Written by Arran Rees and Tim Boon As the Congruence Engine project develops, travelling through its first major cycle of action research, we have been learning more about the challenges in connecting collections data from different institutions, about the affordances of the different computational tools available to us, and about the complex interplay between technology, data, and people in articulating and undertaking historical inquiries in support of the project’s aims. On 20th and 21st June, we held our first workshop […]
Tim runs the Museum’s Research and Public History department, which is dedicated to getting a lively research programme going to support our programmes, displays, collections and interests. Over the years he has worked on many exhibitions, including ‘Making the Modern World’ and ‘Oramics to Electronica’. His books include ‘Films of Fact’ (2008) and ‘Material Culture and Electronic Sound’ (edited with Frode Weium, 2013).
Already ‘Congruence Engine’ feels like it’s a real thing that might exist out there somewhere, a machine for auto-wrangling similarity. Perhaps, you might think, there’s one tucked away in the Science Museum store somewhere. But, of course, ‘Congruence Engine’ is a metaphor and, like many metaphors, there’s a lot of fun to be had working out what it might mean. But it is also crucial to state at the outset what it is not intended to connote. So let me […]