Back in the mid-80s my first foray into interactive multimedia was as assistant to a charismatic maverick called Patrick D. Martin, who’d bought a group of multi-skilled people together as QNet to develop new systems to realise the Roboshow. I’d mentioned this involvement in the early days of interactive and video art to Mike Stubbs, the director of Liverpool-based cinema and art gallery FACT (Film, Art and Creative Television), and he’d suggested I put a paper together for the forth coming Rewire Conference they are hosting there in September.
After managing to track down the leading protagonists, I found a substantial archive of material that charted the evolution of the Roboshow: starting with the early ‘Vidzine’ music video/video art magazine produced by Patrick D. Martin and Doobie Eylath in 1982; culminating in ‘TV Fetish’, shown on BBC2 and later toured as a multi-screen show.
I’d originally joined this innovative group of techno-determinists when they were building the mobile Techno-cab prototype and “Q” the interactive robot to raise funds and test an immersive visual music experience. £750,000 was subsequently raised in 1986 mostly from fashion impresario Peter Bertlesen, and so I then joined Robodevco Ltd which was formed to develop the Roboshow, a system using spacial sound and multi-screen vision to fully immerse the audience.
Sadly, only a test pilot was ever produced despite the rave reviews from the press that I’d had a helping hand in getting. Spin-offs did emerge, however, as technologies and ideas developed and were used in the arts, music and commercial arenas followed, including: collaborations with the likes of Nam June Paik, Jim Whiting, Paul McCartney, The Cure; and installations at the Atlanta Olympics, London Planetarium, Millennium Dome, Seville Expo, V&A and nightclubs/cinemas around the world.
Given my interest and research into Collaborative Innovation it seemed fitting that the submission to the Rewire Conference should be a collective effort by a group of the original Roboshow participants. Our submission has now been accepted and we hope to encompass ideas of robotics, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, mind, technology; and the relationships of multimedia art to industry, technology and investment both then and now. We’re also looking forward to exploring the most relevant themes with the conference organisers as well as the most compelling presentation format/s.
