life

When/where did you first see Bladerunner?

I first saw Bladerunner in 1984, at the Albacon science fiction convention at the Central Hotel in Glasgow.

I was 13, on my first solo trip away from home (Whiting Bay, Arran, pop.700) to the “big city” (Glasgow, pop.700,000).

I was already terrified of being in a city. Sitting in a dark room with a bunch of strange (in many ways) adults in a strange (in many ways) place — a makeshift cinema in a fairly shabby conference room in the hotel — watching these incredible scenes unfold on screen …

I left thinking that cities around the world were simply *already like this* (and given the difference between Arran and Glasgow, they might as well have been). And the music, which had a deep impact in shaping the music I’d go on to write in my late teens. Research, work, and, well so many things.

Like visiting Shanghai 15 years later [March 1999], to the photo above …

[which itself was taken on a very early digital camera, photoshopped & processed on a tiny laptop into a 360 spherical image, then uploaded via a GSM phone… to the web — via London — along with some binaural sound recordings, as a kind of “blog“]

and then, onto some pretty interesting projects / work-in-progress…