XMTR Radio Hour #41 Sounding Colossus

This XMTR Radio Hour is a little different. Lucia speaks to Garry Hunter  the director of arts and heritage organisation Fitzrovia Noir - and composer/violinist Jack Campbell about a new commission from the educational foundation that has grown out of the Tommy Flowers community pub in Poplar, East London. The pub’s namesake Tommy Flowers designed and built Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer, to help decipher the encrypted messages sent by the German High Command during WW2. 23-year-old composer and musician Jack M.Campbell has recently written and extensively performed a piece inspired by Alan Turing’s Bombe. With a bursary from TFF, he has now composed a score responding to Colossus, the computer built by Tommy Flowers to greatly expedite the reading of Lorenz traffic. The code was cracked by mathematician Bill Tutte, who, after the war, went on to teach at two universities in Canada, Jack’s home country. Following the conversation about outsiders, music, algorithms and maths, is an exclusive rendition of this composition: ‘Colossus’ by Jack Campbell. 

What is XMTR Radio Hour?

Do you find yourself stuck in the same channels? Unable to break out of the echo-chamber of your media consumption and worldview. Transmitter is here to cut through the noise. Lucia Scazzocchio from 'Social Broadcasts' scans the digital soundscape every other month to bring you original sounds, new voices and archive treasures from podcasts, radio, sound installations and anything that catches her ears.