The good thing about blogging for this festival – apart from giving me an excuse to take a couple of weeks off work – is that it has forced me to go and check out events I normally wouldn’t. Most notably the graduate show at Gosta Green, going down was almost an afterthought because of getting to the other side of town.
Land of milk and honey
I’ve escaped the distraction offered by the digital too one of the last bastions of F2F interaction, a magical place that boasts things the Internet is yet to give us; human contact, smells, atmosphere and delicious cold booze – all things I personally find necessary for the creative process. Perhaps it’s a little ironic than that I’ve decamped to the pub to edit an interview conducted via electronic mail, but then again perhaps I should go home and check the actual definition of ironic on Wikipedia.
How did you get involved with NGA?
I got involved with the NGA when I received an email from Robin Dobson in about October 2007 in which he invited me to submit a proposal for possible inclusion in the festival this year. I originally submitted a proposal which involved projecting one of my ‘Lightyear’ series onto a large building somewhere around Birmingham - this didn’t go any further as Robin was looking to get something more ‘indoor’ based.
How does the piece fit in with your usual practice?
I’ve reverted back to some older work for the binary pieces, purely because I wanted to create something which, for the most part, is “wireless”. I tend not to make as much sculptural/object based work anymore, my practice has become much more about research (the possibilities and ramifications of creating art in and for Outer Space) and relies heavily on my relationship with certain people and institutions. When I do make sculptural work now I tend to want to either be as economical as possible (both in terms of the materials and what the work is saying) or go for something which has much more of a presence - or for want of a better terminology - a ‘wow’ factor. #Cringes# Which is what i was going for with Milky Way.
Does the work engage with the theme of Digital Utopia specifically or do you think you were chosen because your practice engages with the theme?
The work does engage with this years theme, the Binary pieces in particular, but at the same time they relate to in almost a back-handed way. I knew that I wanted to create some work which explores the ‘digital’ through analogue means, there can be a tendency to approach a digital theme, (perhaps quite understandably) electronically. Reels of cable and monitors at every turn. The idea behind the binary pieces is that they contain digital information, which could quite possibly be scanned, logged and interpreted by a computer, and at the same time they have a physicality and have at least one toe in the sea of art history. The floor piece especially is a nod to minimalism of the 1960’s-70’s.
Digital Utopia? What is it? Is it achievable? Are we there even?
Digital Utopia, hmmm, I think the Digital age in which we find ourselves in was heralded as the dawn of a new era for mankind, and for the most part that is certainly the case. The Internet especially (without which I wouldn’t be able to send you this) has changed a lot of people’s lives, although not always for the better - collapsing dead because you’ve spent the last week living inside a computer screen in ‘Second-life’ isn’t what Vinton Cerf and Timothy Berners-Lee had in mind. But if you really can’t be bothered to traipse down to Tescos and back then it’s quite handy.
But I suppose in it’s most basic sense, Digital Utopia would mean that technology creates a World where nothing is impossible, everything is marvelous and life for all is made generally better. What this doesn’t take into account though is the socio-political and geographic factors which affect every person on the planet day-to-day, some of which we don’t even think about. The people who work in the factories making the technology don’t even get paid enough to be able to buy the 60″ widescreen TV that they’ve just spent the last 2 hours soldering together. Fair enough, I can watch Star Wars in glorious High-definition, but the person who packed the box or made sure the AAA batteries were included, can barely scrape enough together to eat. That is not Utopic.
I don’t think Utopia is ever really achievable, purely because it would have to be realised through human means - by that I mean Man would have to create it. By the same token, someone would always want to control it and exploit it, (screening emails “for our own good”, monitoring I.P addresses etc.) in the end the house of cards will always come crashing down. Nothing that Mankind can create is infallible.
The solution? Create a race of super robots who have no emotion, think logically and perform even the most menial task without a second thought. But we’ve all seen i-Robot, and we all know how bad that was.
How did you like the show? Favourite bits?
I think we really did ourselves proud with the shows, we worked like fury to get them together on time and with comparatively little time, all things considered. We would not have been able to put the shows on without the help of the technicians/decorators: Richard, Will and Lee, all of whom did an absolutely sterling job - even working through the night at one point. I would hate for those guys to be overlooked.
The work is of a really high standard in my view, every piece, every room, is a credit to the artists involved. I do really like Janet’s film piece, it is incredibly engaging with it’s seemingly endless (although it does finish) twists and turns and I was quite taken with her use of an actual cine projector - I’m not sure, but that seemed to be a deliberate move away from the ’digital’, which in realtion to my own work, found really interesting.
Anything else you have saw or are looking forward to?
I’m looking forward to seeing Jane Prophet’s work at the Mailbox, which I believe is opening on the 23rd? (Outside festival time but that’s what the lady at the Mailbox told me!?) If you go there now - level three, one of the empty units, you can peer through the window and see the pseudo - gallery set up but the lights are off and nobodys home. She’s also (hopefully) installing a 20 foot Cow Parsley sculpture which is going to ‘grow’ - looking forward to that!
Chris can be found here and is asking for input on a project to put art on the moon here.
It’s hard to write objectively about an event where you was involved with the setting up, and equally hard to write critically about peoples work when you know them well. This is the unfortunate position I find myself in at the moment. Having spent most of my weekend blacking out a tiny room and wandering round the cavernous club helping out friends, I am then supposed to come back with fresh eyes and critically evaluate the work and venue. So I’m going to do my best, and by “best” I mean “clumsily stumble my way through this treading on as few toes as I can manage and your going to bare with me because you’re nice like that”.
Rachael in her space (she doesn’t glow in real life)
Phil not smiling
Back in the very late 19th century George Cadbury had his own idea of utopia, he wanted to provide better work conditions for his workers, to “alleviate the evils of modern more cramped living conditions” he built Bournville and added plenty of areas for sport and recreation and even supported the arts hence the building now used by BIAD.
(apologies for my poor camera work)
One of the main criticisms of digital technology seems to be about the proliferation of information; some see us as drowning in the stuff. And when its not the volume of information necessarily that get the critics hackles up it’s the quality of this information, if every airhead with two typing fingers and a Blogger account can spout off to the entire Internet whenever his/her brain farts surly, their logic goes, this makes finding decent and reliable information harder to find.
Well I don’t think so, we, as a species, are getting smarter and part of this spike in intelligence is the ability to organize many layers of information at the same time. One look at Sky Sports Soccer Saturday will tell you that even your average football fan can, does, and want to process at least four different mental stimuli including opinion, analysis, graphs and Jeff Stirling.
As we become more adept at dealing with different information and fitting it into a larger picture, we are also becoming better at questioning our sources. Yes The Sun is still one of the highest selling “newspapers” but it’s rare you will find anyone who will admit to taking the stories as 100% fact; it’s far more likely that people that read it will admit to thinking that there is a slither of truth, The Sun being just one point of view of a bigger picture, of course this example falls down on when we take into account The Sun rarely sully there pages with anything as ugly as the Truth or as obvious as Facts. The simple fact is the more points of view of an event we have the better picture we can build up of what actually happened.
So WTF does this have to do with the opening of the NGA festival? Well it’s a roundabout way of excusing my lack of appreciation for some of the performances. I’m a music philistine and should this be in no way a definitive reporting of the facts, more a point of view where for you to use, interpret or ignore all together.
To my shame despite racking up nearly thirty years (on and off) living in this city, Thursday was the first time in the town hall which was impressive to say the least. The crowd was an odd mix of formal suits and the scruffy art crowd.
And Now The News was a brave collaboration of an ensemble orchestra and the BBC4 news team, the live news broadcast was projected live while the musicians and conductors arranged pieces of emotionally evocative music as a response. This was an interesting concept and not as gimmicky as is sounds, it was also one of the accessible pieces of the night as the broadcast gave it a recognisable structure. There were some really nice touches like the percussion that synced perfectly with the dynamic graphics. For me the most interesting bit was when the broadcast came from the concert itself, self referential to the point of infinity, there had obviously been some thought into how the sounds would feedback onto themselves so it made sense in the context of the performance, as well as solving the problem of having the music at a level that would make the link possible.
As I said before, I’m not musically cultured – as I write this I am sitting between two speakers playing Enter Sandman by Metallica at a level that makes me need a poo a little bit. Therefore it may not surprise you that before Thursday I had never seen a classical performance – although I will admit to own a few classical and baroque tracks which I’ve always enjoyed. So I was not prepared to be blown away by Howard Goodall’s and the bridge is love, I was both physically and emotionally moved not just by the beauty of the music but the intensity of the performance. It completely swept me away, my last rational thought being “I can’t be enjoying this, I like the Ramones”.
After a short interval came Kent Olofsson with Tarpeian Rock and this is where the music left me behind, I tried I really did, but no. I just don’t get it. The noise was just plain distractingly untidy, scratching against my brain. At this point I started eyeing the door wandering how long until I could sneak out. The next performance Respire (Breathes) changed that though. the screen showed visuals of dancers stomachs flexing in and out, the shots were tight close ups with no other body parts featured and shot in black and white, so after a while the images became abstracted and a little unrecognisable as specifically human body parts, the music swelled and ebbed in time as a musical soundtrack to these organic breathing objects. At one point I decided that the belly buttons looked like tiny screaming mouths so spent the rest of the time suppressing giggles. The second part of the performance showed shots of several dancers dancing with increasing amounts of disjointed frenzy as the music reached a repetitive crescendo stop and repeat pattern, the effect was good but the visuals were very slick, again shot in black and white with continuous stop pans and zooms in a large virtual space, unfortunately this effect has been used more recently for in the language of advertisements Apple and Gap being just two. This, while very accessible, did take away some of the impact.
Finally Ed Bennett’s Noise Machine, a largely improvisational piece of music and collaboration with the Juneuo Projects. Again the visuals was my way into this performance, using a sound to motion programme that was evident on the screen we saw different pieces of animation and how they were selected and hooked up to the sound output, notably a cheeky geeky in-joke when the mobile phones came up with the message “all your base are belong to us” which made about ten people in the room laugh. This notion of the live computer performance was then subverted when the screen then showed a large error screen, which was then hypnotically was animated as the text multiplied into a giant cloud of information that swarmed over the screen.
Afterwards most of went to the Radisson for the reception and for some light jazz, elaborate food including olives as big as goose eggs and a selection of fancy breads and wine being carried by very friendly waiting staff. The arty untidy people naturally filtered together at the darkest corner of the room to lounge and chat while the better dressed attendees spoke to the mayor. Before we knew it the waiters had stopped bringing wine around and started to tidy around us, which was a very classy way of getting us to leave, but it was a classy place.
Sarah-Jane, or SJ to anyone that knows her, is and always has been deceptively intelligent. Even though she would rather spend more time discussing the latest plot developments of Hollyoaks or what Heat magazine says about the Cabbage Diet, only an idiot would presume that this is because she is out of her depth discussing Post modernism or any other high art theory. Sharp mentally and, of course, sartorially we met in a pub and had a chat about the forthcoming show.
Interviews are an editing of reality, most of the time the pauses, ermm, arrs and other verbal ticks are edited out and moved around to make the piece read better. The tape of this interview was a little more difficult to turn into something interesting because of the amount of deviation from the subjects, giggling, slander and cutting out altogether when we turned the tape off for a particularly good bit of gossip.
So, easy one to start with, how did you get involved with NGA?
Mona said she was interested in a piece of work which she hadn’t thought had been viewed properly, although it’s all about new work, she put up a fight to say it was new work because it hadn’t been given an audience.
Did you feel that yourself, when you did that piece of work? That it hadn’t got the audience it deserved.
Well, it was a last minute piece of work, which turned out to be my favourite, so I didn’t get a chance to put it in the degree show even though I spent time, at the last minute trying to fit it in somewhere else.
So you don’t need to finish anything off or run around organising stuff now for the show?
(Giggle) nah
Wow, easy life for you. Does the work relate to the theme “digital Utopia” or did Mona make that call and you only thought about that afterwards?
Mona made that call, but, I made it as a response to painting and how other mediums respond to painting, how painting can fill the gap and vice versa. So it does fit in with the theme of the show, but I wasn’t necessarily thinking “digitally”.
So what is your work about?
That work, or my practice?
Your practice.
I suppose it’s an exploration of painting and where painting stands today.
Do you think that’s important?
Yes, it’s become even more important to me since leaving university because whenever I tell people I got an art degree they ask “what did you paint?”…
Or “you must be good at drawing them?”
(Laughs) and you’re thinking that you haven’t so much picked up a pencil in two years.
What do you think about “Digital Utopia”? Is it achievable, should we bother?
What is “Digital Utopia”?
That’s what I was kinda asking you
(Laughs) I did think it was a weird theme, it’s very relevant, but it singles out a lot of art. Considering it’s a new artists show. For example on our course there wasn’t that many people exploring digital mediums, there was a few but…
Do you think that you have to be using a digital medium to explore the theme?
No, not necessarily, But for a festival that is about showing new talent coming from there degrees it seems an interesting move. I don’t know what a digital utopia even is, why would it be a utopia?
So you think the theme of “Digital Dystopia” would be more relevant?
(Laughs) I don’t know, what’s a middle one?
(Laughing) I don’t know, a “Topia”? Are making work since you left uni? Or are you taking a hiatus and maybe coming back to it later? Or washing your hands of it completely?
Hmmm
I mean you obviously still interested in the art world or you wouldn’t be doing this
I defiantly still have an interest in it, defiantly. And it’s a really good opportunity to show your work outside of your university. The show is also really good to be associated with and I like all the other people in the show, so it’s nice to have your work alongside theirs. And the building is amazing
Had you ever saw the Que club before?
Yeah, but not sober though (giggle). But as for making Art, I have come to a bit of a slow stop, because of things like working, and you don’t get the opportunity to sit around and talk to people about art, it’s hard to get that input about your practice.
Do you think that you will make more work? Do you still have more to say?
Not really more to say, but do I have more for me to investigate. I don’t think that I have necessarily anything new to say to anyone. But I do have more questions for myself really, but if anyone else is interested that good too.
Sarah’s work is part of the Mona Casey selection.
Now some would say I’m just a lazy chancer who has been hitting up his old uni class mates for easy content and not really the thrusting inquisitive dynamo of investigative energy I pretend to be.
TOSH! I say to them, TOSH I say.
If that is true how did I get exclusive preview shots of Mark Essen’s new work “Eternal Atlas“? Scoops like that don’t just appear through your electronic mail letter box, you have to graft.
this work was made with the help of the Arts council England and Media vault
Helen Brown is an installation artist that graduated last year with me from BIAD, her work is often playful and concerned with difference between what the eyes see and what the minds perceives. Arranging the interview wasn’t that difficult seeing as all I had to do was walk out my bedroom door, walk down the hall, and knock on hers. As such I’ve decided prudently to leave out any sarky descriptions or overly witty bon mots in fear she might spit in my tea.
Yesterday we found ourselves killing time before a private view in a pub. (Where else?)
How did you get involved in the NGA?
Robin Dobson came to our exhibition at the custard factory
Same one as Phil?
Yeah, and he said that he would very much like me to be involved with the show and I said “yes”, well he asked me to send a proposal over, and I did.
As simple as that. Were you always going to be working with Mona?
I’m not working with Mona; I’m part of the Rachael Bradley selection. It’s a different floor
Oh right, so Mona’s got the bottom half of the Que club?
Yeah and we’ve got the top, it’s four of us all being curated by Rachael Bradley
Have you saw any of the other peoples work?
I know what some people are doing but I haven’t seen any of it.
Are you making new work for the show?
Yes.
Is it in the vein of the work you were doing before?
It’s very different to my degree show, I’ve revisited the work I was doing in the first year, more playful and less contrived a freer way of working.
Is that because you’re engaging in the subject of digital utopia, are you engaging with it?
It’s not something I’ve been thinking of really, it’s not something that’s in the work – other than I am working in a digital medium
Oh right so “the medium is message” as far as the theme is concerned?
Thinking about it though, could be strong links between what I’ve produced and the theme “Digital Utopia” in some ways.
Is there anyone you’re particularly looking forward to seeing in the NGA?
The rest of the Que club is going to be good, both floors. And Julian Lloyd Webber because I used to play cello and have an attachment to it.
What do you think of Digital Utopia, are we going to get to one? Is there even such a thing?
I don’t think so…
What does it actually mean to you?
I think there will always be conflict between digitalisation and things like film, or photography, I think we will always make sure the older stuff will be used
We do tend to fetishize the older media like Polaroid pictures
I think it as romantic and nostalgic notion to think of the act of light hitting film rather than pixels.
Do you think we will ever look at early digital media in the same way we look at early film based media – liking it because of its flaws?
There does seem to be a massive revival of the eighties and early digitalisation, acid colours and artificial man made products, that don’t seem to be anything to do with an organic processes but very much, not necessarily a digital way of life, but a one that is technology oriented.
Do you want to tell us about your work; describe the work you’re going to put in? It’s ok if you don’t, a lot of people can be reluctant to talk about it.
I don’t want to, It’s not that I’m reluctant to talk about my work, what I find interesting about my work - It’s hard to talk about it without talking about it – is that the viewer can look at it and believe its one thing, and it, and even though they know what it is, can transform it into something else - if the viewer works it out for themselves, that’s great, if they don’t then that’s even better. I do like the flip of forcing yourself to think to imagine - like the Rorschach tests where the viewer flips between seeing shapes and seeing just an inkblot.
I suppose what you interpret tells you more about what you bring to it than what is actually there.
I think one of the important things about being an artist is that you see things in certain ways and if you can put that across to someone else who doesn’t see the world in the way you do. I think that’s really special.
Phil Barber is a video instillation artist, a
A friend of ours often says he looks a little bit like Ewen McGregor, but if this is true it is Ewen McGregor as imagined by a drunk Tim Burton dressed by Topshop.
How did you get involved with new generation arts?
After my degree I was involved in a show at the Custard factory, of mainly arts based graduates from both
And you were approached at the show?
Yes by Robin Dobson and Mona Casey, there was a bit of debate about which curator wanted me but it was finally decided that I would be working with Mona.
Is that because she liked your work, did you ever find out?
I hope so, because Mona had been a tutor on the degree, we had been involved in conversation about my work and had been there during the development of it, hopefully she liked it and wanted to work with me on something like that. And she’s knows the concerns within my work and that they are closely linked to those they are trying to raise in this exhibition.
Did you say “yes” straight away?
Oh I was always going to do it, its great to be involved in something on this scale and in Birmingham; the amount of advertising, the amount of people they can get to view the shows, the artists I to work with, the amount of equipment they can gather, the venues they can command…
So is that a consideration to what work you put in?
Yes, we don’t get those venues often do we? Once you’re outside an institution if you’re going to book a venue, you’ve got to book it yourself, so it’s going to be your own cash and that controls the size and how much equipment you can rent. The opportunity to have someone to tell you not to worry about any of that and don’t worry about the bills. It controls the work, in a way, or rather the restrictions that we normally have control the work and this time whereas this is probably closer to what we would be doing all the time.
Is it new work?
(Laughs) Built for the space no less, because the space is so large it became about filling the space. Not just filling it with quantity
In a bad way, like “oh god I’ve got to fill this space” or in the way that putting restrictions on things makes you more creative?
Well there are restriction on everything isn’t there? that’s always going to change the way you work. And that a good thing, there has never been anyone who has had no restriction, it’s impossible. I think definite having a space that big, having the equipment and the help to install it, its going to become closer to how you would want to work in the first place – there are less stumbling blocks, when you think of something when you working by yourself the stumbling blocks are the things you come up first without thinking about concepts; can I afford that? Is that possible? Is there a space? Does that exist? But with those things taken away you can concentrate creatively on your other restrictions
The theme “digital utopia”, is the piece to do with that?
I think it fits nicely with this questioning about digital utopia, and I imagine that will be why they approached me to do it, because they know I do that sort of stuff. It’s certainly as much about the arc my work has been following since I started investigating art.
(Laughing) What “Art Dodge”, doing something that seems meaningful and getting away with it?
(Laughing back) Strangely, in a way, it’s a little bit like that, not in the way your saying, the piece is about being initially seduced by video, because video and film are seductive; you put a television somewhere people will watch it before they even know what they are watching, I know I do. So there will a number of projections onto suspended screens, quite large and they will all be aquariums. So the initial seduction will be of that neon glow; its video, its moving, its large scale, it literally glowing because that’s what projections do and in a dark space that is a seductive thing, we are drawn to that.
Like your degree show piece? That looked really good in the dark.
Yeah it did look good, I think that it’s just the way our eyes work, we are drawn to the light and moving colours.
I also found with your work there is a lightness to it, a jokey quality that while it didn’t mask the original meaning, threw you off, but when you had deciphered it, actually highlighted and complimented your intentions.
That’s what I’m hoping to happen with the new piece. I’m hoping, initially, you will be engaged by that almost involuntary seduction, but as you pay attention to the footage, as your pulled in by the glow and the image, and for however many seconds your fooled by the slickness of the shot; your interrupted by the appearance of the glass, or people arms are in the way, or shakiness of the camera, and pixilation of the image. The acknowledgment of the stages of production will push you away. And there is a kind of humour in that, that these things are large projections elevated in this grand space and its of this strange amateur footage.
When I was at Sydney Aquarium I was filming these people filming it, and you think, when people film this kind of stuff; grand canons, museums aquariums, you think “what are you going to do with this footage? What am I going to do with this footage?” And people just go round the whole aquarium filming, it takes two hours to get round it, it’s a big place. You think “what you are going to do with two hours of badly shot aquarium footage”.
Right because you probably don’t want to see it again and you know your friends don’t want to sit through that.
Yes, these people never actually saw that aquarium; they saw it through a lens but didn’t experience it.
Isn’t it strange that there is a certain type of person that tends to experience thing retrospectively, they will record the shit out of it while they’re there and then enjoy the pictures when once they’re back from Jessops?
(Laughs) yes, so there is that element of, one; what are you going to do with that footage? Will you really ever watch it? Are you really going to go home capture two hours of footage, burn it to a DVD, and every couple of months get it out and say “do you want to watch that DVD of the time we went to that aquarium”? And two; you missed the whole thing; you were there at Sydney Aquarium, probably the best aquarium I’ve been too…
(Interrupting)But that’s not a big competition though is it? It’s just basically fish in glass.
Yeah ok I’ll give you that, but the point is they missed it, never saw any of it. This works, in a way, with the theme “Digital Utopia”. Digital technology, despite what people say, it is bringing people together. This was highlighted the other day when a school reunion was organised for my secondary school and I thought “why go?” because of Facebook and such I’m still in contact with all the people I want to be. Even Friendsreunited is redundant now because we will probably have the same Facebook page from when we were school age. I was thinking the other day that I have had the same e-mail address for almost a decade, isn’t weird that people might have the same address for seventy years?
Thinking about it my e-mail address has been more reliable than my actual address.
Exactly.
Will you ever stop plundering your holiday footage when you need a bit of art? “Hmm I need a bit of art, where’s that footage I shot in
In fairness, the polar bear thing (referring to his degree show piece; a giant projection of a polar bear, shot in New York) straight away when I saw it I knew it was really good, I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but it looked so good.
Joking aside, I can see why, it’s just interesting; the big shape moving towards you with blues and whites, its almost hypnotic.
I stood there for ages, filming it over and over again, I didn’t know what I wanted it for I just knew I wanted it. In the same way I went to Sydney Aquarium with my camera, and instead of filming the fish it became far more interesting to stand a few layers back and film behind these people and make sure the lens were in shot and their arms got in the way.
Ahh so you’re saying all the bad camera works on purpose, you disgust me with your excuses.
It was! (laughs)
Do you class yourself as a video artist or an instillation artist, or don’t you care about what labels you have? Because I’ve seen you mostly describe yourself as a video artist but I think a lot of your work seems to be hugely dependent on the installation.
You’re right it hangs on the installation, and often therein lays the content, in its presentation somewhere else. It’s certainly in the case with the new piece, ideally I suppose it would have been someone else’s holiday footage, what is interesting is that I’m elevating into a art exhibition, taking this home footage and while thinking what people could do with it, elevating it, quite literally, into an instillation.
I think that a long time ago artist were not known by what medium they use, they were probably just known as “artists”, I’m not particularly committed to video, I want to work in a medium that captures people imagination in a way that video does, if another medium came out that people, instead of watching telly started watching paint, if people started staring at a picture for eight hours a night or would go to the cinema to stare at a static picture for two hours, then I would start working in paint. That’s the bit I’m interested in.
For my MA final piece I want to try something that references more heavily what people call “film”, because one of the things we were taught in our degree was how to look at things, or how not to look at things, I mean we’re never going disqualify anything we will call it film or video whatever. But a lot of people wouldn’t, without a narrative or storytelling they would just dismiss it. I want to make something, without compromising too many of the ideas I want to work with, that starts to be in both places more, something that’s both “art” and “film”.
I don’t mind being put in a box because people will do that anyway, I just don’t want it affect my work.
Phil will be part of the Mixed Media Installation: Mona Casey Selection starting on Monday 9th and running until Friday 20th June at Que Club in the Central Hall.
I’m sitting in the oldest pub in Birmingham scratching these words out on a pad like a medieval pheasant, but I could be typing on a laptop or editing them to 140 character info bursts on my mobile and sending them to other phones or even spreading them across the Internet using Twitter, I’m listening to the rusty old jukebox playing Fleetwood Mac but I could be listing to anything from the two Gigs worth of music I steal share from the Internet and regularly carry about my person.
The theme for this year’s festival is “Digital Utopia?” and to take my mind off my innate hatred for question marks in titles I have been reflecting on the subject. If I’m honest, and let’s face it – I’m not paid enough to lie, I am a future geek, techno slut and gadget pimp, I love technology and personally can’t wait to jam circuit boards into my brain and rewire my eyes to see infra-red, I would even go as far to say that we as humans have evolved as far as we can go and technology is now facilitating our evolution (sorry creationists).
I often feel cheated, since the sixties we have been promised jet packs, silver jumpsuits and robot manservants that are one bad command away from arm waving “kill all humans” frenzy. But here I am catching boring old buses eating dull old food and hovering my own floor like a sucker without even a hint of a robot uprising. In short I feel this isn’t the future we were promised.
This IS the future though a glorious mash of cultures and copper wire; if your average Victorian could see a mobile phone they would swallow their own eyeballs in amazement and shit out their brain in fear. Because of the Internet, applications like Twitter and mobile phones, we are closer now than ever to a telepathic shared conciseness. The Internet allows us to lead deep, richer and more complex lives surrounded by invisible skyscrapers of information, populated by ghost communities that geography has no say over, glittering structures made of data overlaid on a neon lit streets.
If the people portrayed in the sixties vision of the future had of been accurate, you would of seen them grumbling that the rain was five minutes late or that the meal pills don’t taste as good as the last batch, or blandly discussing the best place to get their hover car waxed; basically not realising they live in the future. Much in the same way we do now. Like it or not we live in a digital utopia NOW, catch up or die.
Now I realise that not many of you will agree (although if you don’t, what are you doing on the Internet reading this?) which is a good thing because the Internet is a public discussion and you can have your say, write a rebuttal and pop on your own blog and send me the link, or even click the comments button, go on, do it now while your still cross.
