos­ters deep­er under­stand­ings. Vis­i­tors also have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take advan­tage of the social and inter­ac­tive aspects that the envi­ron­ment offers.”

The project has import­ed into the Sec­ond Life envi­ron­ment a range of digi­tised archival mate­ri­als from the major poets of the First World War (includ­ing poet­ry man­u­scripts, let­ters and diaries) along with con­tex­tu­al pri­ma­ry source mate­ri­als.  These have been posi­tioned with­in an envi­ron­ment which has been mod­elled to rep­re­sent areas of the West­ern Front, 1914 — 1918.

The mate­ri­als have been sup­ple­ment­ed with new inter­pre­ta­tive con­tent and a spec­trum of inter­ac­tive tools and tuto­ri­als, stream­ing video and audio effects to cre­ate a vivid immer­sive expe­ri­ence that is, accord­ing to vis­i­tors, deeply moving.

“I had, of course, read about the First World War, and seen archive news footage too,” says Saf­fia Wid­der­shins, a Sec­ond Life res­i­dent.  “But to have the feel­ing of walk­ing along nar­row trench­es on duck­boards half cov­ered in mud, to see the dugouts, or to stand in a dress­ing sta­tion, hear­ing the voic­es of peo­ple who had been there describ­ing their own expe­ri­ences – this is all incred­i­bly powerful.”

There will be a Sec­ond Life Press Launch at 4.30am SLT (12.30 UK time) and again at 2pm SLT (22:00 UK time) on Mon­day 2nd Novem­ber. Come to the land­ing point at: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Frideswide/219/199/646/ and take the TP to Theatre.

The instal­la­tion will be open for explo­ration from 2am Mon­day 2nd Novem­ber 2009.  We ask vis­i­tors to pre­serve the atmos­phere of this envi­ron­ment by wear­ing the cloth­ing pro­vid­ed at the land­ing area.

As read­ers may know, one of my sev­er­al activ­i­ties is audio pro­duc­tion, both voice-over work and the pro­duc­tion of com­plete pack­ages with voice, music, effects and so on.

Recent­ly many of these pro­duc­tions have been par­tic­u­lar­ly asso­ci­at­ed with edu­ca­tion­al pro­grammes, clients includ­ing the British Library and City of Sun­der­land Col­lege. Inter­est­ing­ly, all these projects have result­ed from meet­ing peo­ple in the vir­tu­al world of Sec­ond Life. (Par­tial­ly as a result, inci­den­tal­ly, I do not have a great deal of time for peo­ple who crit­i­cise me for “play­ing” in SL or try to con­vince me that noth­ing sig­nif­i­cant will come of it.)

I have a teach­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tion myself, and I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in the edu­ca­tion­al pos­si­bil­i­ties of vir­tu­al worlds: Sec­ond Life is by far the most pop­u­lar and wide­ly-used of the vir­tu­al worlds cur­rent­ly avail­able, although there is increas­ing activ­i­ty in “Open­Sim” vari­ants using essen­tial­ly the same technology.

Most recent­ly I was intro­duced to some of the staff of the First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive, based at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford. They are on the point of launch­ing (on 2 Novem­ber) a new region in Sec­ond Life (named Frideswide after the patron saint of Oxford) which is home to a painstak­ing­ly-built envi­ron­ment designed to shed light on aspects of the life of sol­diers in the trench­es along the West­ern Front dur­ing the First World War. Stu­dents can vis­it the site and learn not only about the con­di­tions endured by infantry­men dur­ing the Great War but also hear poet­ry from the ‘War Poets’, along with inter­views and tutorials.

Here’s how they describe the installation:

This tour of a stylised ver­sion of the trench sys­tems in the West­ern Front has … two objectives:
• to show you the phys­i­cal con­text of the trench systems
• to expose items held in the First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive in a three-dimen­sion­al environment

…This [is] not an attempt to give you a real­is­tic expe­ri­ence of what it was like to be on the West­ern Front. The phys­i­cal depra­va­tion, or the chance of seri­ous injury or death, can­not be repli­cat­ed, and this should always be remembered.

More impor­tant­ly per­haps, this is but one view of the War – and it would be safe to say this is a view open to dis­cus­sion. …we have pre­sent­ed rain-sod­den trench­es, infest­ed by rats, in gloomy sur­round­ings. But this was not always the case. The open­ing day of the Bat­tle of the Somme, for exam­ple, was a beau­ti­ful sum­mer’s morn­ing in stark con­trast to the depic­tions we often see of the mud­dy hell of Paaschendaele.

Chris Stephens, who has been instru­men­tal in putting the sim­u­la­tion togeth­er, com­mis­sioned me ini­tial­ly to pro­vide an audio ver­sion of an A‑level/U­ni­ver­si­ty-lev­el Tuto­r­i­al on “Remem­brance” along with four poems: Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wil­fred Owen, Does It Mat­ter? by Siegfried Sas­soon, plus Louse Hunt­ing and Dead Man’s Dump by Isaac Rosenberg.

I’ve now record­ed some addi­tion­al poet­ry read­ings – Repres­sion of War Expe­ri­ence, After­math, and On Pass­ing the New Menin Gate, all by Siegfried Sas­soon; plus 1916 Seen From 1921 and Can You Remem­ber by Edmund Blun­den – and an intro­duc­tion and epilogue.

These poems have a great deal to tell us about the feel­ings of their authors, and many of them are pow­er­ful­ly mov­ing. Dead Man’s Dump in par­tic­u­lar is full of vivid, detailed imagery.

The tuto­r­i­al, on the oth­er hand, encour­ages us to ask a num­ber of ques­tions about our con­cep­tion of what the Great War was like, and uncov­ers where much of our infor­ma­tion has come from. It also chal­lenges some of our assump­tions about the con­flict. At the time of writ­ing, there are only three vet­er­ans of the First World War left alive, so we rely increas­ing­ly on indi­rect sources.

In the Sec­ond Life rep­re­sen­ta­tion, you start off at an army camp and then pro­ceed to the trench­es via a float­ing bub­ble, dur­ing which you hear the intro­duc­tion to the installation.

Once at ground lev­el in the trench­es, you can walk around and vis­it dif­fer­ent aspects of the trench net­work. Along the way, images of sol­diers flick­er into view and you might hear an inter­view or a piece of poet­ry. The tuto­ri­als are accessed via a “HUD” (Head-Up Dis­play) enabling you to pro­ceed through the mate­r­i­al and exer­cis­es at your own pace. Addi­tion­al audio extracts are ini­ti­at­ed by click­ing on loud­speak­er symbols.

A scene from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford’s First World War rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Sec­ond Life. The vis­i­tor is able to walk around in the trench­es and ulti­mate­ly climb a lad­der up on to the bat­tle­field itself; the cubes with a loud­speak­er sym­bol on them enable play­back of audio mate­r­i­al such as poet­ry read­ings and inter­views. The green-tinged cloud and float­ing text ahead are part of a sec­tion on the use of poi­son gas dur­ing the War. 

Over­all, the Sec­ond Life rep­re­sen­ta­tion is quite an intense and pow­er­ful expe­ri­ence, and I can imag­ine it will be a par­tic­u­lar­ly effec­tive edu­ca­tion­al tool.

The chal­lenge for an envi­ron­ment like this is that there is a fair­ly steep learn­ing curve before vis­i­tors can ful­ly expe­ri­ence what a vir­tu­al world like Sec­ond Life can offer – before you can expe­ri­ence an instal­la­tion like this you have to learn how to move around, acti­vate things and gen­er­al­ly oper­ate suc­cess­ful­ly in the envi­ron­ment. How­ev­er in this case you real­ly need to be able to do lit­tle more than walk around and click on objects, so most peo­ple will require no more than a few min­utes of train­ing to be able to get the most out of vir­tu­al re-cre­ations like this.

I wish the First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive every suc­cess with this project and am very pleased to have been able to make a small con­tri­bu­tion to it. This instal­la­tion will also be fea­tured in the 10 Novem­ber edi­tion of the Design­ing Worlds show on Treet.TV.

*“…And each slow dusk a draw­ing down of blinds.” is the final line of Anthem for Doomed Youth by World War I poet Wil­fred Owen – one of the WWI poems I’ve record­ed for this project. Pho­tos cour­tesy of First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive.

Iron­bridge, near Telford in Shrop­shire, is right­ly regard­ed as one of the foun­da­tions of the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion. Here in 1707, Abra­ham Dar­by per­fect­ed (and patent­ed) a method of smelt­ing iron ore using coke.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, the process required char­coal, which takes a great deal of time and effort to pro­duce, first grow­ing the trees (!), then burn­ing the wood under the right con­di­tions. As a result, the amount of iron that could be smelt­ed was lim­it­ed by the sup­ply of char­coal. The dis­cov­ery of a means of using coke – which is derived from coal – meant that iron could be pro­duced as quick­ly as the coal could be mined. This enabled the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion to take off.

In 1779 the great Iron Bridge across the Sev­ern, after which the town is named, was built by Abra­ham Dar­by III. It was the first cast-iron bridge in the world.

Today, the indus­try that char­ac­terised the area for hun­dreds of years is large­ly silent, but in its place is a col­lec­tion of near­ly a dozen dif­fer­ent muse­ums and attrac­tions that help us to under­stand our indus­tri­al her­itage. You can find out more about them here. In 1986 the Gorge was one of the first sev­en UK sites award­ed World Her­itage Site sta­tus by UNESCO.

The Muse­um of the Gorge is housed in a con­vert­ed Goth­ic-style river­side ware­house, where goods where stored pri­or to ship­ping down the Severn.

To see all the major loca­tions will take you more than a day, par­tic­u­lar­ly as a result of the exten­sive­ness of Blists Hill Vic­to­ri­an Town. How­ev­er, I sug­gest you start at the Muse­um of the Gorge, which boasts one of the most detailed dio­ra­mas I’ve ever seen, in this case of the stretch of the Sev­ern and the enor­mous col­lec­tion of indus­tri­al activ­i­ties car­ried out here from mediæ­val times onwards.

In addi­tion, you might like to take in the Coal­brook­dale Muse­um of Iron. How­ev­er the most exten­sive loca­tion to vis­it in the area is Blists Hill Vic­to­ri­an Town. Based around the site of an old brick works, the town con­sists of build­ings either restored, relo­cat­ed or spe­cial­ly built fol­low­ing detailed research.

You enter the town via a very impres­sive (and recent) audio­vi­su­al pre­sen­ta­tion which high­lights the region’s indus­tri­al her­itage, and then you’re on the main street, where the first build­ing is a Lloyds Bank. Here you can exchange mod­ern mon­ey for tra­di­tion­al pre-1971 £.s.d. that you can use to buy items in the shops on the site (they also take mod­ern mon­ey, unlike the Ken­twell Hall’s Tudor re-enact­ments, where beyond the “time tun­nel”, all trans­ac­tions have to be done with the tra­di­tion­al coinage).

Repli­ca of Richard Tre­vithick­’s local­ly-built Pen-y-Dar­ren loco­mo­tive of 1809

There are work­ing steam engines, includ­ing one used to raise and low­er a mine cage and a repli­ca of Richard Tre­vithick­’s 1802 Pen-y-Dar­ren loco­mo­tive. There are a cou­ple of very impres­sive beam engines orig­i­nal­ly used to blow air into blast fur­naces, but regret­tably these will nev­er steam again and are demon­strat­ed by dri­ving with an elec­tric motor.

The oper­a­tor of the mine­shaft wind­ing gear steam engine

Cos­tumed staff are on hand to describe the busi­ness­es, shops and indus­try of the Vic­to­ri­an era and I was very tempt­ed to turn up in cos­tume – though I was not sure how they would react. Some places love you to do that, while oth­ers (notably Ken­twell) abhor it, as you might be mis­tak­en for staff and, not know­ing the back-sto­ry, might let them down (at Ken­twell the back-sto­ry is so detailed that this is a real pos­si­bil­i­ty). Beamish, I seem to recall, lets you turn up in cos­tume and they give you a spe­cial tag (suit­ably print­ed in let­ter­press fonts of the peri­od, pre­sum­ably in their print shop) to indi­cate that you’re a “Vis­i­tor”.

Indeed, the obvi­ous com­par­i­son with Blists Hill is Beamish, and there is appar­ent­ly a lit­tle rival­ry between the two sites, it was hint­ed, but in fact the two, while there is some obvi­ous over­lap, have some sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences – the mon­ey at Blists Hill and the trams at Beamish for exam­ple. At Blists Hill, you get around on foot or by horse-drawn wagon.

Blists Hill has a wide selec­tion of shops, some­times pro­duc­ing and sell­ing items; there are also some per­for­mances by a pair of actors who present hilar­i­ous excerpts from Shake­speare (with the help of the audi­ence) and there are music-hall songs in the pub from time to time.

I did not take a great deal of video, but here is one extract. Down the bot­tom of the town there’s a Vic­to­ri­an fun­fair, includ­ing a mer­ry-go-round, which orig­i­nal­ly, one pre­sumes, would have been dri­ven by a steam trac­tion engine. There’s a nice lit­tle Pell organ on this one, play­ing var­i­ous med­leys of tunes of the era, of which you can hear a sam­ple below.

Blists Hill Fair­ground Organ from Richard Elen on Vimeo.

This video takes you on a tour of a Vic­to­ri­an bob­bin mill at Stott Park, near Lake Win­der­mere, in the Lake Dis­trict, Cumbria.

Tour of a Vic­to­ri­an Bob­bin Mill, Stott Park, Cum­bria from Richard Elen on Vimeo.

Enor­mous cog­wheels at Stott Park bob­bin mill

Stott Park Bob­bin Mill was opened in 1835 to sup­ply the cot­ton mills of Lan­cashire (of which this area was a part at the time) with bob­bins to car­ry the thread which was spun into cloth. It was orig­i­nal­ly pow­ered by a water wheel, lat­er by a water tur­bine and then by a steam engine. Ulti­mate­ly, elec­tric­i­ty arrived. The mill final­ly closed in 1971 and then reopened in 1983 as a museum.

Exte­ri­or view of the build­ing show­ing the end of the line shaft and a belt drive

Today, Stott Park Bob­bin Mill is in the care of Eng­lish Her­itage, and in this video you’ll be tak­en on a 20-minute guid­ed tour of the mill by one of the Eng­lish Her­itage staff mem­bers to see the dif­fer­ent stages of the bob­bin-mak­ing process, includ­ing some of the machines being used by a vet­er­an mill worker.

You’ll see the steam engine, although it was not, regret­tably, in steam on this occa­sion, and get a feel­ing for what life was like for the mill work­ers – who, in this case, came main­ly from the work­hous­es of Liv­er­pool and Manchester.

View through the win­dow in the pre­vi­ous pic­ture into part of the build­ing show­ing some of the machines and the belts lead­ing up to the over­head line shaft

For many years, the man­ag­er of this mill was a woman, and curi­ous­ly she only had male work­ers in the mill; gen­er­al­ly mills of this type were oper­at­ed by women, who were wide­ly believed to be bet­ter at the job.

I am grate­ful to the staff at Stott Park and to Eng­lish Her­itage for pro­vid­ing the tour depict­ed in this video.

This video is part of an ongo­ing series intend­ed to give an insight into Britain’s ear­ly indus­tri­al technology.

I was in Lin­coln recent­ly for the glo­ri­ous Week­end at the Asy­lum Steam­punk Con­vivial (you can find a selec­tion of my pic­tures of that event here). Wan­der­ing around the cen­tre of Lin­coln as the event wound down on the Sun­day after­noon, I stum­bled across this group of musi­cians play­ing live in the heart of the old castle.

This video is very impromp­tu and hand-held – essen­tial­ly lit­tle more than a string­ing togeth­er of a few dif­fer­ent shots – but you can expe­ri­ence the atmos­phere of the per­for­mance (albeit with a touch of wind-noise from time to time).

Kudos to the City of Lin­coln Wait­es for their excel­lent play­ing and for the fact that they per­se­vered despite it being quite cool and breezy.

Instru­ments played include a vari­ety of per­cus­sion instru­ments; the sack­but (pre­de­ces­sor to the trom­bone); var­i­ous recorders; a rack­ett (the com­pact reed instru­ment played occa­sion­al­ly by one of the per­form­ers seat­ed on the step); a shawm or two (pre­de­ces­sor of the oboe); and a soprani­no rausch­pfeife shown below (played in some pieces by the woman on the right in the video), which has no mod­ern equiv­a­lent. It’s a capped reed instru­ment (like a bag­pipe chanter: your lips do not touch the reed as in mod­ern wood­winds) with a con­i­cal bore; it’s a rel­a­tive of the crumhorn but a good deal loud­er and more dif­fi­cult to play (as it eas­i­ly overblows).

Soprani­no Rausch­pfeife with cap removed (Wiki­Me­dia Commons)

Apart from the recorders this would prob­a­bly have been described as a “loud band”, play­ing the kind of instru­ments you would expect to hear out­doors at pub­lic events.

Post­script

I heard today (6 Octo­ber)  from Al Gar­rod, the Mas­ter of the City of Lin­coln Wait­es – the name of the band play­ing in this video. Al is the sack­but play­er. Do please vis­it their site and if you get the chance to hear them, I rec­om­mend them highly.

The oth­er week­end I had the great oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it the Beamish open-air muse­um in Coun­ty Durham. I was stay­ing with friends near Sun­der­land for the week­end and their sug­ges­tion that we went there was a very good one. I can hearti­ly rec­om­mend the muse­um to any­one inter­est­ed in our indus­tri­al his­to­ry – and par­tic­u­lar­ly that of North­ern England.

Not only that, the Muse­um is cur­rent­ly offer­ing a spe­cial deal where for £16 you get a year’s admis­sion. Well, it’s worth that for just one vis­it – you need to allo­cate an entire day to the site (and still you won’t get round it all).

Both my friends have been involved with Beamish over the years and as a result they knew all the cool places to go. There are quite a few build­ings and oth­er items on-site, each hav­ing been painstak­ing­ly dis­man­tled, brought to the site, and rebuilt.

The cen­tre­piece, I sup­pose, is a rebuilt town street, set in 1913, with a ter­race of hous­es (includ­ing an ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry den­tist, a pianoforte teacher’s house and much more) and shops includ­ing a Co-Op, a sweet shop with sweet­ies made on the premis­es, a garage, a bank, and the most recent addi­tion, a Mason­ic Hall with a com­pre­hen­sive dis­play of arte­facts and regalia. There’s also an excel­lent cafeteria!

There’s also a Wag­gonway, set in 1825, where you can trav­el for a few hun­dred yards behind a repli­ca ear­ly steam loco­mo­tive (see below); a Col­liery Vil­lage cir­ca 1913 and an old Manor on the hill. The dif­fer­ent areas are linked by peri­od bus­es and trams.

The peri­od cov­ered is broad­ly Victorian/Edwardian, but some loca­tions (such as the Wag­gonway and the Manor, which are set in 1825) are set in ear­li­er peri­ods. Every­where there are staff mem­bers (in cos­tume) who will tell you about the old prac­tices and explain what you’re see­ing. I real­ly could­n’t fault them.

This is a real­ly tremen­dous place to vis­it and I can’t rec­om­mend it enough – I’ll be back as soon as I can.

I took some video while I was there and present them below. All three items are hand-held so I’m afraid they are a lit­tle wob­bly at times, but hope­ful­ly they will give you a feel for some aspects of the place.

This first one is of the Pock­er­ley Wag­gonway, where we trav­elled for a short dis­tance behind the “Steam Ele­phant”, an ear­ly steam loco­mo­tive. We see the jour­ney from an open coach and also from the track-side, and the trip is pre­ced­ed by some back­ground from a staff member.

Pock­er­ley Wag­gonway at Beamish Muse­um from Richard Elen on Vimeo.

The sec­ond item is also from the Wag­gonway area: it’s a demon­stra­tion of a tra­di­tion­al Pole Lathe, used by a “bodger” to make things like table and chair legs and oth­er items that could be turned from wood. The oper­a­tor, William Slas­sor, describes its prin­ci­ples, oper­a­tion, and how it was used.

Pole Lathe at Beamish Muse­um from Richard Elen on Vimeo.

And final­ly, a short video of a gen­tle­man play­ing a Ger­man ‘Har­moni­pan’ street organ in the main street of the recon­struct­ed town.

The instru­ment is hand-cranked, and turn­ing the han­dle both oper­ates the bel­lows that enable the pipes to sound; it also draws a roll of punched paper tape about 2in wide across a what we might call a “read­er”, con­sist­ing of a row of holes, each con­nect­ed to a pipe. The bel­lows pass air to the read­er, and where there is a hole in the tape, air pass­es through and off to the cor­re­spond­ing pipe.

The music is a med­ley of Amer­i­can tunes, and ends with quite a flour­ish. I was­n’t able to cap­ture the very begin­ning of the med­ley, but I got most of it and what there is effec­tive­ly cap­tures the feel­ing of this kind of street enter­tain­ment, com­mon in the Vic­to­ri­an and Edwar­dian eras.

‘Har­moni­pan’ Street Organ at Beamish Muse­um from Richard Elen on Vimeo.