Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 7.21.
flicker machine at the living city, ica, 1963. source: sadler 2005,
57, fig. 2.6.
1993, 165). “Pask agreed to join the Fun Palace team and organised the Fun
Palace Cybernetics Subcommittee, and along with Littlewood and Price, he
became the third major personality behind the Fun Palace” (Mathews 2007,
75).
57
What was the Fun Palace? Like Archigram's designs, but at a much more
practical level, the Fun Palace was intended as a reconfigurable adaptive space
that could support an enormous variety of activities that changed over time
(Landau 1968, 76):
The activities which the Fun Palace offered would be short-term and frequently
updated, and a sample suggested by Joan Littlewood included a fun arcade,
containing some of the mechanical tests and games which psychologists and
engineers usually play; a music area, with instruments on loan, recordings for
anyone, jam sessions, popular dancing (either formal or spontaneous); a sci-
ence playground, with lecture/demonstrations, teaching films, closed-circuit
T.V.; an acting area for drama therapy (burlesque the boss!); a plastic area for
modeling and making things (useful and useless). For those not wishing to
take part, there would be quiet zones and also screens showing films or closed-
circuit television of local and national happenings.
