HOURS of interviews with female workers will go live next month in a multi-media project marking the 25th anniversary of the Timex strikes.
The industrial action in 1993 spanned almost seven months as staff rallied against job cuts.
The period included violent clashes with police and saw strikebreakers brought in before the US-owned Dundee factory finally closed with the loss of hundreds of posts.
Now the “army” of women that made the factory tick – and produced the ZX Spectrum computer – will be remembered in a digital art project that goes live on May 4.
The event, titled Generation ZX(X), will include recorded testimony from ex-Timex workers.
The material will be geotagged around the city’s Camperdown Park, close to the site of the facility.
To access the testimonies, audiences will walk around the park using a mobile phone app to listen to clips at specific locations marked with colour-coded balloons.
The “promenade” culminates at the former factory, which is now owned by JTC Furniture Group, where archive images and footage donated by the local McManus Museum and news firms DCT Media and STV will be projected onto the side of the building.
Meanwhile, bespoke games related to Timex story will be available to play on-site.
They have been made by Abertay University staff and student team Retrospect Games and researcher Mona Bozdog, who is coordinating the project, said the project is a tribute to the forgotten women who helped turn the Tayside city into a computer gaming capital.
She said: “The women of Timex who brought us those computers are the hidden figures of the games industry. When you walk to the former Timex Camperdown building there is nothing at all that attests that this legendary computer which marked the beginning of UK’s home computers scene was made there.
“And it was built by these incredible, hard-working women, most of whom never realised what an impact they have made on Dundee’s video games development and education scene.
Bozdog added: “I just wanted this project to be a thank you, from our generation to the women of Timex who, through their labour, contributed to Dundee’s future in video games.”
Abertay lecturer Charlie Malone, a former Timex shop steward, said: “In Dundee, Timex was no ordinary employer, but rather an institution.
“If anyone needed reminding of the importance of Timex to the city, it was evident in the dispute of 1993.
“What sustained the employees was the social rather than just the political solidarity of the citizens.”
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