LondonMet lecturer onto a good 'Thing'
11th May 2009
Giles Askham, Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Computing, recently presented his new work 'The Thing' at the Takeaway Festival of DIY media at the Science Museum in London.
Giles's project is inspired by the work of Léon Theremin, a Russian inventor born in 1896. Léon is famous for his invention of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments. He was also involved with Soviet espionage creating state of the art technology which enabled the KGB to spy on the U.S., British and French embassies in Moscow. He also invented The Thing, also known as The Great Seal bug, one of the first covert listening devices (or’bugs’) to use passive electromagnetic induction to transmit an audio signal.
Replica of Leon Theremin's 'The Thing'In 1945, this device was embedded in a carved wooden plaque of the Great Seal of the United States and presented by Soviet school children to U.S. Ambassador Averell Harriman, as a ’gesture of friendship’. The bugged carving hung on the ambassador’s Moscow residential office, recording all his conversations until it was exposed in 1952.
Giles Askham's project, also called 'The Thing', makes connections between different aspects of Thermin's work in espionage and electronic musical instruments. He has replicated the carved Great Seal and connected it to an oyster card reader. When the individual touches in with their Oyster card the Great Seal’s eagle will sing unique tunes generated by individual Londoner’s recent Oyster travel histories.
The Oyster Card-activated musical installation, while playfully highlighting the history of RFID technology as a cold war tool for surveillance, also asks users to ponder issues of individual privacy and the gathering and storing of personal information by government agencies.