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reuben moss /works/computer chronicles

Computer Chronicles

Computer Chronicles was a weekly, PBS informational show on computers which ran from 1981 until 2002; from the early days of the personal computer through the dot-com boom and subsequent bust. This work consists in re-presenting the entirety of the series through a web-streamed perpetual loop broadcast from a computer installed in the gallery. The work when operational is visible in the exhibition space on a screen of the era and at the same time remotely as a web-stream, taking 10 and a half days to repeat.

The series, consisting of 561 28-minute episodes, is a fascinating window into the sometimes humble beginnings of an era of technology which today is fundamental to almost every aspect of our daily lives. Computer Chronicles, as a series and also as a documentary artefact in its own right, is a stark reflection on the inevitability of redundancy. The series in its entirety effectively presents that inevitability as both a paradox and paradigm of modern design and ideology in the era of unabated neo-liberalism.