{"id":301,"date":"2010-11-05T17:31:18","date_gmt":"2010-11-05T17:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/2010\/11\/05\/power_and_authority\/"},"modified":"2011-03-01T20:43:09","modified_gmt":"2011-03-01T20:43:09","slug":"power_and_authority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/2010\/11\/05\/power_and_authority\/","title":{"rendered":"Power and authority"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the beginning of this week we had the cameras in.  Plus a bit of razor wire, some iron bars, fake police cars and a few actors. No doubt there were gaffers and all those other strangely-titled people that you see on film credits. Yes, our august Institute was being used as a location for a TV drama.  I don&#8217;t know the title or channel but the drama is set in a young offenders&#8217; institution, hence the trappings of law, order and incarceration.<br \/>\nIt is surprising, to an outsider, how easily a few carpenters and painters can convert a setting into something completely different. I won&#8217;t say we all started behaving like young offenders, but it was quite a persuasive visual transformation.<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s not the first time we have been used thus.  A year or so ago the Institute was turned into an army barracks for the weekend for another TV drama. Five years ago we had a more thrilling role as the Arkham Asylum in the film Batman Begins.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.times-series.co.uk\/resources\/images\/234513\/?\" alt=\"\" width=\"152\" height=\"227\" \/><br \/>\nI&#8217;m starting to see a pattern here.  The design of the building that houses the Institute, dating back to the mid-1930s, gives it the look of a classic institution.  It exudes those institutional qualities of reliability, power and authority. And perhaps just a bit of incarceration too.<br \/>\nIt is interesting to note that in real life the building did once serve as a kind of barracks.  The building was finished just as the second world war broke out and it was requisitioned as a home for the Women&#8217;s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) during the war, under the name <em>HMS Elizabeth<\/em>. My aunt was stationed here at that time and told me she remembers having to scrub the cork floors.  The building was not commissioned for scientific use until 1950.<br \/>\nMaybe this gives some clues to potential uses for the building in five years time, when we are all decanted to the new UKCMRI, down by St Pancras?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the beginning of this week we had the cameras in. Plus a bit of razor wire, some iron bars, fake police cars and a few actors. No doubt there were gaffers and all those other strangely-titled people that you &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/2010\/11\/05\/power_and_authority\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}