BEACON. Thomson & Craighead

THOMSON & CRAIGHEAD

BEACON

This page documents BEACON as a unique mechanical railway flap sign built by Solari of Udine in Italy. As with the projected version, the railway sign continuously displays archived and contemporary web searches (when possible) made around the world, presenting them back in series and at regular intervals as an endless concrete poetry. The BEACON archive comprises over one million searches made between 2009 and 2020 and forms a historic snapshot of human activity during a decade of unprecedented technological change..

BEACON first began broadcasting online at midnight on January 1st 2005 and can still be seen today at http://www.automatedbeacon.net if you use a web browser that will allow Adobe Flash to play. It was first instigated to act as a silent witness: a feedback loop providing a global snapshot of ourselves to ourselves in real-time. It now stands as a monumental documentary snapshot of human activity during a decade of unprecedented technological change.

The development of the railway sign was funded by The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) & British Film Institute (BFI Southbank)/Arts Council of England (NW)