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Digital Planet: 28/06/2011

Factual: Science & Nature

28/06/2011

BBC World Service - Digital Planet, 28/06/2011

The artists whose fans pay for their tours before the venue has been booked

The world's most powerful computer, A Japanese machine called 'K'; The artists whose fans pay for their tours before the venue has been booked; What it will take for 3D TV to catch on in the home

A Japanese machine called 'K' has just been crowned with the honour of the world's most powerful computer in the latest edition of the Top500, a six monthly round up of the world’s fastest number crunchers.  'K's processing muscle is applied to running mathematical models in science and engineering research.  One of the team who compiles the Top500 list is Jack Dongarra, a professor of Computer Science at the University of Tennessee's Department of Electrical Engineering.


What do you do if you are a musician, you turn up to your own gig and only 18 people are there?  Do you give up or do you ask yourself how to go from wash out to sell out next time?  For New York musician and artist and Kim Boekbinder, the answer was the latter. Part of that answer was using social media.  It is true that just about every musician uses MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or a combination of them but Kim’s approach was pretty original.  She tells Click more about it.


If you are British, Kim's story might remind you of the band Marillion. In the 1980s, they had it all: the record contract with a big label, sell-out gigs in big venues and a series of top ten hits.  But roll on the 1990s and the success and the cash were in shorter supply.  The fan base was still there though, and despite the fact this was the early 1990s there was already a buoyant email and chat community devoted to the band.  In what was surely one of the earliest cases of "crowd-funding" in the history of rock music, word got round to the US fan base that the only way of getting the band over there was by means of an online whip-round.  Mark Kelly, keyboard player, takes up the story with Gareth Mitchell.


If an alien landed in the middle of a cinema these days, they would think that all earth people were Buddy Holly fans, given the growing popularity of 3D movies and the special glasses that go with them.  But what is the future of 3D in the home?  That is the question our sister programme, Click TV, is asking this week in a special programme from Los Angeles.  Presenter Spencer Kelly has been talking Gareth through the three dimensional dilemmas facing the big technology firms and studios over there.

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