WWW: World Wild Web
dal 12/10/2012 al 30/11/2012
Segnalato da
12/10/2012
WWW: World Wild Web
Furtherfield Gallery & Social Space, London
The artists in this exhibition work and play with living organisms and technical things, systems and language, to explore how our relation to the natural world is changing. They introduce us to the unruly life going on in other natural webs of communication.
To be alive is to be wild. And we humans have a will that shapes the world with language, song, lust, labour and play. And for those of us who connect with it, a network of machines now extends our reach, amplifies our urges and quickens our exchanges.
The artists in this exhibition work and play with living organisms and technical things, systems and language, to explore how our relation to the natural world is changing. They introduce us to the unruly life going on in other natural webs of communication, knowledge and feral exchange. Gallery visitors (humans and dogs) are invited to view videos, interact with art installations and social media and undertake walks in the surrounding park with its other animals and edible plants.
Mary Flanagan travels overland and undersea in virtual worlds. Her journeys in the worlds are caught on video. Her avatar scouts the boundary lines of ‘heritage’ landscapes built by “residents”. Her walks are inspired by Thoreau, the great American writer and walker, who knew that 'all good things are wild and free'.
Andy Deck calls attention to echoes of the wild in language. Despite the many entertaining digital visions of nature beamed to the flat screen, a wealth of intuitions relating to nature still survive in colorful expressions passed down for centuries. He invites you to help him build a bestiary of animal idioms using social media and a gallery installation.*
Sarah Waterson has invented a set of cartographic tools for dogs (and their human friends) to develop an interspecies psychogeography. Her electronic mapping system generates sniff data, routes and photographic journals supporting communication, collaboration and knowledge-sharing between companion species.
Helen Varley Jamieson and Paula Crutchlow dramatise the private actions and global consequences of our domestic lives in a long-running series of networked performances located in peoples' homes. Dave's Quiz (part 2) is an interactive extension of their provocation to discuss and appreciate relationships between personal, state and corporate responsibility around issues of consumption and disposal in late-capitalism.
Artists duo Genetic Moo invite us to discover a dark, interactive sea of wiggling, luminescent creatures that gorge on torch light. They fantasize an evolutionary digression through the lens of human sensuality, drawing on images made by early scientists as they first found micro organisms or Animacules swarming in every sea, pond and pool of saliva.
Disquieted by the environmental impact of constant technological upgrades, Dominic Smith works with open knowledge from the DIY mycology movement to create a system that combines the waste products from the tools and fuels of the contemporary coder. Out-of-date software manuals and coffee grounds are shredded to create a compost for fruiting oyster mushrooms to be harvested and consumed by visitors.**
This exhibition is dedicated to Jay Griffiths, author of WILD: An Elemental Journey (2006).
NOTES
* Crow_sourcing is a 2012 Commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its Turbulence website. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation. http://Turbulence.org/Works/crow_sourcing
** Dominic Smith developed this iteration of the shredder concept, originated by Julian Priest, David Merritt & Adam Hyde, as part of the geekosystem project. It is an experimental transposition of software development methods taking an organic, material form. It’s also worth noting that in his 1998 net art work Shredder 1.0 Mark Napier took the texts and images from pages of the WWW and jumbled them in colourful abstractions to reveal their ‘rawness’ once freed from the strict orthodoxies of web page design.
Exhibited Works
Crow_sourcing by Andy Deck
Borders series by Mary Flanagan
Animacules by Genetic Moo
make-shift: Dave’s quiz (part 2) by Helen Varley Jamieson & Paula Crutchlow
Shredder by Dominic Smith
Laika's Dérive – The dogs de Tour by Sarah Waterson
Opening Event: Saturday 13 October 2012, 1-4pmco-hosted with The Festival of Mint - A Celebration of Local Growing - serving mint tea and mojito
Furtherfield Gallery & Social Space
McKenzie Pavilion - Finsbury Park - London
Open Thu-Fri 1-5pm, Sat 11-5pm