The Interesting Machine

Last Saturday a lot of interesting people descended on Conway Hall for the day of joy that was Interesting 2008.

We were invited by Interesting organiser Russell Davies to do something interesting in the lobby. So, using materials close to hand (such as lab coats and ancient modems) we made an Interesting Machine.

We made some antique-looking punchcard type things:

And a very high-tech box with a slot that you could feed them into:

Then we put on our Lab Coats Of Everything, and invited people to write things they were interested in onto punchcards:

Then we ran the Interesting Machine.

By the end of the day we'd done several batch processes, and matched people up into groups according to what they were interested in.

Elsewhere during the day, Andy and Russ joined lots of other people in a nursery rhyme variation in the minimal style, scored for very amateur recorder orchestra (video here, at your own risk).

We had lots of fun. So many thanks to Russell for inviting us, and to all the people who shared what they were interested in with the Machine!