then and now

“The passengers on the ‘Heavy Capitalism’ ship trusted (not always wisely, to be sure) that the selected members of the crew who were accorded the right to climb onto the captain’s deck would navigate the ship to its destination.  The passengers could devote their full attention to learning and following the rules set down for them and displayed in bold letters in every passageway.  If they grumbled (or sometimes even mutinied), it was against the captain for not taking the ship to harbour fast enough or for being exceptionally neglectful of the passenger’s comfort.  The passengers of the ‘Light Capitalism’ aircraft, on the other hand, discover to their horror that the pilot’s cabin is empty and that there is no way to extract from the mysterious black box labelled ‘automatic pilot’ any information about where the plane is flying, where it is going to land, who is to choose the airport, and whether there are any rules which would allow the passengers to contribute to the safety of the arrival”.

 

Bauman: On Being Liquid and Light

“like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”

digital bodies

The word digital comes from digitalis, meaning relating to the finger; and digit, deriving from digitus, meaning finger or toe.

The word and its etymology embodies the separate and discrete values that comprise all of the digital, its fingers and toes as its only body parts. But what use are fingers without hands enabling them to work together and in different combinations? The digital retains a language of ‘digits’ and independent entities that exists underneath all that merges, pours, and blends in discontinuous becoming continuous.  Despite its fingers and toes, the digital has come to speak of togetherness and openness where we can share ‘information’ freely without limit. Contradiction is its essential character.

In many circumstances the digital means to us transferability, and therefore easy collaboration and interactivity.  It bends our experiences of time and space, and (often) passes over social and cultural differences. There is an air of coolness and casualness in our ‘digital era’ – within its landscape art mimics social spaces, transposing the viewer as an interlocutor, and positively reeking of interactivity, participation, and democracy.  This is a projection that is given attention even when none of the above might actually happen.  What we take, and what we have to contribute in turn – even if nothing at all – is always worthwhile. And accordingly things take on a look, perhaps with MDF and bright colours, that somehow reads as this shifting digital communication in the space of the gallery.

Creative work-spaces or staff-rooms have sometimes adopted a similar tone that this openness suggests, with fun plants, colours and beanbags, indicating a place of idea-generation, flexible thinking, work and leisure, and welcoming of individual ‘personality’.

Thinking and talking on art might behave like we operate in a virtual world, but our bodies still walk through the space of a gallery. Most of the time.  Assembly at the Jerwood Space presented three works of artists working in relation to the digital, and in this way, the show also stimulates awareness of the gallery space conceived currently, in the many responses to the collaborative spark the digital produces.  Charlie Woolley’s installation occupies the entrance gallery with low tables and speckled beanbags, absurd hanging coloured canopies and potted plants. No one was in the space sitting on the beanbags and the plants were wilted – the supposedly active was inactive and experiencing a marked absence.  A sad face for participation. Either the space was waiting for something, or it was never going to happen. Fascinating though was how it was able to hold onto it’s sense of action, telling us how ingrained these signals now are that they can produce recognition by their visuality alone.

Walking through to the next room, a screen was showing slowly moving dancers,  slowed down further.  Like discrete fingers and toes, their bodies, contained in a dance studio, were moving independently to their own patterns and rules. Again the gallery was left empty,  bodies as virtual bodies flattened against the wall. Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth were ‘showing’ a live projected version of their blog, with participation meaning scrolling through, bringing your body to affect their virtual set up. Except that not too much could be affected. The blog was ‘exploded’, projected disjointedly across three screens, and therefore was simply transferred off onto a slightly oblique angle whilst remaining the stuck. Navigating through was invited, but confusing in its presentation – this was representation of the digital, rather than the open invitation it implied, maybe a deliberate hindrance and a comment on the uncollaborative collaboration we had just participated in.

I quit the blog by accident. Although this scared me – the gallery still holds a certain control over you, no matter what you are allowed to do – I thought in participatory art any contribution must by its action, be worthwhile contribution.  This was until the receptionist got someone to fix it.  The invitation wasn’t really an invitation after all.

I felt bad about my interactivity, the affect of my finger on the touchpad. We cannot have interactivity if interactivity is displayed and spoken of; not affected or embodied.

ICA : Soundworks / Bruce Nauman Days  180612

Social:

A collaborative project and a London premier, spliced together. Soundworks is a virtual exhibition, that is ‘housed’ by and exhibited via online platform. It professes to ‘engage’, to encourage ‘interaction.’  Soundworks presented an iPad in the upper gallery, for viewers to choose what the gallery presented, or to feel like that. Days is the sound of voices from flat panel speakers as they recite the names of days of the week in no particular order.  In a smooth concurrency/disturbance it provided a point to which all artist involved with Soundworks made a response.

The works brought people together but not necessarily in interaction about the work. The engagement that might be designed for the social space online, that disperses the possibility of engagement to anyone with access to the Internet, is somewhat displaced in this setting with a social exercise in peacocking.

Interactivity:

Sound as immaterial art. The Soundworks project makes a link between this immateriality and its ease of collaboration and interactivity.  Speakerless speakers afford a seering sound that occasionally rises over other noise.  With no objects to negotiate – save the iPad in the centre of the gallery –  behaviour was freer. This was one of the few times I have lulled about the gallery floor, making me recall the time a fellow gallery-goer lying on the floor was told to get up by a gallery assistant.  He barked I’M ENJOYING THE FUCKING SPACE!  before being escorted out.

In Days this awareness of physicality was produced by the immaterial sound, the voices that seemed to hang in the air built a structure. So we ran in the gallery, down the column of sound.  The physical affect of the sound was such that where you placed yourself, the speed and direction at which you travelled, morphed the experience of sound.

Language and space:

Space is shaped by language, and language alters with movement.  Spoken language is the passing of time.

 

prestidigitation

filter – combine – melt – pour – pool – absorb – solidify – cut – paste