I was recently lent a great documentary film about Lancashire based film duo Mitchell and Kenyon. The pair were active in the early 1900s and shot Edwardian life to use as entertainment in the traveling shows. For example they would set up their camera to take footage of factory workers coming out of the gates at the end of the day- they would encourage people to get in shot and people smiled and waved and stuff and then the film would be shown the following evening as part of a nights entertainment and people would come and watch themselves on the screen.
It’s fascinating to historians as it provides a valuable insight into life then and specifically in and around the North West of the country. But I think it’s more interesting when you start to consider spectacle and documentary and home video. It’s also really interesting as when you see footage of these people from a hundred years ago (which normally you see as static photographs) you quickly understand what a short time ago it was and, we always consider people back then to be juddery (thanks to different frame rates on many cameras and stuff ) or stiff (as in the smart photographs) but when you see people moving around freely and normally (and I know it sounds stupid, but as you or I would) the anachronistic clothing and cars and stuff is forgotten a human connection emerges which I hadn’t expected. You do get a real sense for the people in the images- smiling and being excited about this new technology. I wish I could have that novelty of being filmed and watching myself on screen in such an innocent way as they did. Sadly it will never be- I’ve grown up with cameras and video and the spectacle of cinema and the unreal on screen, not to mention the fact that any city dweller has to give into the fact that they are probably filmed 50 times a day (or whatever the scaremongers tell us).
This is a machine which as far as I can tell- has a story loaded on it and then takes keywords and compares those to keywords in patents in the US patents office- it finds the images associated with the words and then draws them- a drawing for every word. So you end up with a story told in amazing diagrams and drawings. Read the website, watch the video…….. link: http://storyteller.allesblinkt.com/
The BBC are putting on some great material at the moment- Dive is about 2 kids who get pregnant and have a kid. It sounds rubbish but it’s so beautifully put together and it’s got the guy out of skins I like, Jack O’Connell. It captures a bit of teen times nicely and looks at the struggles between love and pride. Directed by Dominic Savage. Check out the amazing shots from the swimming pool- it’s worth watching for these slow mo diving shots.
Also about at the moment is The Silence so far like 5 parts- about a deaf girl who witnesses a Policewomans murder. Really good stuff and I was struck by this shot of tap drinking. I’ve never seen it displayed before- It looks great.
I only ‘This Happened’ found this one the other day- not sure how I missed it for so long to be honest- Created/curated by Chris O’Shea, Joel Gethin Lewis and Andreas Müller, it’s basically videos where a designer (normally interaction) talks through one of their projects for a bit and then takes questions. There’s a couple of gems in there- I’m a big fan of Matt Cottam of Tellart’s talk about wooden logic.
- People like things- they don’t mind paying for an object (as opposed to web/ internet related stuff)
- A tacky figurine might be better than 1000 photo files on a cloud when it comes to recalling or remembering a holiday
- Screens aint all that
- People are amazed that internetty type data can become physical- especially personalised objects
- As old tech and practices change the infrastructure they used begin to become more accessible to the little guy (we’ve broken your business now we want your machines.)
This is a fantastic set of documentaries by Richard Macer which looks at three ailing British Museums: The National Waterways Museum, The Freud Museum and the Commercial Vehicles Museum, under the pretense of looking at why they are failing and how they are trying to reconnect with the visiting public.
I firstly love this set of programmes because I love museums- I’ve got a real thing for them. I love the processes of collecting, accumulating, storage and display (as friends know only too well). I love the feel of them- the museums documented here are the sort of museum my childhood was filled with- wooden cases with curios and engines and stuff and I personally think there’s little more British than Leyland Lorries and Canal Boats. There’s a warmth and bored interest surrounding very specific information conveyed through plauqes and ‘Authentic’ surroundings.
So there were a few interesting bits and pieces about how the Museums faced a challenge in attracting new visitors without compromising the context and history of the space which the Museums inhabit- which are often the now disused housings of the exhibits at the museums- Boat sheds for the waterways, transport warehouses for the buses and lorrries, old mills for the Victorian industrial revolution that sort of thing. One poignant point from the now ex Director of the Waterways museum was that a few years ago visitors were visiting these places as there was a nostalgia for them. These visitors had canal boats and stuff when they were kids and so there was an interest in getting back to that. Now, however there was no such nostalgia. The canal boats were now an anachronism, and the museum’s challenge was in making these almost alien artifacts relevant to an audience who felt no real affinity towards them.
All the documentaries though, happily veered off towards the people who were within the museums- those working and volunteering to keep the place running, and the relationships and politics between them. Whilst there were some traditonalists who were stuck in the ‘olden days’ the most interesting thing for me was seeing the passion and enthusiasm which the volunteers put into their respective tasks and the camaraderie they found through it. The Commercial Vehicles Museum had a particularly endearing character called Errol (pictured) who had been an employee at Leyland and now worked in the cafe at the museum- he heated up mushroom soup, morrisons beans, and buttered baps for ham sandwhichs. He was so happy- and the friendship between these, almost exclusively, old men was quite touching to watch.
I’m sure to most it sounds like a rubbish watch but I think it’s an important, interesting bit of social, anthropological history which most people will be able to relate to. Check them out here until 3rd June: BBC Behind the Scenes at the Museum
