Work 217, Analogue Relic

Analogue Relic
( Discarded TV aerial, Alexander Palace )
c. 2005 Michael St.Mark
.

North London’s “Ally Pally” was the place of the world’s first then high definition television transmission in 1936. Nowadays, although television is still transmitted from here, half the building is derelict, the “found” discarded old aerial on a high window ledge, intriguing, esp. with the imminent introduction of digital & HD TV.

The pole languishing amid such desolation induces an atmosphere of hundreds of thousands of hours receiving soaps, sport and news. All those dramas and tragedies viewed in the 60s, 70s 80s & 90s. Now as nothing but the dead past; the aerial battered, as if exhausted from the ordeal of decades of exposure to crudity of human noise and vision.

The “First Broadcast” plaque and the TV transmission tower / mast at Alexander Palace.