How Buildings Learn

Stewart Brand (now president of the Long Now Foundation) uploaded all six parts of his 1997 documentary How Buildings Learn to Google Video last year. Here’s what he said about it

This six-part, three-hour, BBC TV series aired in 1997. I [Stewart Brand] presented and co-wrote the series; it was directed by James Muncie, with music by Brian Eno. The series was based on my 1994 book, How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built. The book is still selling well and is used as a text in some college courses. Most of the 27 reviews on Amazon treat it as a book about system and software design, which tells me that architects are not as alert as computer people. But I knew that; that’s part of why I wrote the book.

Anybody is welcome to use anything from this series in any way they like. Please don’t bug me with requests for permission. Hack away. Do credit the BBC, who put considerable time and talent into the project.

Historic note: this was one of the first television productions made entirely in digital— shot digital, edited digital. The project wound up with not enough money, so digital was the workaround. The camera was so small that we seldom had to ask permission to shoot; everybody thought we were tourists. No film or sound crew. Everything technical on site was done by editors, writers, directors. That’s why the sound is a little sketchy, but there’s also some direct perception in the filming that is unusual.

I’ve embedded part one here but here are links to all six episodes: part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six.

I’d love to link to its permanent page on bbc.co.uk/programmes or bbc.co.uk/archive but it doesn’t yet seem to have one at either.

All New Shooting Stars

The once yawning gap between the peerless silliness of Reeves and Mortimer and their obvious antecedents Morecambe and Wise is closing fast: the first episode of Shooting Stars went out fifteen years ago, which is nearly half as long ago as the 28-million viewer everest of the 1977 Christmas Show (if you get a move on you might still catch Paul Merton’s excellent tribute to M&W here). And in those fifteen years they’ve got closer in other ways too.

Even this brand new show—which preserves the format of the original unchanged—now seems as innocent as an Ernie Wise play—in comparison, I suppose, to the rest of contemporary TV comedy—which needs to be ‘edgier’. In this rather melancholy documentary about Shooting Stars it’s clear that the BBC executives who commissioned the show back then really did hope they were investing in the new Eric and Ernie. It didn’t really work out – they’re still a minority taste (and half the population will never sit down to watch the same show ever again). I wonder if it still could.

Crooked House

This is only available for a couple more days but it’s worth it. BBC4 gives us a reminder that you don’t need a big budget to frighten your audience, however jaded by CGI they may be. In this spooky drama by Mark Gatiss there are hardly any special effects, just a clever script and your imagination.

At first this seems just an entertaining throwback to those portmanteau films that stuck a few ghost tales together, added some kind of sinister, squinting narrator and hoped for the best – but the modern story that links everything together here turns out to be properly terrifying.

Can’t say much more without spoiling it – just watch it quick, and don’t answer that knock at the door…

Sighthill Stories

I posted a message on Twitter the other day (feel free to follow me, I’m @clara_mac) saying that anyone who worked in education not moved by this film should leave the profession, now. I stand by that, but Sighthill Stories is more than a film about a school. It’s about communities and change – but it’s never po-faced or worthy. That’s because the kids tell the stories. And these kids have stories to tell.

I must have watched this programme about four times now, partly because it’s brilliant and partly because it expires on Wednesday (grrr…). I know it’s short notice, but do yourselves a favour and download it, especially those readers not in Scotland, who will probably never have the chance to see it.  I really hope that it does get shown again on network telly for everyone to enjoy, because every town will have stories like this – I’m just glad that Glasgow had the chance to tell theirs in such a wonderful way.

Between the Lines – Railways in Fiction and Film

Only two days left. Watch it. Quick! (Thanks Matt)