What if computation wasn't about speed, automation and scale but building slower, tender and more personal systems? Radical Computing is my love letter to the personal computer and all those who tinker, weave, extend, stretch, hack, subvert and make with the materiality of code.
My relationship with the computer has always been personal. My family fled from the Cambodian genocide in 1971, finding salvation in Australia in 1978. We didn't have much, even with both grandparents working two jobs each, seven days a week. Growing up in a multi-generational household, we naturally pooled the collective resources we did have.
An uncle gifted our family a decommissioned computer from his workplace. To get online, we collected free trial internet hours on CD-ROMs and the only software we had was cracked. This gift led to the Buntine Computer Collection — featured in this exhibition — and my career as a designer and creative technologist.
From the raw energy of the Demoscene, Australia's early rave and hacker underground, to global creative coding and open-source software movements, Radical Computing celebrates those who have shaped, challenged and reimagined our world via code as a medium.
For me, the computer is an inherently radical object. The people, communities and computers in this exhibition push the boundaries of what computation can be.
—Mel Huang Buntine, exhibition curator and co-founder of the Buntine Computer Collection