DCRC - Digital Cultures Research Centre

The week ending the 25th of May is also the 142nd week of the operation of the DCRC and featured a feast of fusion, sandbox and tricksters in the glorious sunshine. 142 years ago, in 1870, the General Post Office took over the functions of telegraphy that had until that time rested in private hands. 1870 also marked the death of the author Charles Dickens, on the 9th of June, whose complete works rank 4th in the best-selling anthologies on the Kindle store.

The week ending the 18th of May saw researchers conducting interesting conversations both near and afar, some reflection and also looking forward, the week was also the 141st week of the operation of the DCRC. 141 years ago, in 1871, Henry Stanley tracked down David Livingstone on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, five bank holidays were introduced by law for the first time, the Rugby Football Union was founded and and trade unions were legalised.

It has never been more important to study the media. As Lord Leveson lifts the Fleet Street flagstones to glimpse the tangle of power, influence, secrecy, disdain and corruption writhing beneath them, as social media are accused of rewiring children’s brains, of destroying the very sociality they proclaim but also celebrated for toppling autocratic regimes, as popular magazines proliferate new forms of disgust for their readers’ bodies, and as photography, video, animation and the written word fuse, split and evolve in the new primal soup of the Web, the work on display in this exhibition offers a magnifying glass for the study of this rapidly mutating media ecosystem.