City Outlook

A school holiday visit to the National Media Museum provides a great opportunity to look out over the city.

This was 4yo's first visit, so we mostly just wandered around the bits where you could press buttons and make cool stuff happen, the Magic Factory being a favourite part. Just to show how fast moving the world of popular culture is, the only characters she recognised were Wallace and Gromit and a few pictures in the animation gallery. I tried to persuade her of the merits of the Wombles, but she wasn't having it. 7yo meanwhile has recently been engrossed in a 1967 Captain Scarlet annual, so was moderately impressed by the orginal Gerry Anderson marionettes, including the Man in Red himself. Neither have started watching Doctor Who yet, but obediently posed in front of the Dalek.

Since my last visit, for a Christmas/New Year blip meet, the new Life Online Gallery has opened. This tells the story of the Internet, and is another indication of the widening brief of the museum that started life as the National Museum of Photography, Television and Film, but now embraces gaming and web culture. I'll go back again when I have a proper chance to study the exhibit, and to admire all the old personal computers that form part of the display. There were plenty of Apple devices in evidence, but I'm not sure they had the far more legendary Amstrad PCW that saw me through my research student years. One part of the exhibit is a wall full of Twitter avatars, so we had fun scouring that to find mine and there were lots of other familiar faces on there too.

watching the city
frame
by frame
museum of film
and photography