Helen Stratford’s and Lawrence Bradby’s artists' bookwork 'Mechanical Operations in Cambourne', describes the measured environment of the newly built village of Cambourne, through a series of technical drawings and pseudoscientific reports that create a comically deadpan critique of the underlying corporate tactics that aim to create the impression of ‘traditional’ English village life in the early twenty first century. Using the layout and jargon of council-speak with which we are all familiar, Helen Stratford and Lawrence Bradby are subverting the continuous stream of instruction to the public from the writerities.