We went up to London today to see the Listening Post exhibition at the Science museum. Click here for more info.
The beginning of the exhibition, which is basically a history of communication, was interesting but not amazingly so. There were some very interesting bits that were done as if it was an exhibition in the 1920s, but other than that, it was nothing special.
The centrepiece of the exhibition though, the Listening Post, was quite honestly one of the most fascinating and moving things I have ever seen in my life.
That’s it. All those little screens have letters on. The sequence starts with just one in the middle coming on with one letter at a time, going through all the letters of the alphabet until it finds the right one, then the next letter doing that, then the next two, until there’s a 4-letter word. Then another word comes. Then another. Then they all start ticking over. They make a ticking sound as they do it. Then all the screens come into life, ticking over with words that people are saying. It’s incredible to watch. There’s English words, German words, Spanish words, normal words, real words, misspelt words…it’s amazing to watch.
After that (I think: I’m not entirely certain I have the order right) were people’s usernames that they use in the chat rooms. Some of them are read out by a computerised voice, and there’s hundreds of them going past. It was fascinating.
The best bit was the next bit, which was I am/I love. It picks out sentences beginning with ‘I am’ (or, if it’s doing the ‘I love’ one, sentences beginning with ‘I like’ or ‘I love’). They’re all read out and they all scroll past on the screens. It’s oddly emotional: I actually felt like bursting into tears. You know when you see some exhibitions, and you think ‘wow, think of the possibilities’, but you can’t quite feel as overawed as you should? You don’t feel like that with this. You feel so amazingly overawed that you can hardly handle it. You really do get the sensation of watching thousands of people talking, at home, in the office, in internet cafes…it’s incredible. It has to be seen to be described.
Then there was a part with just random sentences that seem to come across in waves. That’s hard to describe too. People were talking about everything…seriously, it’s incredible.
It was something that really, really made me think. If you have any chance at all of going to the exhibition, then do. It’s part of the permenant collection, so it’s not going away any time soon. It was one of the most beautiful, moving, emotional things I have ever seen. I cannot recommend it enough.
We also went over the road to the V&A, which is probably my favourite museum, to see the Mapping the Imagination exhibition. It was really interesting. There were loads of different maps, of real things and imaginary things and all sorts of things. It was a very small exhibition but nevertheless well worth seeing. One of my favourites was Jeremy Wood’s ‘All London Routes’. He tracked his journeys around London for 5 years using a GPS system and then made a map of them. Dark lines represent routes well-travelled and pale lines are less-travelled. Here it is (though you can’t quite get the full effect without really seeing it):
And finally, one more from the exhibition. This is London’s Kerning, in which all the street names are made out of the letters (click here for a larger version):
