New Tempo

Delve into theories behind technology and communication in three innovative episodes of the arts show.

Please note that one of the titles screening in this programme, Information Explosion, contains flashing images which might affect customers who are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy.

  • Producer

    Mike Hodges

  • ITV 1967. Total running time 100min

In 1967 Marshall McLuhan published The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, which explored how each new medium of technology and communication ‘massages’ human behaviour. In this arts series for ITV, Hodges attempted to capture McLuhan’s abstract ideas on film. Here, we screen Information Explosion; Noise (John Cage and Roland Kirk), Heroes (various) and Stimulants (RD Laing); films that caused quite a stir! Poet Adrian Mitchell wrote to Hodges exclaiming: ‘I don’t know how you survive without having your head chopped off!