[old computer intro sounds]
Welcome to Norwich. Now, as well as being the City, I live
It's a City both steeped in mystery and history
and here, on the corner of the St. Peter Hungate Church, where Elm Hill meets Princes Street
We have quite a strange mystery of
a keyboard, fossilised in the pavement, which
has been here for quite a few years, but no one is really sure why
and that's what we're going to explore, in this video
[twangy folk music twangs]
Yes, I know computers are starting to get old, but a fossilised keyboard is surely a
stretch too far. This is how it looks today, rather battered, cracked and looking the worse
for wear. But if you take a look on ye olde'internet, you'll find photos of this going back numerous
years, showing it in various states of life.
This is one of the earliest ones, and as you can see, it's quite fresh and minty. 2009,
it still looked fairly nice, but by 2012, cracks were starting to show, probably due
to the removal of a lamp-post situated adjacent to this ancient artifact.
Still compare it to a REAL fossil, and you can see why people are getting excited about
this! They're practically 'identicial'.
Now, I'm sure regular viewers of this channel will spare no time in identifying this as
a Amstrad PC1512 keyboard, or a very close variant. But what the hell is it doing in
the pavement.
Being a Norwich resident, it's something I've seen pop-up in public forums and Facebook
groups almost on a yearly basis.
there's even an array of blog pages and news articles dedicated to it.
"Can anyone shed any light into the 'Norwich Keyboard' at the top of elm hill?
"Looks like a concrete keyboard... is it???"
"Evidence of an advanced civilisation on the corner of Elm Hill and the Monastery. Does
anyone know the origins?"
"Been there 20 years or more"
In fact MANY people seem to remember it being there since the 80s, as some sort of art installation.
Speculation kept on coming, along with a lot of interest the real story behind it's creation.
And it's certainly not without its conspiracy theories. A popular one is that it fell off
the back of a lorry in the 1960s, when the cement was wet and got stuck in situ, for
years to come.
Of course, this type of keyboard wasn't about in the 60s, and rather than a feasible explanation,
this is now almost a piece of Norwich folklore. You can imagine it being passed down for years
to come. "The keyboard that fell in the pavement cement, back in 1969".
Other people jested (or were actually being serious, I can't really tell) that it was
simply a telephone inspection plate, with non-slip surface.
Some people believed it had been carved not (Surely on a real one encased?).
even that it was an actual FOSSILUSED typewriter.... Looks like a Remington.
One comment links it to the nearby Norwich University of Arts... "This is an imprint
of a 18th Century printing template. Accidentally discarded from nearby college when it had
a printing dept in the 1960s"... which is getting a little closer.
Of course, the truth is rather a different story and took a fair amount of digging. I
went to various places, including the Norwich University of Arts, from speculation that
it may have been created by a student at some point. But, it was a separate thread of investigation,
where I got in contact with someone who claimed to know someone who knew the original creator
of prehistoric keyboard, and so I got to work trying to contact her.
[Investigative music investigates your ears]
Several weeks passed, and I had heard nothing.
Until out of the blue, I got a reply, from someone named Molly Sole, and she, herself,
verified herself to be the original creator of this Norwich urban legend.
During her time at the Norwich University of Arts, or back then, as it was known, the
Norwich School of Art and Design
Obviously the next step was to setup a video call and have a chat to Molly;
-How are you?
Yeah good, good, pleased to get hold of you actually.
-Wow, I'm honoured. I am like, so honoured. Very flattered to have, anyone even notice
it! I like the fact that I knew it was there, and I've always thought to myself; I know
people have to look at that. It was my own little, like, OK... so I haven't become a
great artist, but I've got my one little bit *chuckles*
-I'd love to go back. I haven't been back for a long time.
So when did you go, was it... late nineties?
-Yeah, like 1999 to 2001.
In the Norwich groups. Facebook groups. Every year, someone posts about it, and then you
get a massive string of questions. There's loads of people who claim that their dad or
grandad, said it fell off a back of a truck, and then it was cemented into the floor. You
get all these wild theories.
-I sort of did it. It was very off the cuff. I was walking to college and somebody... I
walked that street every day [COCKEREL SHRIEKS], and somebody had just laid a beautiful piece of cement
on that corner, and it was an act of anarchy, I suppose, to want to vandalise it. I thought,
I've got this keyboard mould, and I was making lots of sculptures about how the internet
was changing things, and how email was altering the way that we work, and I was melting keyboards
in my studio, and I had this mould, and I thought, I'll just push it in the cement and
see if I can leave a mark, and it did, just sort of stayed there. But it wasn't as crisp
as I had hoped, so when I went back to see it, when it had dried, it was sort of... soft.
*laughs*
So you were making moulds in your studio?
-Yeah, so actually, my tutor Chris at the time really helped me with it, because it
was quite technical. So we found this really big old chunky keyboard, which looked quite
dated at the time, even then, and he helped me make the mould of it, and then I just had
it, in the studio. Because if you had the original keyboard and pushed that into the
cement, it would have left like...
A negative image.
-A negative, yeah. So I just happened to have it, and I just thought, oh, I'll see what
it does, and then it just stayed there. I think they'd even, I seem to remember they
had road block, the street signs blocking the streets so pedestrians couldn't stand
there, so it's perfect, so nobody wrecked it whilst it was drying.
Amazing.
-It was really fortunate.
What were the moulds for? Were they for a different project?
-I actually found one, because I thought you might want to see it.
Oh yes!
-This is the original, or one of the ones that came out of the mould, and it's made
of porcelain. So, the idea was, it was melted; or not melted, but they go in a washing machine
basically, they ended up on washing line. So there was a whole load of these, wet, supposedly
wet keyboards drying on a washing line, in my final degree show, and I was making lots
of subversive pieces about how technology, was kind of maybe threatening domestic traditions,
and stuff. It was all a bit random.
Ok.
-But I just liked the idea of it, because the keyboard is so. Everyone just respects
it and reveres it so much, and you don't spill any water on the keyboard, and I thought it
might be kind of fun to, just trash it, and it was just one of those times, when you're
trying to put your work out there, so that you've got an audience of some sort, and I
thought that morning, hey, this is an easy way to get an audience. I'll just stick my
work in the pavement!
-It was probably the most throw-away thing I did in the three years, I was there really,
and there it is, so.
That's often the case isn't it? (-chuffed!) The thing you, don't think about, stands out.
-I'm sad to sort of, to wreck the conspiracy theories for people, but I'm definitely a
little bit sceptical about technology and I definitely think it's a bit spooky that,
that was how you managed to track me down, and the fact that I, evaded you because of
that! I was like, oh no, this is a bit dodge.
-Ironically I ended up becoming a digital artist.
So have you worked on like, various films?
-I have, yeah.
I've got your IMDB page, and you've worked on things like Star Wars, Fantastic Beasts.
Is this you?
-Yeah, that's me.
Wow.
So, you've gone on to do some amazing things off the back of it.
-Yeah, really lucky, and randomly, ironically, one of the guys I worked for, called Stuart
Craig, on Harry Potter, also was at the Norwich Arts School, and I think he's like, a Patron
or something now, he's really important, and goes and lectures there, or used to. And one
of my actual, colleagues at work, I also studied with at Norwich, and we both work in the film
arts department, so that's really nice.
Thanks for your time, it's appreciated!
-Alright, you're really welcome! Take care!
OK.
-Thanks Peter
Thanks very much!
-Bye!
Bye!
So, it was incredibly interesting speaking to Molly, and I'll be putting the whole interview
up on my Extra channel if you want to see it. I had a chat with her afterwards about
how it's pretty strange how, some twenty years later, the only way this interview was possible,
was through the world of online technology that was really in its infancy back then.
Her work about technology and work creeping into the domestic setting has really come
to fruition, especially now. Can you imagine how things would have been had we had the
same global situation back in 2000. Pretty strange, and it feels like a circular closing
of her original work.
And that solves a mystery which you may, or may not have ever wanted to know about.
Thanks for watching, have a great evening.
[Mysterious Norwich(ish) music sounds us out]