In Coal Fired Computers, a one hundred year old, 17.5-ton showman’s steam engine powers a single computer with 1.5 tonnes of coal. Black lungs inflated every time the database record of a miner’s lung disease was shown on the computer monitors. The original work was produced over three days at Newcastle’s Discovery Museum, with groups of miner activists. The work was originally commissioned by AV Festival, Newcastle, UK and produced in partnership with Discovery Museum, Isis […]
In Coal Fired Computers, a one hundred year old, 17.5-ton showman’s steam engine powers a single computer with 1.5 tonnes of coal. Black lungs inflated every time the database record of a miner’s lung disease was shown on the computer monitors. The original work was produced over three days at Newcastle’s Discovery Museum, with groups of miner activists. The work was originally commissioned by AV Festival, Newcastle, UK and produced in partnership with Discovery Museum, Isis Arts and The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. In collaboration with Jean Demars, the work was a response to the displacement of coal production to distant lands like India and China after the UK miners’ strike in 1984/85.
Coal Fired Computers took as it starting point 19th century technologies of power, in particular Charles Parson’s 1884 steam turbines, coal and their relationship to Newcastle and retired miners . The work was also produced to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the UK miners’ strike to focus on our increasing use of coal embedded in our technologies.
The work employed a steam engine to electrically power a single computer that displayed the records from two contentious databases: one held on the servers of a law firm soliciting claims for lung disease against the UK government; the other from the UK government itself. The databases – miners’ claims for those who contracted Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) since 1952 and those miners that have died in mining accidents since 1700 – triggered compressed air to inflate two sets of diseased lungs. Miners’ activists, some of whom had contracted COPD, helped staff and run the contraption, while talking to the public about our relationships with coal and globalisation. They also displayed an archive of publications on the topic they had amassed.
Source: Matsuko Yokokoji and Graham Harwood (2010) Coal Fired Computers. (archived version)