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Antiquraian Artworks
I'm intrigued by the aesthetic possibilites making art using the technology of the "heroic age of electronics". I use the term heroic in a tounge-in-cheek sort of way, but it captures a forgotten truth. Prior to the popularization of the light-weight and cool-running transistor, all electronics was heavy, hot, and dangerous. (Dangerous, because the vacuum tubes [valves, Brit.] used to implement circuits
ran on high voltages which tend to bite you if your attention wandered while you were working on a circuit.) Parts were fantastically expensive by today's standards, and much of the construction time of a project was spent just getting the parts bolted down so you could work on them. The level of technical abstraction in these kinds of circuits was very low so a much more basic understanding of the science was necessary to do a design. In short it's a wonder they ever made anything work at all.
My interest in obsolete technology differs in kind from what most people would call "retro". To me, retro means the recontexturalization of outdated technology or design into a contemporary setting, usually in an established niche in the consumer marketplace. The nixie clock phenomenon is a good example of this. The design setting is contemporary because we still all need clocks. But we all don't need
butter churns, so no matter how cool it was, I don't think it would be possible to build something one would call a "retro butter churn".
So since my technical and design interests arent really retro, and aren't archeological, or anything else associated with a productive discipline, I've chosen to call my interest and designs "antiquarian". I know the word already has a couple of established meanings, but it sounds nice, and expresses in some way the idea of valuing esoteric things from the past.
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