“In a field near Sandwich in Kent, Alan Gibbs, a local model maker, is firing up his steam engine. Its chimney is coughing out irritated little clouds of smuts and its pistons are bobbing up and down,” Charlotte Higgins reports for The Guardian.
Higgins reports, “At a table, curator Rob Tufnell is using an Apple Mac powered by the engine. For this is the Steam Powered Internet Machine: the latest deeply eccentric project from Turner-prizewinning artist Jeremy Deller and his collaborator Alan Kane. ‘We were thinking about something that connects the industrial revolution and the digital revolution,’ said Deller. Kane added: ‘They are worlds apart but there’s also a proximity. The steam age and the digital age are not so far apart.'”
“There’s a marvellous impracticality to the machine. But it does work,” Higgins reports.
Full article with photo here.
Exhibition info: http://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions.cfm?&id=38
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Gandalf” for the heads up.]
Give me a break. Bet most computers are steam powered. What do you suppose turns the generating equipment at your local power plant? Whether the heat comes from coal, natural gas, or nuclear, steam turns the turbines. The only exception come from wind, water, solar, fuel cell plants, and the occasional motor generator sets. Been much cooler if they had used a water wheel at an old mill.