Terror-Forming: the Manchester Context

Symposium:

• ISEA98: Ninth International Symposium on Electronic Art

• Terror-Forming: the Manchester Context

• John Hyatt

Category:

• Introductory & Welcoming Notes

• Intro: The Terror Ball

  ISEA98terror is the culmination of a year of electronic anniversary celebrations in Manchester, a critical “grand finale” of the city’s Digital Summer of academic, artistic, and public events. It is fitting that, in the year of our one hundred and sixtieth anniversary, the Department of Fine Arts at the Manchester Metropoli-tan University is hosting this symposium as it has hosted world-changing events and symposia throughout its history, such as the Pan-African Congress of 1955. Our reasons for concentrating on new technology in 1998 lie in Manchester’s history. Manchester, whilst being popularly well-known for its soccer, contemporary music scene, and for being the heart of the Industrial Revolution, was, also, the birthplace of a second technological revolution. Fifty years ago, in June 1948, a universal machine was constructed here which has fundamentally altered global ways of life and given a new context, subject, tool, and medium to practicing artists and scientists. The world’s first successfully operating stored-programme computer switched- on a world technological revolution. A working copy of the Mark I, affectionately nicknamed The Baby , has been especially and faithfully rebuilt by our neighbour the Victoria University of Manchester. It is on public display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester alongside ISEA98 exhibitions. The Museum is on- the site of the world’s first passenger railway which travelled between Manchester and Liverpool.