Art brings steam power to the digital revolution
Charlotte Higgins, arts correspondent
Tuesday July 11, 2006
The Guardian
Alan Gibbs works on Jeremy Deller's Steam-Powered Internet Machine. This is his artwork. Photograph: Roger Bamber
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.
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 - unlike the disused Richborough power station, whose cooling towers loom, and the abandoned wind turbine at the end of the field. "We like inverting economics," said Kane, adding, perhaps unnecessarily: "This is a very uneconomic way of having a portable computer."
One of Deller's most famous artworks was his reconstruction, with historical re-enactment groups, of the Battle of Orgreave, the most vicious clash in the miners' strike of 1984. Last year he and Kane curated an exhibition of contemporary "folk art" at the Barbican, including sectarian murals from Northern Ireland, village fete cake-decorating, and records of local rituals such as a gurning contest. "We are interested in what other people can do," said Deller. "Somebody's hobby can be an art form."
Gibbs, up to his elbows in grease, and solicitously feeding the sculpture from his oil can, is certainly an enthusiast. He was put in touch with Kane and Deller through Turner Contemporary, the Margate-based organisation that commissioned the work. The Merryweather boiler dates from 1945, and was originally used to pump water for fire engines. A handsome object, the boiler has brass taps, a fine whistle and smart teak cladding.
The artists say that the current era - when it is possible to have travelled by steam train as a child and be surfing the internet now - calls to mind JMW Turner's masterpiece, The Fighting Temeraire, which marks the moment when the great sailing ships gave way to steam. "We're at a certain point in British history, at the end of something," said Deller.
· The Steam Powered Internet Machine can be seen at the Kent County Show, Detling, July 14-16 and the Queen Elizabeth Queen Mother Hospital Summer Fete, Margate, August 5. www.turnercontemporary.org
dailymail.co.uk
Charlotte Higgins, arts correspondent
Tuesday July 11, 2006
The Guardian
Alan Gibbs works on Jeremy Deller's Steam-Powered Internet Machine. This is his artwork. Photograph: Roger Bamber
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.
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 - unlike the disused Richborough power station, whose cooling towers loom, and the abandoned wind turbine at the end of the field. "We like inverting economics," said Kane, adding, perhaps unnecessarily: "This is a very uneconomic way of having a portable computer."
One of Deller's most famous artworks was his reconstruction, with historical re-enactment groups, of the Battle of Orgreave, the most vicious clash in the miners' strike of 1984. Last year he and Kane curated an exhibition of contemporary "folk art" at the Barbican, including sectarian murals from Northern Ireland, village fete cake-decorating, and records of local rituals such as a gurning contest. "We are interested in what other people can do," said Deller. "Somebody's hobby can be an art form."
Gibbs, up to his elbows in grease, and solicitously feeding the sculpture from his oil can, is certainly an enthusiast. He was put in touch with Kane and Deller through Turner Contemporary, the Margate-based organisation that commissioned the work. The Merryweather boiler dates from 1945, and was originally used to pump water for fire engines. A handsome object, the boiler has brass taps, a fine whistle and smart teak cladding.
The artists say that the current era - when it is possible to have travelled by steam train as a child and be surfing the internet now - calls to mind JMW Turner's masterpiece, The Fighting Temeraire, which marks the moment when the great sailing ships gave way to steam. "We're at a certain point in British history, at the end of something," said Deller.
· The Steam Powered Internet Machine can be seen at the Kent County Show, Detling, July 14-16 and the Queen Elizabeth Queen Mother Hospital Summer Fete, Margate, August 5. www.turnercontemporary.org
dailymail.co.uk