Media Release | NCM announces Radical Computing: A love letter to the personal computer

The National Communication Museum (NCM) has announced it’s next feature exhibition, Radical Computing, opening on 19 September 2026.

Guest curated by designer and technologist Mel Huang, Radical Computing explores the story of computing – from large, expensive machines used by only a few experts, to personal computers we brought into our homes and lives and made our own.

"Radical Computing is my love letter to the personal computer and all those who tinker, mould, extend, stretch, hack, subvert and make with the materiality of code," Huang said. "I’ve always seen the personal computer as a radical object – the notion that you could own your own computer was a radical idea."

"Radical Computing is my love letter to the personal computer and all those who tinker, mould, extend, stretch, hack, subvert and make with the materiality of code" — Mel Huang

Also featured in the exhibition is a rare piece of computing history: a Connection Machine CM-2, recently donated to NCM's collection by Karl Von Moller, alongside a companion CM-5, and restored by NCM's collections and NCM Studio teams.

Built in the 1980s by Thinking Machines Corporation, the CM was the first commercial supercomputer with a massively parallel architecture, and its design, led by industrial designer Tamiko Thiel, is as celebrated as its engineering: a matt black "cube-of-cubes," its translucent doors revealing thousands of status lights blinking as its 65,536 processors computed. Thiel has been assisting NCM with the restoration directly, with further guidance from the team at Germany's ZKM Center for Art and Media, who currently have a CM-2 of their own on display.

"Until NCM contacted me, I had never even known that there were Connection Machines in Australia! I am so excited that [they] will be uncovering and telling the story of computing in Australia for the first time," Thiel said. "And I am so touched that the Connection Machines were considered valuable enough to preserve for almost 30 years after they had likely stopped working — an unheard of time span for what many installations considered a worthless pile of scrap!"

“Until NCM contacted me, I had never even known that there were Connection Machines in Australia!” — Tamiko Thiel

"The acquisition of the CM-2 and CM-5 is a landmark moment for NCM's collection,” says NCM’s Co-CEO and Artistic Director, Dr Emily Siddons. “These computers reflect a foundational moment that will allow NCM to build our computing collection and reflect the seismic shift that AI has created for generations to come.”

"The acquisition of the CM-2 and CM-5 is a landmark moment for NCM's collection.” — Dr Emily Siddons, Co-CEO and Artistic Director, NCM

A love letter to the personal computer

Radical Computing is deeply personal for Huang. Her family fled the Cambodian genocide and settled in Melbourne, where a hand-me-down computer from her uncle became her creative outlet and her connection to the outside world.

That connection has grown into serious collecting. With her partner Andrew, Huang is the founder of the Buntine Computer Collection, which began in 2018 with an SC-3000H — SEGA's only personal computer — found in a box of "old computer stuff" by a neighbour doing demolition work nearby. Key items from the collection feature throughout Radical Computing. "I collect vintage computers like I collect inspiration and those whose work I love," Huang said.

Alongside the CM-2, the exhibition's other hero objects include Laurie Spiegel's Music Mouse, a 1986 "intelligent instrument" recently revived in partnership with Eventide, and the Demoshrine, a tribute to underground hacking, early-90s rave culture and the demoscene. Radical Computing will also feature several artworks from influential artists such as Tim Rodenbroker, Chia Amisola, Chok Si Xuan and many more, plus there will be lots of interactive experiences, designed for computer lovers as well as families.

Radical Computing also foregrounds a story often left out of computing history, tracing computing's origins back to weaving and the loom and recovering "women's work" as a true starting point of computing. "There was more resistance to the fact I was using computers than to the fact that I was a woman doing music," said pioneering composer Laurie Spiegel, whose work features in the show. The theme continues locally through Melbourne artist Kate Geck's tapestry work, and through young live coder Nu (Fetle Wondimu Nega), whose Code Jam workshops are introducing a new generation to live coding.

Why now

The exhibition arrives at a moment of widespread anxiety about AI, surveillance and the monopolies that "big tech" hold over social media platforms, and the CM-2 offers an unexpected way into that conversation. Built decades before today's AI boom, the Connection Machine was already grappling with ideas of machine intelligence, and unlike most AI systems today, it was designed to make its own inner workings visible rather than opaque.

"It has never been more urgent to rethink our digital environments and consider how we can build more personal and less extractive systems for our future," said Siddons, “This has been a focus for us here at NCM this year”.

Thiel echoed this sentiment, saying, "How can humans form judgments or opinions, if they have no data from which to learn, and no insights with which to understand?"

Opening weekend

Radical Computing opens at the beginning of the September school holidays with a day of free programs, included with museum entry designed for the whole family. Activities include a drop-in, all-ages weaving workshop inspired by the CM-2; a talk with curator Mel Huang on how the exhibition grew out of her own story; and a series of demo talks with Creative Technology Melbourne spotlighting the demoscene subcultures at the heart of the show.

Radical Computing runs from 19 Sep 2026 until 21 February 2027, spanning multiple school holiday periods and is planning a jam packed NCM Summer program for families, related to the themes of the exhibition.

Radical Computing

19 September 2026 – 21 February 2027

National Communication Museum, 375 Burwood Rd, Hawthorn

Guest curated by Mel Huang

Fiona Brook (Zilla & Brook)
fiona@zillaandbrook.com.au

0407 900 840