This is not just any newspaper. It is a signed, numbered (23/100), limited-edition copy of "Immanent in the Manifold City", crafted by James Bridle with the generous assistance of Newspaper Club, Graphics category winner in the Design Museum's Designs of the Year Awards. I left it on the sofa while I went out to work. … Continue reading A funny thing happened to my copy of a limited-edition newspaper
Last September I posted about the amazing preserved walking dragline excavator at St Aidan's, near Leeds, which I discovered through the Heritage Open Days scheme. If you missed that opening, there's another chance to explore it this weekend, from 2pm to 4pm on Saturday 17 April 2010. More details on the website of the Friends of … Continue reading There now follows a Public Service Announcement from the Department of Giant Walking Robots
There's a common narrative pattern in which a protagonist is saddled with some differentiating characteristic - big ears for example, or scissors for hands, or flatulence. At first said characteristic causes the protagonist to be shunned by their peers, but in a different context it turns out to be an advantage, enabling them to overcome a … Continue reading We got everything we need right here
Cutting edge artists have always looked to advances in science for new materials and techniques. But where our innovations centre on digital media and information technology, the crossover science of the Victorian era was chemistry. We owe today's rich visual culture to the pioneers who mastered the interactions of chemicals, minerals, ceramics, celluloid and light. … Continue reading Finding Lizzie Le Prince
Thanks to Bettakultcha and Media Squared, here's a video of my Murray, Boulton and Watt presentation at the amazing Temple Works, Holbeck. It's a tale of green sand and subterfuge, of how one of the biggest names of the industrial revolution tried to stop a competitor in his tracks... ... also the slides are on Slideshare … Continue reading Video: How to get ahead in business the Boulton and Watt way
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. And so I'm loving the safari around the world's largest city and capital of the British Empire, afforded by Chris Heathcote's inventive Newspaper Club debut As It Is To-Day. Chris has been feeding Newspaper Club's editing software Arthr on a diet of old London … Continue reading As It Is To-Day
My 20 slides from Bettakultcha at Temple Works, Holbeck... ... on which more later, but meanwhile you can also read the original blogpost: How to get ahead in business the Boulton and Watt way.
Late last year I made a small prototype based on my Ignite London talk, 1794, by printing the 20 slides as Moo cards, with associated pages on this blog. Now there's a new version, using cards, stickers and an A3 sheet for you to play with the story. It's backed up with a new set of … Continue reading 1794 Redux
About this time of year, this blog gets a peak in search hits for Thomas A Watson of "Mr Watson, come here. I want you" fame. Somewhere out there, I imagine, is a teacher who sets the same class assignment every year, and whose students flock obediently to Google in search of information and images. … Continue reading Thomas A Watson: An Apology
It's a pleasure to see - at risk of sounding like a Key Stage One Literacy Coordinator - that reading is hot right now. Amazon is starting to ship the Kindle DX worldwide Apple is apparently about to launch some kind of new device eReaders are predicted to be the hottest category at CES this … Continue reading Brought to book: some subtleties of social interaction
Be it known that at some point in the near future I plan to bloviate on the concept of the prospectus and its coming revival in new and unexpected transmedia formats. Consider this a prospectus. I'm so meta.
Dirty tricks among high-tech businesses? I recently came across the original Machiavellian play book for start-ups, and it's more than 200 years old. Two of my 1794 heroes were the steam pioneer James Watt and Holbeck engineer Matthew Murray. Both made engines for the textile mills of northern England - in effect the processing power to … Continue reading How to get ahead in business the Boulton and Watt way
I held off writing up the Ignite London talks until now because I wanted to link to some of the great videos of the event now live on Vimeo. It must always be a tough challenge to get the balance right, all the more so for our capital's inaugural Ignite. I reckon the programme was spot … Continue reading We don’t want to change the world, we’re just waiting for a plate of chips
The Ignite London challenge of telling the story of my 1794 heroes in five minutes and 20 slides set me thinking about other ways to package up a narrative in the most minimal way. In parallel with preparing my talk, I used the slides as the starting point for some printed material. My experimental recipe … Continue reading 1794: Prototyping a small story
It was a delight to welcome the writer Steven Johnson to Leeds last week and to hear first person some of the themes in his book, the Invention of Air. We were, I think, doubly fortunate to hear Steven just a day after his appearance alongside Brian Eno at the ICA. It's worth listening to the … Continue reading The smallest book
Matt Edgar writes here 