Due to circumstances of health (ironic since my last point of view of hospitals and the human body where those magnified images of bloodied wounds that Robin had splashed writ large on a projection screen, rather stomach churning!), I sadly missed the sound toys of Studio Tonne. I'm a natural fiddler and very curious, so to be able to pick things up and play with them is a real thrill, especially when someone elses imagination and inspiration has gone into these one-of-a-kind objects. I'm also very into reverse engineering, and since a lot of modern hi-tech objects are sealed modular units, it presents me with a challenge to find out how they operate. Hopefully I might catch their work again soon.
I also meant to post this reaction to Auger Loizeau. Oh well, better late than never..
Afterlife
Auger-Loizeau
At first I was a bit intimidated by them. The press release I read did not help, blazoning as it did the subject of rotting corpses powering dildos. Not "sex 'n' death AGAIN I thought. Has this not, literally, been done to death? Was this going to be another cheap carnival of shocks we see constantly paraded in the performing show that is contemporary art?
But no. In fact, the little film reminds me of the 1980's TV version of The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, which I found strangely comforting and reassuring, with a calm soporific voice underscoring delicate beautiful animations that spiralled into black voids like sparkling constellations. It reminded me of something else as well, the lyric by Moby - "we are all made of stars".
The second part of the film, with the two conversationalists bobbing like lonely bouys in a vast ocean, faceless and miles apart yet with voices and stories, was totally compelling. These sleek and altered bodies made me think of dolphins. You cant see their lips but you know they are talking - just like intelligent sea mammals - sending messages miles across the sea.
Saturday, 30 May 2009
Tuesday, 26 May 2009
POW
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Jonathan Swain is next up in the last of the series IDDA. Image © Jonathan Swain - POW interview 1991
IDDA Reviewed By Unlimited Media
Identity In The Digital Age
Fusebox
I'm a child of the digital age and am used to being inundated with fast-moving images. Robin Blackledge's decelerated video installation 'Organism', the first portion of this exhibition in newly opened arts space Fusebox, was therefore a bit of a shock to my system. But the images of the inner workings of a hospital and its surrounding woodland, metamorphosing into each other at a snail's pace, become mesmerising after a while, and the slow rhythm of science and nature merging into one another soon feels organic. The three other digital artists - Auger & Loizeau, Studio Tonne and Jonathan Swain - who will be presenting their work in this unusual and intimate space as part of the exhibition are certainly something to look forward to.
Fusebox, dates vary, 1.00pm - 6.00pm, free entry, fringe pp68.
tw rating 4/5
Fusebox
I'm a child of the digital age and am used to being inundated with fast-moving images. Robin Blackledge's decelerated video installation 'Organism', the first portion of this exhibition in newly opened arts space Fusebox, was therefore a bit of a shock to my system. But the images of the inner workings of a hospital and its surrounding woodland, metamorphosing into each other at a snail's pace, become mesmerising after a while, and the slow rhythm of science and nature merging into one another soon feels organic. The three other digital artists - Auger & Loizeau, Studio Tonne and Jonathan Swain - who will be presenting their work in this unusual and intimate space as part of the exhibition are certainly something to look forward to.
Fusebox, dates vary, 1.00pm - 6.00pm, free entry, fringe pp68.
tw rating 4/5
Sunday, 24 May 2009
A Third Week
A Third Week
(some sketchy thoughts on the Studio Tonne installation)
Studio Tonne’s sound toys are possible equivalents to intertextual poetics and theory. When using the toys the viewer becomes creator or collaborator, and not just a consumer, as they “play.” Studio Tonne has given up part of their control as designers over user experience to the user, just as the reader, with their personal and cultural associations and memories, “writes” their own experience of a text. One visitor to the show has likened the aesthetics and experience of the applications to video games. The sound toys remain distinct from the Internet’s web of links, pages and content, or the sampling embedded in video games. Although the Internet is a hypertext “system of interconnected writings,” ST’s toys alter the conventional relationships between images and sound on the web or video game; the manipulation of graphic language produces unique soundscapes. The “links” of hypertextual systems are rich layers of audio-visual composition. Indeed, video games are systems that, as “cybertexts”, contain a rigid structure within which the user creates their own narrative.
As examples of hypermedia, the sound toys are representative of our post-industrial society; we are used to being in control, of customising our experiences of text, images and film when using the internet. As a visitor on Sunday remarked, “it looks like an iphone app I’ve got.” In this respect, the work is a reversal of Robin’s photographic projection in which the viewer was unable to control the fade of one image and the exposure of the next, the next image they see or for how long they will see it. Robin's piece was an antidote to the hypertextual internet-enabled environment; photographs of a hospital's hidden spaces and graphic content are both forced upon the viewer and withdrawn without consideration of their desires. The visitor to Fusebox in its third week rather than its first is able to speed up the tempo of their composition, reset, exit and switch application at any time as well as producing relatively unique compositions of sound and graphic image; the visitors’ temporal, audio and visual experiences are to a large extent, decided by them.
Quote of the day (Sunday 24th May): “it’s not exactly an open house is it?”
Also: “so are they selling it, or is this just an exhibition?”
[his reminded me of a comment that Auger_Loizeau’s Afterlife installation came across as promotional, transforming the space into a show room, all bit it as one in which the glossy product is barely lit by the projected image of its accompanying film and not a[ppropriately on display. Not only is this relationship indicative of their mutual product-based practice, but also of their shared ability to manufacture conceptual devices that blur the boundaries of fine art and design. If installation-based art is defined by its disorientating effect on the viewer, inserting these “products” into an unlit space with an unconventional art gallery or design show room aesthetic serves to blur this distinction further.]
And lastly: “which one will make the most noise?”
(some sketchy thoughts on the Studio Tonne installation)
Studio Tonne’s sound toys are possible equivalents to intertextual poetics and theory. When using the toys the viewer becomes creator or collaborator, and not just a consumer, as they “play.” Studio Tonne has given up part of their control as designers over user experience to the user, just as the reader, with their personal and cultural associations and memories, “writes” their own experience of a text. One visitor to the show has likened the aesthetics and experience of the applications to video games. The sound toys remain distinct from the Internet’s web of links, pages and content, or the sampling embedded in video games. Although the Internet is a hypertext “system of interconnected writings,” ST’s toys alter the conventional relationships between images and sound on the web or video game; the manipulation of graphic language produces unique soundscapes. The “links” of hypertextual systems are rich layers of audio-visual composition. Indeed, video games are systems that, as “cybertexts”, contain a rigid structure within which the user creates their own narrative.
As examples of hypermedia, the sound toys are representative of our post-industrial society; we are used to being in control, of customising our experiences of text, images and film when using the internet. As a visitor on Sunday remarked, “it looks like an iphone app I’ve got.” In this respect, the work is a reversal of Robin’s photographic projection in which the viewer was unable to control the fade of one image and the exposure of the next, the next image they see or for how long they will see it. Robin's piece was an antidote to the hypertextual internet-enabled environment; photographs of a hospital's hidden spaces and graphic content are both forced upon the viewer and withdrawn without consideration of their desires. The visitor to Fusebox in its third week rather than its first is able to speed up the tempo of their composition, reset, exit and switch application at any time as well as producing relatively unique compositions of sound and graphic image; the visitors’ temporal, audio and visual experiences are to a large extent, decided by them.
Quote of the day (Sunday 24th May): “it’s not exactly an open house is it?”
Also: “so are they selling it, or is this just an exhibition?”
[his reminded me of a comment that Auger_Loizeau’s Afterlife installation came across as promotional, transforming the space into a show room, all bit it as one in which the glossy product is barely lit by the projected image of its accompanying film and not a[ppropriately on display. Not only is this relationship indicative of their mutual product-based practice, but also of their shared ability to manufacture conceptual devices that blur the boundaries of fine art and design. If installation-based art is defined by its disorientating effect on the viewer, inserting these “products” into an unlit space with an unconventional art gallery or design show room aesthetic serves to blur this distinction further.]
And lastly: “which one will make the most noise?”
Saturday, 9 May 2009
Fringe Benefits
Going into an secluded art-space on a bright sunny warm day in May might not be everyone's idea of a good time, but the footfall into Fusebox today has been a steady stream. Everyone from "ladies who lunch" - who on rambling around the artists' open houses stumbled across our little dark show and were really taken by the "weird, wonderful and very imaginative" - to the dedicated seeker after the delights of the digital domain - all who entered fell under the spell of the work and one visitor stayed for so long looking at the slow and unravelling story on the projection screen that he blinked as he stepped out into the daylight like a small furry creature emerging from a long and restful hibernation.
Wednesday, 6 May 2009
Liberation
I steamed through the north lanes and was slightly out of breath on arrival at Fusebox. I sat in with the video installation. My breathing quickly slowed right down- there is something of the meditative in Robins work. It lulls you into the present.
The cinematic fading into brilliant white, which I'm later told is grey (reminding me of my flawed perception), also brought to mind the Buddhist notion of nirvana- merging into Brahma. The liberation of surgical equipment! I also enjoyed the painterly aspect to the stills as they dissolve and emerge in a textured, abstract dance- a stunning play on the transient.
My friend, Richard, commented on the strangeness of surgical stills, featuring blood, plastic gloves and tools, set against lively bird song. Having other appointments he couldn't stick around for the woods and greenery. He also thought the photograph of a chopping board was a chopping board.
The cinematic fading into brilliant white, which I'm later told is grey (reminding me of my flawed perception), also brought to mind the Buddhist notion of nirvana- merging into Brahma. The liberation of surgical equipment! I also enjoyed the painterly aspect to the stills as they dissolve and emerge in a textured, abstract dance- a stunning play on the transient.
My friend, Richard, commented on the strangeness of surgical stills, featuring blood, plastic gloves and tools, set against lively bird song. Having other appointments he couldn't stick around for the woods and greenery. He also thought the photograph of a chopping board was a chopping board.
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
A Piece of Me
'A Piece of Me - Milky way'Large Format Giclee print
© Robin Blackledge 2009
Interesting comments AC COX. Thanks
Sunday, 3 May 2009
Impressions in the shadow of darkness
The sound hits you before you enter, hit is too strong a word, it is more like a stroke than a slap. The constant buzzing in the dark is constant and starts off disturbing but becomes grounding. Accompanied by pictures that remind one that although we are genus and species strangers to the wood that surrounds us in this womb of a space, we occupy the same space and time, both vulnerable and susceptible to weaknesses of age and frailties within the physicality of our being.
Despite man's ever growing armoury of technology and knowledge, it remains a fact that we pass from existence only to be replaced and displaced, that the many individual battles we may win or lose will come to nothing when we finally lose our war with time.The images that fade until pale grey traces remain, until they too fade, remind us of our own impermanence. One day we too will fade and die away, and one day even our traces will die away, even documented evidence of our ambitious hopes and achievements, the texts and photographic images, will be lost and decay after we leave, as history and time continue without us.
Despite man's ever growing armoury of technology and knowledge, it remains a fact that we pass from existence only to be replaced and displaced, that the many individual battles we may win or lose will come to nothing when we finally lose our war with time.The images that fade until pale grey traces remain, until they too fade, remind us of our own impermanence. One day we too will fade and die away, and one day even our traces will die away, even documented evidence of our ambitious hopes and achievements, the texts and photographic images, will be lost and decay after we leave, as history and time continue without us.
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