Before EMF, I had the pleasure of meeting artist Jem Finer and collecting his gigantic marble-run artwork Supercomputer. We put it in a tent as a participatory experiment. I expected we'd give it away in bits at the end as nobody could store it.
Excitingly, Look Mum No Computer came to the festival and asked if he could take the whole thing! I spoke to Jem and he seemed cool with that, so this is the result:
Here is me, pictured after having moved it the first time. I spent over 3 hours with Jem Finer taking it – one wheely trolley at a time – down five floors in a lift and jamming it into a slightly too small van
Honestly, hat off to Sam for making it work in a week. I didn’t believe he’d do it when he said that was his plan. However, he is going to be just Look Mum to me from now on as he clearly has a computer!
@bleeptrack I've packed this thing into a van and moved it twice now, so I know just how many bits go into it…
@jonathanhogg Is that Jem Finer as-in "Jem Finer from The Pogues" (?!!)
@jonathanhogg Having watched Sam rebuild a BT phone exchange he seems like somone who could get it working again
There were a group of people trying to reassemble it at EMF but they seemed, not surprisingly, a bit overwhelmed by the size of the challenge
@andydavies I fully expected that nobody would touch it during EMF, so I was super-excited when a gang had a go. What was even better to me was how much they enjoyed patiently explaining the project to other attendees who stopped to have a look.
Honestly though, Sam kind of saved me from the folly of my decision to take it on, as I had no plan for what I'd do if it was still there at the end…
@jonathanhogg this is so cool I can’t even cope; what an awesome idea in the first place let alone to rebuild it again. EMFCamp really is the best place on the planet.
@terahnova When Jem offered it to us, @jonty and I were both: no, that's a terrible idea, but… yes, of course!
@jonathanhogg @jonty sometimes terrible ideas are also best ideas, you just have to take a punt and the community will provide the rest. So. Fricken. Awesome.
@jonathanhogg Sam is great ^^
@jonathanhogg amazing happy ending! The emf spirits aligned
@jonathanhogg When I was at #EMFCamp I took one look at this pile of bits and thought it was a good project for LMNC.
And so it came to be and Sam took it to his home for old and abandoned projects.
@jonathanhogg Amazing! What a great result. Your faith paid off - that's the EMF community magic for you :)
@jonathanhogg I walked past that many times and assumed somebody hadn't turned up to build it. I'd no idea I could have got stuck in!
@coldclimate yeah… I probably didn't do a good enough job of signage. I ended up printing a few things off on the Friday as I was so busy
@jonathanhogg I saw him playing with that! He did have a glint in his eye…
@jonathanhogg had no time to watch the video so far. This evening!
@jonathanhogg ohh this thing! I remember seeing this installed in a shipping container outside the back entrance of the student accomodation building I lived in for a couple years while I was attending University in 2017-2018. For the longest time I had absolutely no idea what it was about since there wasn't any signage attached to it