tag: Leicester

In September I had the pleasure of visiting the Retro Computer Museum in Leicester. It had been on my list of places to go for probably nearly a decade and I’m not sure why it took me so long to visit!

Its exhibits are spread over three main rooms. The main room as you enter houses a lot of playable retro consoles including various Commodore computers, all of the Nintendo and Sega consoles, and even Pong/Squash. I was also excited to see a Satellaview for the SNES. The addon, released in Japan in the 1990s basically let you download games and other content. Of course the one in the museum wasn’t working (it was Japanese only and its services discontinued in early 2000) but it was still exciting to see one IRL as I’d only ever heard about its existence from watching youtube documentaries.

windows.exe has stopped working is about that moment of uncertainty when software begins exhibiting signs of an impending malfunction. The software stutters, glitches, begins acting erratically, sometimes altogether freezing with no indication of when normality will return. When faced with this hopeless situation the illusion of flawless technology is shattered and we’re reminded that technology is imbued with the flaws and imperfections of its creators.

CREATe have put the video from the Copyright as Frame and Prison panel discussion online.

Using the works within the exhibition as a starting point, a panel featuring artists and copyright experts will discuss how emerging technologies are shaping creative processes, how (perceptions of) copyright enable and inhibit those technologically-enabled processes and the appropriateness of appropriation.