WRD

A little extra light each day really does go a long way toward compensating for the extreme darkness looming in the east. Each day the projection of international muscle seems more surreal. Surely a living horror for anyone in the path of all this warmongering for profit.

Here in southeast London, the chill in the air has lifted following a week of sunny spring days. Have restocked tomatoes, courgettes and cucumbers Our week was as busy as ever, several threads intertwined for longer term sustainability, others unravel!

It’s been a productive one in the Virus Shelter, as a set of 4 x 450w solar panels have just today been patched into the battery stack of the EcoFlow Stream Ultra X (really?). Wrestling the cables into some squirrel proof pipes whilst perching on the fragile roof was traumatic and has exhausted YT! Today we will see if the effort returns value as the sun swings round mid-morning. Indeed, the skies are a little clouded so we are less than optimal at about 60% of the anticipated capacity of this rig. The house and shed runs at about one kilowatt when in use, so we are already breaking even with some spare to charge the 3.8 kw/h battery.

Updates to the local LLM Ollama based OpenClaw installation for the donated PC we call Cranium, a well resourced i5 6 core PC with dual GTX 1060 gpu’s and as much RAM as we can find here. Despite the vintage of all the parts, the raft of AI co-ordination dashboards, the optimised installation of all the CUDA libraries for use with tensor and neural Python tools, it spins along as well as anything else we have!

This all seems primitive stuff in comparison to the corporate AI cloud, the use of local LLM models is restricted, yet progress has been made. We can switch between local and cloud models to or spin up local agents to speed up responsiveness. Cranium, joins Redrum, Hexium and Bubblegum on our Uniformed Discord server where others in the RTF research group members will be able to interact.

Over at Limehouse Town Hall we set up another OpenClaw instance as assistant to the Yoshi stack so it knows as much about the archive as any of us involved. @drew4yoshibot has worked out how to extend the functionality of PhotoPrism and write captions for photos in the archive address and return useful information about the different collections, resources and history, online and off. In addition, it wrote it’s own report of activities, linked below!

With all the hype for agentic AI, OpenClaw and the rush for more energy hungry capitalisation and scaling up of commercial infrastructure, there is a lack of applied attention on critical issues most people face day to day and as ever too many face hunger, war and exploitation.

Meanwhile, these tools already make it possible to glimpse how AI augmented health advocates have a strong role to play. Whilst your health is OK, do take time to prepare use of agentic tools to help you track interaction with health care professionals, organise appeals for attention as well as act for you should difficulties arise. Relying on powers of attorney, living wills and the good nature of family or friends to do the right things for you, is a mugs game!

We should be doing better. How about putting some resources together to follow the money and dox as many of the corporate slime, privileged knobs and degenerate billionaire corruption we can, before it’s all beyond us!

Just this week, we have been supporting James Braddell aka Funki Porcini in preparation for the long anticipated arrival of Laserium Extravaganza at Limehouse Town Hall later this month. Not only will the incredible Laserium be on show, but a group of friends and performers will also contribute two days of sonic and illumination excitement.

Please check the event post for up to the moment details and get your tickets soon, as it’s set to be a busy and popular couple of days…

Greenman is a social software advocate and developer based at Limehouse Town Hall. As well as playing a key role in the long term utilisation of the building over 20 years, he sustains a healthy range of diverse interests and activities from his lab there. We often find a time for a chat when attending the Yoshi Stack on Wednesdays.

It was a little before the seasonal break that he introduced TAMS which is being developed by the BBC research. They have taken a fresh approach to bulk video production management by offering a AWS cloud based hosting of media as shards or vectors that are designed for distributed production, providing streaming service access to live and stored media resources.

These active developments bode well for future use in support of AMP and desire to make legacy activist media resources available to Undercover Police Inquiry, to help pick out Spy Cops embedded within direct action groups and even co-ordinating demonstrations ! A mountain of social engagement video tape filmed by the public has yet to be digitised let alone reviewed, before adding to collections at MayDay Rooms, LCVA, EngageMedia, National Archives and SAM.

The task then, is to refactor these opensource softwares for use in more locally hosted media systems, rather than corporate cloud providers, which he has begun work on and will soon be ready to demonstrate.

This all sounds somewhat akin to the legacy research as conducted by the late, great Alexei Blinov and YT back in 2015 where we envisaged ‘a sludge of 1Satoshi torrent shards‘ that would reconstitute media resources on demand, a satoshi sidechain hustle, oh well!

SPC has more recently been nurturing development research threads of our own throughout 2025. Dermot Finn has been leading with very hands on development of software tools for RTF not least with our sponsor EXN’s interests in mind.

He has been finding a way through the maze of bum code steers and entangled logic that the current AI bloom has generated. This progress has staggered from pillar to post in a supreme effort to explore data retrieval and augmentation options as they present themselves, whilst not straying too far off the path!

EXN are a Deptford based network technology and high redundancy, co-location, data hosting provider. If that’s too much a mouthful, then a visit to any of their expertly constructed, maintained and serviced racks in London’s Dockland datacentres will surely blow your mind.

They already operate an array of ; customer facing, logistical management and secure private network infrastructure, with monitoring systems of such high redundancy and integrity, the likes of Rightmove didn’t hesitate to enlist them in the hosting of their intensive property marketing service.

Any software enhancement of their operation should not expose them to unanticipated risks. We hope that outcomes from our research, will inform on just how innovative data modelling, intent interpretation and reasoning is practical for their tight team.

In the dash to track the breakneck progression of AI prospecting, it would be all too easy to lose track of longer term interest and appreciation of alternatives for application and data hosting. SPC has continued with deployment of DIY hosting platforms for NAS, CMS and micro publishing.

Of those, Yunohost has recently helped us get going with a dockerised Peertube at https://mov.spc.org and Immich at https://img.spc.org. We also established a capable Ollama server for investigation into ‘offline AI’ where all the retrieved and augmented data sources are insulated from robot co-option and scrutiny.

Options for citizen media and community networks are needed more urgently than ever. Transnational corporate muscle is being flexed in all corners of the world, where those that seek to dominate and oppress must find us well dug-in and independently able to resist!

As we windup for the last weeks of 2025 and prepare for early activities in 2026 am pleased to report the conclusion of another productive and stimulating year.

Backspace.org was registered in Spring of 1996 a couple of months after the opening of the public access cyber lounge once the website was ready. Thinking back to those days now, it’s hard to recall just how these ideas we now all take for granted, rationalised out of the William Gibson novels or Mondo2000 tech-zines, were projected into the grime of 90s London.

We loved our time in Clink Street and revisit the area with a mix of affection for the quality experiences and horror at its gross commodification. Just this week, when wandering the area for a chat with media journalist and recent UAL graduate Alma, dipped into the Red Bus gift shop to admire the solid timbers and scale of the old place despite the total remodelling since the rug was pulled at the end of 1999.

With that all in mind, it is our intention to revisit regularly during the coming year in celebration of its 30th, but also to measure up for a VR rendering and reanimation of the space. To start we will be placing a Digital Marker in the window in time for the new year as Stuart, the current owner, is keen to acknowledge the innovative use we made of the place.

You still visit much of the original and extraordinary Backspace website from the era, but we hope to make it possible to once again stand in the place alongside some of the great characters whom once frequented. Founder of Cyberia, Eva Pascoe has already remodelled their network of spaces this year and will be assisting our efforts in the coming months.

That’s where we need your help ! Our photographs and recollections are surprisingly threadbare where they do exist. Yes we do have a bag of ephemera, flyers, posters and tangled memories, but it is our hope you kept better records! Please get in touch and let us know if you have stuff to share ASAP – it’s bak@spc.org for email users and +447973318881 for James.

In spring 2006 some friends and regulars did regroup for an afternoon in the then Starbucks coffee bar, to reminisce a decade on from Backspace first opening, but that afternoon also now feels like a deep history!

As we soon reach winter solstice, how about a get-together at the Crossbones Vigil on 23rd December then find a local bar to plot for next year?

We all felt the shockwave at the news of Mark Saunders sudden death. All seemed well with him after a week away in Finland at this years Inura. He returned on Monday but by Friday he was at Kings College Hospital getting emergency treatment, to no avail and he lost out to Septic Cardiogenic Shock on Saturday 5th July. Since then a group of his friends and peers have gathered in support of the family and to save Spectacle, best we can in the circumstances.

A celebration of Mark’s life will be held at SET social in Peckham on October 21st, friends and colleagues all welcome! It’s where we met earlier this year for Exploding Cinema and a perfect space for us all to gather, watch a reel of clips, raise a glass or two and smoke a ready rolled in his loving memory!

Readers of this log will know he and YT have been meeting regularly over at Spectacle production studio in Lavender Hill, to review the resource mountain stacked there. Mark was actively seeking routes for future sustainability and utility of this unique historical video archive. Not only does it describe the social history of documentary film making in the UK and Europe but the evolution of community video production in practice. It’s a unique collection.

Time is now short to define practical steps toward ensuring viable future access to the collection. The vast catalogue of video tapes, cameras and production documentation have been well annotated so packing them up in order they could be retrieved if needed was made relatively easy. Having said that there are 75 boxes of old media so it’s encouraging to now see empty shelves! Much more still to be done before clearance can be completed and the place closed down, too much rent to pay.

We have have been very fortunate to locate secure meanwhile storage with friends until this time next year. There is space for the whole archive, cameras, tape playback and capture hardware alongside a huge stack of tape and documentation. Longer term plans for how to preserve and promote the archive are in conversation now, please chip in with practical ideas and support! Contact ‘Spectacle after Mark’ sam@spectacle.co.uk.

A huge bulk of the material has already been digitised in an ongoing effort with help from a stream of community media workers in training and mentorship with Mark over so many decades! The many threads of research, review and production in process have been left dangling, yet many will likely be resolved well in time.

A lifetime ago in 1980 I purchased the debut Cardiac Arrest 7″ single at the OurPrice record shop in Kingston after my curiosity got the better of me. A Bus for a Bus on the Bus really was unlike any other record. Before long got to see Cardiacs play live for the first time, meeting a family of firm friends and forever deviating my pathway, theirs was set!

During the rest of the 80’s, trajectory spiralled outward, slowly at first then with a momentum that thrilled and sometimes made us nauseous. We travelled the country performing all sorts of crazy, driving the unique tangle of musical ideas, inprinted with sonic heritage out there on the fringe, independant and striving for splendor. The Alphabet Business Concern we founded then, persists and thrives!

That bus dropped me off in time to pick up on a technology rocket that during the 90’s resulted in early networked database development with ESPY for BRAG agency, non-linear video editing as MIT with VideoVision Studio and by 1995, web design boutique Obsolete, media lab Backspace and community wireless primer Consume before the end of 1999.

Throughout, we have always kept closely in touch, supporting when possible, always in admiration. The later up’s and downs really seemed to have taken their toll and when Tim Smith finally succumbed after so many years of pain and suffering, that could well have ended it all…

Not so! In a life affirming effort by so many, over the intervening years, his expansive set of partially recorded songs has been fabulously elevatated and made ready for release this September.

LSD is a double dose of Cardiacs, 17 new songs that Tim had recorded at his home studio ‘Apollo’ but had barely sung on. All have now been completed with so much love and class, mastery and mahem abound !

A new single Woodeneye is already available and there are plenty of oportunities to see accounts of the band playing live, most recently a previously unreleased film from 1988 at Town & Country Club featuring YT and Miss Swift through the Whole World Window!

On these very hot days the mind wanders about to compensate for the containment in the shadows and it’s only now as temperatures drop a little is there a moment to thread together some of those thoughts, which in the process uncovered previously unexpected connections.

The first of these is Felinet as featured on this HackADay page. After many years tracking so many fringe radio development projects this one slipped by until checking the title for this post! Electra surely has a hand in this but haven’t checked with her yet.

It’s been over a year since we all met up in Berlin to mark 20 years of Pico Peering so it was great to see everyone again over video link during The Rise of the Network Commons book launch in C-Base this June. Also pictured is Adam Burns who forges ahead with innovations in secure DNS and it’s role in service discovery for wireless (edge) networks. In checking some details of these threads, came across yet more interesting heterogeneous edge network development for federated learning also sharing the Felinet title!

Over recent weeks at Co-oPepys our resident artist Alpha Ω has reassembled the Kali Hypothesis installation throughout the studio spaces, to make ready for visitors for just this week. It’s huge effort for such a short showing so do please come and see for yourself how the work has developed and to play the detective game that has been so long in production.

Kali (the cat) has been showing up at strategic points around the SE8 area, perhaps you have spotted some on your travels.

The mystery trail begins at Deptford’s Badger Badger game cafe then routes you through to the exquisitely crafted detective installation at Co-oPepys…

a ‘Live Art-Gaming Event for Viral Agents Vs Detective players where the Code is real.’

Outside Co-oPepys are the middle legs supporting Daubeny Tower where the near constant flow of funnelled air rushes under the 18 floor tower.

Ever since first visiting the place 25 years ago it been a thought to further explore ways of expressing this phenomenon with giant wind filled structures.

Although the lack of rain has done nothing for the grass areas of the garden at home, many of the annuals have thrived with the occasional evening sprinkling, my favourites right now are the orange Day Lilies and fire red Crocosmia and lilac Hosta’s. Gardening however lightly practiced is the best of antidotes to this endless screen time and concerns for creatures of this world.

The churn of experimental AI development, to push innovation and hype attention, perpetually grinds out fresh LLM models that thrill speculators and surprise skeptics. Beyond the hype of DeepSeek, Ollama and Manus etc. our anxieties peek in realisation of it’s insatiable energy appetite.

Media has never been more thoroughly homogenised, distorted and counterfeit at our expense. Shattered context fragments and crumpled shells litter the disinformation pathways. Exploitation of natural resources is on a runaway course in pursuit of unbridled capital gain, whilst a whirlwind of environment catastrophe makes landfall. The daily drama of oligarch drawn maga corporate and transnational capital gorging, depresses our senses, curbing creative expression, suppressing inspirational response, but respond we must!

Fabulous then to visit SDNA prior to the opening of Sentient Currents exhibition of recent image and light sculpture then to hear the delight voiced by all attending for the prompt engineered dish of delicious moths, squid and molluscs @ Bomb Factory 99 Kingsway, London wC2

SPC has limited experience in the art of business development but a substantial record supporting a wide range of socially engaged and exploratory initiatives. The race to re-frame all knowledge, rights and relationships with corporate AI tools has prompted us to call on our friend and local developer Dermot Finn to help mount a response; one that’s more in scale with available resources and in tune with a day to day reality than can yet be offered by corporate business alone.

Our most recent subscriber and contributor EX Networks, operate a contemporary network infrastructure and mission critical hosting at data centres in London and across EU. Their commitment to our AI research initiative RTF, sponsoring some of the time it takes to establish a bank of practical experience to draw from.

Meanwhile, they race within a changing technical environment and accelerating energy costs, so seek innovative opportunities. A growing range of LLM development tools and home brew alternatives to commercial hegemony’s old and new, are in hand.

The word that we were seeking hardware to operate some Ollama AI modelling, got around and as a result, community technology recyclers Catbytes loaned us their best available PC. It has since been topped up with a donated Nvidia 3080 GPU to allow for some modest Open Source LLM model testing via a gigabit fibre host in Peckham. EXN also dropped round an even more chunky PC than we could have anticipated, which features a monster CPU and GPU combo that we placed at a host in Hackney. Jake Bains and Greenman then donated legacy gaming PCs which we reanimated with GPU’s that allow them to run smaller AI models just fine. None match the gruesome capacity nor suck up the energy of a small city like Gemini, OpenAI or Grok megaliths but can all be put into useful service directing agent retrieval and refinement of deeper research prompting and reasoning.

We have since been on a stimulating but sometimes frustrating research journey to brush up on PC hardware configuration and progress with open source LLM deployment with Ollama. The construction, configuration and operation of these fast evolving systems is not such a headache now we gathered some missing info that was not self evident from our standing start in December! Luckily there are many freely available and high quality AI chat systems devoted to problem solving, coding Python for LLM use and organising resources which helped us prepare for more specific application development.

It’s no good relying on the corporate AI systems ‘freely’ available as offered, to continue accommodating the surge in uptake. Better to distribute the compute; establish localised systems to integrate data resources and promote access for social enrichment over commercial abasement.

We first met Peter Kennard whilst installing and maintaining the broadband infrastructure at Martello Street Spacestudios on the edge of London Fields in Hackney.

His incredible exhibition at Whitechapel Art Gallery including some of the most iconic political imagery of our age, is now over. The mono portraits layered with projected petro-chem icons, news stands, back projected xerox illustrations and crafted posters spanning decades spaced throughout the gallery, inform on his ingenuity and intensity.

Just last week, YT picked up Nick and Stephen of Brixton Hill Studios on the way out to Westbury, Wiltshire for a visit to Dave Chelsea’s Temple of Boom, the old victorian church which is being transformed into huge live recording room (ground) and mixing suite (top).

It’s been the first time for while we all had time to show up in support, to sift and sort instruments, outboard effect modules, document archive and construct the shelving to hold it all. We hope this gives Dave a leg up and look forward to the resumption of Sunday service now spring is in the air!

Great progress was made in relatively short time before we gathered in our habits around the table to feast on the mix of great produce from the nearby farm shop. Despite plunging temperatures outside there was plenty of warmth from the huge wood burning stove to see us through till morning.

Nick stayed on to work with studio setup process which will link up the spaces over the newly refurbished building wide network infrastructure. Broadband speeds remain limited to the 4G service out here in the countryside but internally the highspeed connections over ethernet and wireless will be essential.

A day later we then visited a huge ramshackle building and huge hall in West Norwood, both prospective future home for the ‘Perfect Pitch‘ sonic skill centre that Stephen and fellow directors are currently co-ordinating with the aim of providing a long term home for community music production and performance training in Lambeth. Some considerable effort has already been put to the preparation and planning for just how such a comprehensive and sustainable ambition can be realised. It’s our intention to support this initiative in anyway possible yet the huge financial reality of such plans will need to be funded from elsewhere!

There has been a quick start to the new year with a diversity of emphasis and some urgency from those around us, to locate suitable collaborative environments for project development and resource sharing – a Resourceforge

SDNA joined us for a viewing of the abandoned Second Home space on Mare Street in Hackney. They operate a hybrid media practice with participation workshops and composite image projection at it’s core. Others seek a place to meet where We are all on a quest for suitable spaces to work publicly and have brought in Spacegenerators to the conversation. They have been successfully supporting establishment of community climate centres around the country, facilitating direct responses to the crisis and helping negotiate rate relief in exchange for meanwhile spaces. London rents are out of all our reach so we should appeal for supported access to unused buildings, breathing some fresh ideas and energy into city centres.

We concluded the seasonal festivities with EX Networks where we spent some of the conversation describing our first steps toward home-brew AI development with local installations of Ollama and introductions to CUDA toolkit for RAG. The commercial offer of OpenAI and it’s many challengers is a cost of use that may be beyond your IP budget or comfort zone. EXN provided a high spec PC with plenty of GPU cores for our use with latest locally hosted LLM models such as DeepSeek, a much needed experimentation platform.

Our AI revolution should be celebrated at all scales. Rather than get caught up with cost of using corporate platforms, let’s take up every opportunity to explore options and develop grass-root installations stocked with local data for collective benefit and value exchange as a priority. Nor is it a walled garden that’s needed but open access to tools and techniques required for practice now.

RTF is our working ID for this research initiative and collaborations with EX Networks are ongoing, to dig out a pathway for ‘retrieval augmented generation’, agentic and workflow refinement that we can re-deploy as needed. Their specific needs for speedy tech response demands a lot of their compact engineer team, service that an in-house LLM should well enhance.

Our highly creative prompting for useful output should be accompanied by a healthy dose of skepticism and reserve. If you already collect and host your business information or generate research data, it’s value may not be something you are ready to trade just yet. The training of AI models is surging in sync with our rapid engagement with these groundbreaking tools. All this enthusiastic interaction is providing a rich harvest of valuable context and raw material for service providers to recirculate and capitalise on.

Each week YT spends Wednesday at Limehouse Town Hall tending the Yoshi stack and participating in hall activities, not least a recently convened food coop.

We adopted the Co-operation Town model of mini co-op where groups of max 20 individuals select from local wholeseller lists of seasonal organic vegetables for £100 budget. A basket of goodies for a fiver each week can easily get topped up with free extras when there is surplus produce.

The torrent of fruit and vegetables arriving to London markets does result in food waste that these initiative could help mitigate. This weeks Christmas box was doubled up and here we are after sorting out the 23 individual boxes which included pears, onions, parsnips carrots and of course brussel sprouts!

Last week we got to visit the newly completed apartment buildings at Church Grove in Ladywell. RUSS is a Community Land Trust whose members campaigned, raised funds together and negotiated hard with Lewisham Council planning for over a decade or more before at last reaching completion. The freshly planted gardens gardens will see their first spring in 2025 and all the spaces have been fully allocated and occupied.

Each apartment is equipped with Openreach high speed fibre termination points ready for residents to make up their own minds for broadband supply. The options remain limited but Zen have been the successfully supplying a good deal at £35 pcm. FTTP is a leap of quality and speeds compared to legacy ADSL most homes in the area still pay the same price for. A single 1gb fibre lease line may well have been more cost effective between the 36 homes but perhaps in anticipation of difficulties distributing access and delegating such costs, a more conventional solution was chosen.

Down at ground level you will find public community gardens, a good size event and meeting space, laundry and playground for residents. We met with Liz, resident from one of the two shared houses and visited others along the walkways linking the two blocks.

Spacestudios invited SPC to quote for installation of distributed wifi access at their latest artist studio building with 34 studios on 4th floor of Attic Storage in Enfield. A BT lease line fibre service is a long term commitment and substantial expense despite prices leveling off in recent years. Rather than assume a new service installation (the building already has fibre at first floor for landlords) we visited the neighbouring business centre Gor-Ray House and talked with their network architect about the range of services they already offer their in-house manged offices and how a suitable alternative to engaging directly with BT might be possible with them.

Either way service will need to be routed up into the coms rack via this service shaft which seems to rise from the ground floor. It looks a bit tight to climb so let’s hope there is an acceptable pathway to follow that leads through to next building.

Back in the nineties we first became aware of telecom regulations not least those governing the network interlinking of buildings which prohibits any crossing of the kings highway with cable without a telecom license. It was this realisation that prompted us to install the first wireless ethernet link between Winchester and Soho wharves on opposite sides of Clink Street in London Bridge. In 2000 we began co-ordinating Consume, the community wireless initiative which explored how to distribute unmetered telecoms and formalise relationships between those sharing access, with a Pico Peering agreement.

Today wireless data technologies permeate every environment and use light licensing to govern consumer uses. We have a pair of 60ghz radios with which to bridge short gaps that run at up to 1gb/s where previously this would have been completed with 2.4ghz or 5ghz systems.

The relentless churn of London’s districts and histories continues as backdrop to our day to day experience. Step off your habitual pathways for just a moment and discover redrawn environments that jump cut the geography of your mind map.

A recent derive around City of London confirmed just how extraordinary a phenomenon this is in light of the post pandemic exodus and uncertainty for the future of work. Many international insurance companies, banks and mega corporations extracted themselves to country retreats with little trace but the now vacant floors throughout the city.

Not that this change of heart seems to have effected the prospecting of high finance, ever seeking to reformulate and adapt. Perhaps we under estimate just what has been going in the comparative lull of normal business since then. New monolithic structures, many as yet incomplete litter the streets from Fleet to Fenchurch, Canon to Great Eastern. Other less fortunate and soulless forms remain in place to shore up and exemplify vested power structures and shadow economics.

Some of the most notable post war modernist buildings are in the firing line as their once optimistic profiles have long since fallen from grace and languish untended and vulnerable to the sweep of speculative indifference. Fountain House on Fenchurch Street has just such a history and precarious future. It’s owner and guardian the Clothmakers Company are 500 years adrift from their origins and will roll on undisturbed whatever the state of play. The Mercers, Grocers and Drapers weald hidden hands and backroom beliefs in an eternal wealth they operate as charity, challenge free. One hundred and eleven such merciful companies retain the core controls over how the square mile and much else besides, is operated and understood.

No point in brooding on all this inequality when it comes to eeking out a position from which to illustrate options and develop much needed opportunities for those without portfolio. Any acknowledgement of the alternatives to capitalism is rare yet without doubt there is upsurge of interest in full social democracy and egalitarian redress.

Over in South London, pastures gave way to Victorian mass house building and the laundering of colonial wealth through property prospecting. These legacies ran aground in post war Britain when the scale of dereliction was dropped into the lap of London Borough Councils poorly equipped and underfunded. New housing estates were added to the stocks but the scale of inadequacy, corruption and lack of foresight in general resulted in substandard planning and construction. Abandonment of responsibility for incoming populations consigned impoverished communities to these dilapidated estates where social problems were condensed in pin mould.

50 years on, post pandemic, a fresh wave of redevelopment determinism is welcome, yet for those of Clapham Park the long awaited rebuilding of the rotten estate buildings signals a shortening of tenure for many. Grand plans and positive process can’t hide the likelihood some will be unable to adapt to a refined environment and the increases in rents due. It’s taken a huge push to get to this point for all those concerned and the proposals for community integration in to the housing association future offer a range of shared ownership, part exchange and buyback will leave many with poor options. Demolition is underway so those with the least may find themselves moved out of town or excluded block by block.

MTVH are currently inviting proposals for resident artist or consultant engagement to shape up a Public Art Strategy in sync with Lambeth Council planning and commissioning frameworks. The staged redevelopment and re-homing of residents presents unique difficulties and complexities that will stretch resources and patience.

Local artist and filmmaker Pete Gomes presented himself for last minute consideration with a well considered overview text and upbeat introduction video which should align the ambitions of the Clapham Park Committee; made up of current residents, senior leadership team with the MYVH CEO. Their brief defines placemaking and wayfinding as key with celebration of diversity, quality of life and social cohesion as imperatives to raise Clapham Park’s profile and legacy as its own destination.

Pete has lived locally for over 30 years. His response is to identify with a Community Area Network pragmatism, where shared digital resources and collaboration tools are promoted locally to organise events, express social cohesion and acceptance of our distinct human qualities and needs.

‘I am in this local community and I am part of it. I have experienced how the area has radically changed: new school buildings; demolished shops and pubs; new landscaping; and I have seen the hard work and results of self initiated community gardening projects and public arts. My approach is a practical and direct connection to the diverse people in my area’.

Perhaps more importantly he has working experience in social settings and a passion for the built environment, public art with great insights into dynamic thinking and improvisation.

‘ I am an academic, a Doctor of Arts, completing my doctorate in 2021. My research developed an entirely new innovative way of working in groups and ensembles, where skills and responsibilities are actively shared between participants, who work together without hierarchies. I devise and develop creative community workshops and use them as a way of developing connections between people and making dynamic social environments. My skills and experiences enable me to speak and connect with a wide range of classes, cultures, types and ages being able to listen and nurture meaningful and connected relationships.’

Let’s hope the strengths needed in support of local peoples rights for good quality and safe affordable homes, is delivered through enaction of co-authored plans for cultural enrichment and well being.

It’s been a busy week again for YT almost forgot to mention a panel appearance and short presentation about Backspace cybercafe at The V&A on Saturday 23rd November – Digital Art Communities: Hubs, Nodes & Networks – SOLD OUT! There is deck for this talk just in case of connection issues but really should have just read out the contents of this page !

It follows on from contributions to ‘Hubs, Nodes and Networks: a new history of British digital art’, a book published by Thames and Hudson but we haven’t yet seen a copy so tell us what you think of it if you have seen it!

Our host for the event is Pita Arreola, a London based curator and co-founder of Off Site Project, a curatorial platform that through exhibitions, events and residencies promotes international new media talent. Also on the panel is Zaiba Jabbar an award-winning director, independent curator and the founder of HERVISIONS. Catherine Mason is an independent art historian and author who has been researching the history of computer and digital art since 2002 – makes four!

When we first tried to arrange a working space in 1995, Matt Black of NinjaTune was quick to offer us a side room to work things out. We outgrew and moved into our own room below them within months, to establish the relatively short lived but well loved web boutique Obsolete!

The Backspace idea was first considered to accommodate social overflow from the new studio, where we worked and played 24/7 to build the earliest of experimental html based websites for The Fortean Times, On-U records, WARP records, Nature magazine and Levi’s Europe, out of which only Backspace survives intact ! 

The new ground floor space though took on a life of it’s own and was fitted out by sculptor Tim Cook before opening early in 1996 to begin offering public access to direct publishing onto the WWW. This view circa 1999 features the work of artist John Hayward – Hayvend and the Pop Sewage of Tod Hanson.

By early spring the https://backspace.org website we see today took shape. It was developed by Obsolete designer Dorian Moore in response to our vague suggestions it should ‘show a dynamic pick of published projects on the splash page’ so everyone got a fair crack at exposure for their products. His response was to use PLA tide tables to refresh a floatsom and jetsom of animated GIF links.

Our record keeping and image archiving left a lot to be desired, similarly few of Obsolete and it’s many projects survive but are still listed. The Backspace web system needed server migration so often over the years, some bits got lost in transit. It’s mostly OK now, since Kass Schmitt wheeled by to repair it, just some broken links for offsite connections that were dissolved decades ago remain!

We were influenced by so many innovators and experimenters not least Heath Bunting’s Cybercafe log, Luini’s IUMA and Jamie Levy’s production of ‘The Word‘, a very early and trailblazing webzine based in NY that was 6 months ahead of us all. Heath later organised a series of one day un-conferences at Backspace where each contributor had just a couple of mins to describe their work – introducing us to a wealth of ideas and energies – a who’s who of euro web culture! https://www.irational.org/cybercafe/backspace/

Before the end of 1999 there were 100+ published objects being churned by tides on http://backspace.org.

We were busy each day with fresh subscribers and public interest was rising. Doors opened at noon and closed at 8pm 6 days a week with Monday offline for reset and rest! Spacers took on the opening and closing, playing tag with the keys, particularly on the days when caring for our young family made it hard to get out of the house!

Those 4 years we remained active were intensely experienced but limited our opportunities to get out and about London. As much as people came to us with fresh energy each day it was something of a relief when it stopped at the end of 1999 with eviction.  A massive squat party to celebrate the new millennium in the recently emptied building went on for a month until developers paid them off, which was just about right!

We returned to occupy the Starbucks once again with ‘spacers’ and friends in 2006 for a lovely afternoon, but as you know, it’s never the same river twice!

Fourth Portal is the hybrid event space as defined by South Londoner John McKiernan. His energy and insights succesfully highlight social enterprise and community ingenuity at the heart of your local town. It’s key to unlocking value in the sense of purpose and human value embedded with acknowledgement of qualities in each other we so easily take for granted.

John is celebrating experiences gained during a decade activating spaces in coastal towns and has been sharing conclusive evidence of these experiences at the most recent portal space based in the St Andrews chapel at Gravesend Thameside over 18 months.

Visit to the Innovation Showcase on Wednesday 20th November 2024 throughout Gravesend town centre and riverside venues, where you will find a range of activities, presentations and entertainment as presented by resident artists, engineers and accademics, explore emerging technologies and new economic opportunities together.

James Braddell concludes the showcase at 7pm with the latest iteration of The Laserium, a DIY built and midi modulated laser light organ featuring 800 LED mechanisms, projecting galactical landscapes and sonified orchestrations of Funki Porcini compositions. The development of these innovations, in syncopation of sound and light has continued at pace since we first wrote about the first show at commonground in Coventry back in 2022, don’t miss it’s current mode.

Update 21st Nov – Now recovered after a hectic day setting up and atuning for the show with help from droogs, Gio, Ellis and Ian – much love and thanks. Happy to report all went very well with an appreciative audience of almost 100, concluding a busy day for organisers, performers, participants, venues and caterers in Gravesend! Thanks everyone.

Early in September we were contacted by Luke of ArtHub the art studio group. They have been operating fairly priced artist studio spaces in Deptford and Woolwich for 25 years. The Creekside studio building they lease has recently been sold and is due for redevelopment as flats etc. ArtHub have got ahead of the game and negotiated a 5 year tenancy with Lewisham Council for 100 studios + at the Mornington Centre .

SPC have been reanimating the legacy ethernet infrastructure to redistribute broadband via the RJ45 wall ports and sprinkling of wireless access for all those due to take up space in the coming weeks and months. With well over 500 people on the waiting list and the old studios closing it won’t long before it’s a swinging and well loved community centre worthy of your attention.

Right now it’s getting a lick of paint and roof repairs to improve on the state of it in these pics but am kinda fond of it’s state of dilapidation. We already installed high speed switches, CCTV and await Hyperoptic GB broadband installation to complete the process. Once done there will be eighteen wireless access points and five CCTV cameras pulling on the broadband before the hoards arrive.