“Hail the machines, sweet old machines, blow off the dust, wipe off the rust. Christmas has come, joy is foretold, for those of us you never sold. Still we are here, still full of cheer, just plug us in, it will begin.” So starts the Christmas carol this quirky choir of vintage computer equipment would like to sing to you today courtesy of The Glasgow School of Art.
Alumnus James Houston, who graduated in 2008, created the project using a collection of vintage Mac computers, a Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum +1 and a SEGA Mega Drive. The lyrics to the song ‘Carol of the Bells’ were rewritten accordingly.
Houston got the idea when pondering new uses for past Christmas gifts, realizing that a few of them had the capability for speech synthesis.
“Bleep bloop beep bong, hear our sweet song, if none of our coding is wrong.”
