Welcome to the third episode of ‘Hollingville’. My studio guests are composer and musician Bruce Woolley, friend to robots everywhere, and writer and editor James Bridle, who has built the universe’s largest computer out of matchboxes and beads. Expect live and unscripted ruminations on music-making machines: ‘the other kind of instruments’, typewriters, early movie cameras, factory assembly lines, opera houses and concert halls.
When Thomas Edison first screamed ‘Hullo!’ into the mute, expectant mouthpiece of his latest invention, the ‘phonograph’, in July 1877, a shift of seismic proportions took place. Before even the faintest echo of a tune had registered upon a rotating cylinder, an entire culture lost its mind. As Nietzsche, using his brand new Malling Hansen Writing Ball, wrote in the late 1880s: ‘are these people or thinking, talking and writing machines?’ And have we mentioned music yet? Specially commissioned musical interludes will be by Radiophonic, with additional moods by the ‘Hollingsville’ composer in residence, Graham Massey, plus ins and outs by Indigo Octagon. Now press play.
After visiting Mars, where next? Welcome to Hollingsville: the new twelve-part series from writer Ken Hollings. A World’s Fair of the airwaves, the shows focuses each week on a different aspect of our historical relationship with technology. From machines to monsters, spaces to dreams, this Radio Expo offers an unscripted tour through the chosen theme, utilising voices and sounds from special guests and presented by Ken Hollings with his usual idiosyncratic flair.
Ken Hollings is the author of Welcome To Mars: Fantasies of Science in the American Century 1947-1959, available from Strange Attractor Press. For more information go to http://www.strangeattractor.co.uk or http://www.kenhollings.blogspot.com
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