Ancient art of invention: Quote: >You've just ordered a pint. You’re sitting gazing out at the concrete building opposite. The footie is on the television above the bar. A vending machinewinks beside the door to the toilets. You might think that the things around you are quintessentially modern. But you’d be wrong. All of the components in this picture (well, ok, apart from the telly) were invented by ancient peoples who lived more than 1,000 years ago. The makers of What The Ancients Did For Us, which starts on BBC2 this week, believe we have the peoples of Mesopotamia, Central America, China, India, Arabia, Greece and Rome to thank for many life-changing discoveries, from rubber bands to central heating. "We have a tendency to think of ancient peoples as being stupid because they didn’t have television or mobile phones," says series presenter Adam Hart-Davis. "But of course they were just as intelligent as we are, and they didn’t waste their time watching television or texting each other. So they used their intelligence and invented some wonderful things."< Link
monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993. [more]
