AA Archives: Computer Community, 1968
The AA Archives have just received a donation from Fred Scott, consisting of a 45rpm record created by AA 5th Year students, Dolan Conway & Brian Mitchenere for a 1968 Interim Jury presentation of their Diploma project, ‘Computer Community’.
Examining existing information sharing and retrieval systems and contemplated the future of communications aided by computer networks, the project is highly prescient in looking forward to the digital age…
To quote from Conway and Mitchenere’s own words: “Over 58 commercial time sharing computer systems are currently available in the USA – using General Electric and IBM hardware systems. New linkages are being created inducing new communication patterns for different spatial arrangements of activity places… It is anticipated that greater range of locational choice will be the result of our study coupled with a change in the form of our habitat. Distance becomes no-distance, the electronic wave is the permissive force of our future life. Our image is non-image: the visible rounded corner and latticed crane is superseded by the electronic beam, the radio wave – the silent powerful forces of our world.”
Listen to an excerpt
The record, on the Calibre Auto Recording label was likely to have been made at one of the British Automatic Company booths dotted across London in the late 1960s…
BAC Calibre Recording Booth, Waterloo Station, 1967