UPFRONT
CONTENTS PICKS FEATURE
SIZE MATTERS
FEATURE CULTURE
Y : NE DAIL HO IP KE 1 TA I’d generally assumed that the future would contain cars that were smaller, safer and lighter, but then I remind myself that I don’t live in Tokyo but here, where we are steadily working towards total gridlock in the mornings so that stressed executives and their trophy wives can spend quality time with the kids amidst the roiling fug of carbon monoxide belched out by their inappropriate offroad vehicles.
SIZE MATTERS: NEWER IS SMALLER
[EXCEPT WHEN IT’S
BIGGER] words | Grant Runyon
CULTURE
“Electronic technology is like a supermodel - it has to become lighter and thinner just to prove itself, whereas vehicles are more like Jordan - the more cartoonishly pumped-up, stupid and poisonous they become the more profitable they are.”
If only the same principles behind mobile phone design could be applied to cars. They’d be about as wide as a supermarket trolley and constructed entirely from carbon fibre, although it’s also true that they’d probably stop working as soon as you drive through a valley, and you’d need to turn your diesel roaming off every time you went to the UK unless you wanted to arrive home to a bill the size of the UK’s budget deficit.
Illustration | Chelsea White
I
f you ever want to feel like you’re living in the future, root around in your cupboards for an hour and see what it’s like to spend 24 hours relying on technology you thought was impossibly cutting-edge when you were about ten. I did, so I’m composing this on a steam-powered typewriter, and will transmit the finished product to Gallery Towers by means of semaphore and carrier pigeon. I hope to see it published on Ceefax as soon as possible.
A PHONE SO SMALL IT COULD BE EATEN BY A GECKO. I held off from buying a smartphone for so long that I’ve turned into one of those idiots who coos over my iPhone like it’s an especially clever baby, but I expect the next model will leave my current phone looking so fat, inadequate and outdated that I will be crippled with shame until I sell one of my kidneys and trade it in for another dose of Apple’s shiny crack. Electronic technology is like a supermodel - it has to become lighter and thinner just to prove itself, whereas vehicles are more like Jordan - the more cartoonishly pumped-up, stupid and poisonous they become the more profitable they are.
Just one day spent using an early mobile phone, analogue camera or ‘vintage’ CRT television will produce both massive irritation and an eerie sense of everything being slightly out of scale. Phones, cameras and computers have become miniscule, lightweight things that are faster and quieter than ever before - whereas cars, televisions and Super Soaker water pistols have swollen to a scale better suited to Andre the Giant. A SMALL CAR THE SIZE OF A BABY BUS. Have you seen a Mini recently? It’s more or less the same shape, and seats the same number of people, but the designers have seen fit to inflate it til it has assumed the proportions of a steel midget on anabolic steroids. There’s a lot of them in town, and every time I see one I expect circus music to start playing and a parade of chromed clowns to start pouring out the side door.
For my money, the new average size of televisions and computers is the real proof that I live in Tomorrow’s World. More sensible
futurists might put forward ‘vastly increased life expectancy’ and ‘human understanding of quantum physics’, but I doubt those people grew up fantasising about a Nintendo that could do more than 64 colours or owning their own Laserdisc machine. My current television is so large that I can see right up Jeremy Kyle’s nose and into his tiny, hate-filled brain, and comes with the ability to stream at least a million channels across the internet in a resolution that makes my eyes throw up. It’s lucky that most of them are religious channels from Mozambique or repeats of Babestation, as the TV uses enough power over the weekend to light up an African hospital for a month. My computer, on the other hand, is like a sleek silver robot that has sex with my brain, guiding me across the internet in my ceaseless search for news, music and videos of The Crystal Maze. It is quiet, slim and beautiful, awash with vivid colours and so precisely engineered that it feels like it was dug up by explorers on the planet Mars. My first computer looked like it was constructed from ugly Soviet Lego and smelled of burning wires, whereas this manages to be larger and more powerful whilst feeling unobtrusive, calming and even kind. Reading that last sentence back, and can see clearly that this machine is so enhanced that it’s stealthily reprogramming my suggestible mind, but I don’t care, because it’s so efficient I can author six spreadsheets just by stroking a bit of metal and winking suggestively at the webcam.
The Island, as seen through Killip’s camera lens, makes a lasting impression. What he saw and what he chose to photograph has the ongoing power to startle and unsettle as well as to mesmerise and delight.
to pretend they live two decades in the past, I don’t expect there’s much market for tiny televisions or chunky mobiles that make the hairs on your testes fall off. Instead, I expect to be the proud owner of a television so stupidly gigantic that it wraps round most of my living room and into the toilet, pumping enough BBC iPlayer into my tired brain that solid lumps of coagulated panel show start dripping from my nose whilst I’m asleep at my desk.
Cornelly and Greeba
MANX NATIONAL HERITAGE ARCHIVIST WENDY THIRKETTLE INTRODUCES A NEW EXHIBITION AT THE MANX MUSEUM
I expect an iPhone so tiny that I have to swallow it each day like a birth control pill, or jam it into my eyeball like a disposable contact lens so it can beam Twitter straight onto my brain and block out sensory input from all non-Apple brands and any humans whose DNA is copyrighted by Microsoft. That will probably mean I can’t even see the massive TV any more, causing Sony to dispatch PS5 robot death squads to Applestan, whilst the Googleplex simultaneously becomes selfaware and decides that Youtube comments are conclusive proof that humanity must be cleansed with thermonuclear fire.
W
indswept landscapes, the eyes of people staring assuredly into a camera, glimpses of the fabric of hearth and home. These and much more besides may be observed in the Isle of Man photography of Chris Killip. In 1970 this Manxman set out to photograph the Island. Travelling to many varied places over the course of three years he captured buildings, interiors, natural features and people of all ages at work and rest.
Our tombstone will be a line of cars from Athol St to the bottom of Victoria St, each one the size of a monster truck and containing a family of atrophied pod-people who’ve been queuing since the great ice age of 2112. Future civilisations of mutant seagulls will dig them up and wonder, although the subtle mysteries of human art, love and the location of all the secret eggs in Angry Birds will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Selected images from the resulting work were published in 1980 in Isle of Man. A book about the Manx. Now, visitors to the Manx Museum, Douglas have the rare opportunity to view large prints provided by Chris Killip himself. Manx National Heritage is proud to host Chris Killip’s Isle of Man Revisited in the temporary gallery between 7 May and 30 July 2016. Fifty stunning Killip images have been chosen for display out of a total of 252 large prints held by the MNH Library and Archives. Some have never been seen in public before while others appear in the 2015 book Isle of Man Revisited. They all benefit from viewing in a gallery space where they are left to speak for themselves or through the reflections of the photographer himself.
RISE OF THE MACHINES. So what’s next for technology? How can things possibly get any larger or indeed smaller unless they start moving backwards? Despite the best efforts of ridiculous hipsters
The exhibition will trace the early years and influences of this remarkable photographer who was born in the Highlander Inn, Marown in 1946. His Manx work came after gaining over five years’ experience working among professional photographers in 1960s London. Many of the images are set on farms. Killip had no specific plan but in his own words followed one thing after another. He used family connections, contacts with people he knew from childhood and initiative. Often I would see someone somewhere, maybe at a farm sale or at the mart and I would be looking at a face and say who is that over there, where do they farm and I would just turn up. Knocking on the door of a stranger somewhere in the countryside he would be quizzed on his family connections before usually being given permission to photograph. Killip’s images have a certain style and character so it is interesting to learn that it was the practicalities of using a plate camera on a slow shutter speed that led to use of particular locations. Chris needed to take people somewhere quiet where they could prop themselves up to hold still for the time needed. “A doorway is good because often they were whitewashed and the light would reflect back”. He continues,
“When you are using a plate camera it is a very formal process. Although people are resting, for me the process is formal, so people had a chance to address the camera. They would prepare themselves without me saying anything.” Whilst not directing proceedings he did use the occasional trick such as putting his hands in his pockets, an action copied by the men. The Island, as seen through Killip’s camera lens, makes a lasting impression. What he saw and what he chose to photograph has the ongoing power to startle and unsettle as well as to mesmerise and delight. Killip himself recognises the different relationships people can have to his work. It makes him “very happy that the work is in the Isle of Man because that is where it well and truly belongs. It is more open to all sorts of other meanings which it couldn’t have in other places because it doesn’t belong.” Exhibition dates: 7 May – 30 July 2016, Manx Museum, Kingswood Grove, Douglas AN AFTERNOON WITH CHRIS KILLIP - MANX MUSEUM, SATURDAY 7 MAY @ 2PM Chris Killip will provide insights into his career and will sign purchased copies of his book Isle of Man Revisited from 3pm.Tickets: £10 Adult, £5 Student available from the Manx Museum Gallery Shop & www.manxnationalheritage.im 10% discount to Members. Mrs Hyslop, Ballachrink, the Braaid
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FEATURE: Size Matters
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CULTURE: Chris Killip Isle of Man Revisited
THE REST UPFRONT
AGENDA
Edito...........................................................................................................................5
In The News........................................................................................................44
Size Matters..........................................................................................................10
Movers & Shakers..............................................................................................48
What’s On..................................................................................................12
Business Events.................................................................................................54
15 Things you know when you have micro people....................13
Uk Billionaires fewer and poorer................................................................52
Bigger isn’t better...................................................................................14
How to invest in Whisky................................................................................54
Me & My Pet.........................................................................................................16
New CEO at Manx Wildlife Trust.....................................................58
News in Numbers....................................................................................19
Mind The Micromanagement............................................................60
Give........................................................................................................................20
On the Right Track................................................................................62
Laura Adams & Rob Booth’s Wedding Day................................22
Manx Startisan....................................................................................................66 Microbrewery.......................................................................................................70
CULTURE
Brave New Era in Technology......................................................................72
Chris Killip Revisited............................................................................26
Virtual Reality enters the real world........................................................74
Culture Vulture.................................................................................................28
Fear of BOTS......................................................................................................76
Culture News..........................................................................................29 Landmark Birthday of Michael Sandle RA..................................30
PLACES
Essentia..................................................................................................................34
Feature properties........................................................................77-106
UPLOAD....................................................................................................36
TRAVEL
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FASHION & BEAUTY Get the look...........................................................................................108
Micro Missions....................................................................................................40
Andreas Fashion Show................................................................................109
Travel Gadgets...................................................................................................42
Beauty Products..............................................................................................112
ISLE OF MAN PREMIER MAGAZINE