On a recent saturday afternoon, while a jazz combo jams at the Downbeat Café on Alvarado in Echo Park, hipsters at the Machine gallery opening next door sip Tecates and puzzle over the array of obsolete computing devices from the ’50s through the ’70s in Tom Jennings’ “Story Teller” installation. Pushing a button on a black box the size of a DSL modem feeds a reel of 1-inch-wide computer punch tape into a wooden box on a pedestal. This box reads the tape and sends a signal to a shoebox-size wooden container on the floor — a crude voice synthesizer that belches out barely decipherable syllables in a clipped monotone while a clacking, waist-high Teletype machine outputs text on sheets of 50-year-old, buff-colored paper. Modern computer chips that Jennings has installed in each device enable the machines to communicate.

“It’s basically a multimedia system,” he says brushing a hand over the voice synth’s surface. “A laptop beats the pants off of this kind of computer. But this is made of stuff you can touch.” An aging punk rocker, Jennings has a thin white goatee, ears stacked with silver hoops, and arms covered with tattoos that reveal his deep love of computing and its history. On his left forearm he has the International Telegraphic Alphabet; on his right is the FIELDATA precursor to the American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A renowned computer programmer, hacker, artist and queer activist, Jennings created the Homocore zine and, in 1984, FidoNet, the first public bulletin board and a forerunner of the modern Internet.

The octopus-like physical network in front of us tells an eight-hour story about Alan Turing, the legendary gay British code breaker and mathematician. Nearby, Jennings’ canine duo, Dart (a Mexican hairless) and Molly (a moon-eyed Peruvian hairless with a white Mohawk), play close to the front window. Dart nips Molly in the leg, and the pair take off running past a portrait of Turing, the only art on the gallery’s walls.

“Almost all spaces dealing with new technology look like the Mac store,” says Mark Allen, the artist who created Machine and designed the space with the architect Fritz Haeg. “I’m against the idea that you have to have money and corporate backing to do something with technology.” Jennings and his low-tech “Story Teller” installation perfectly embody this ethos. Allen’s choice of a daytime opening was intentional. “I figured if we had the opening during the day, more people might come to check out the art instead of just to drink the free beer.”

His strategy pays off. Art fans, friends, and people from the Downbeat and the 33 1/3 bookstore steadily stream in and out of the gallery all afternoon while Molly and Dart play tag between the crowds’ legs.

Allen is a founding member of the C-Level collective, a group of artists who have gained notoriety for their video game–based performance pieces that interrogate the relationship between humans and technology. The modular Machine space will showcase similar technology-related installations and sculptures, on an ongoing basis.

“The ‘Story Teller’ story is fine, but it unfolds very slowly,” Jennings shouts over the buzz of the crowd. “I have something that’s tangentially related, but it’s only 18 minutes and it’s much more chatty.” As he hand-winds punch tape, he admires his antique computers. “The Teletype machine cost the price of a small car in 1960, but they would run for 20 years. Now you spend two grand on a laptop, and it’s gone in 18 months.” But as Jennings knows, old school isn’t always more reliable. A Western Union telegraph printer and a graph plotter Jennings has modified to output handwriting are connected to the network but aren’t functioning. “The fan belt isn’t working,” Jennings says as he tinkers with the plotter. “You just get done in by the dumbest stuff.”

—Andrew Vontz

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previous columns:
12/05/03 Here Comes . . .Who Are You Again?
11/28/03 Crashing Comdex
11/21/03 The Ice Storm
11/14/03 Scaredy-Cats