February 10, 2006
>OVER
[TELE]COMMUNICATION
"Are you ready?" the message went out. The first message to cross water, the first wireless communication. The exhibition >OVER is, in part, a homage to Marconi’s ground-breaking experiments that he undertook near Cardiff to develop the first ever wireless transmission in 1887, a breakthrough to which nearly all of today’s telecommunications are indebted.
The means we use to send and receive messages influence the language we use, from the considered etiquettes of letter writing to the rash disposability of email and the text message; from the formalities of a landline telephone conversation to the obliviousness or indifference of the mobile phone user giving a prefixed report on their location. >OVER explores this territory. The artists either engage in methods of communication to produce the work, or they examine the impact, the language and significance of those methods.
Stefhan Caddick explores the text phenomenon. An LED sign facing the street from the gallery will display text messages sent from members of the public to its receiver. He gives us the opportunity to address the city. The project’s intention is to encourage members of the public to evolve a new use for these signs, which usually carry important but mundane information. Instead the Variable Message Sign will carry text messages, which by their nature are often deeply personal.
Lizzie Hughes’ two sound pieces expand and compress time and space by way of a simple telephone inquiry. In Second Empire State Building Piece, she telephones each of the building’s eighty floors, asking each occupying company in turn which floor they are based on. Their responses create an image of the building, but not one we might recognise or expect. Similarly, in a second piece, Lizzie telephones various locations around the globe to request the local time, which differs from call to call. She phones the same regions again over the course of 24 hours: this time each recipient reports identical times. The piece draws attention to the geographical and temporal scale of the world, its diurnal movement and our place within it.
Jennie Savage’s work Note To Self compels us to reflect on what we consider important enough to communicate to our future selves. We are invited to write a personal log that takes on archival significance because it will not be sent until 2011. By reverting to letter writing, a method of communication that now seems archaic, Note To Self gives a simple but enduring voice to our everyday, which would ordinarily pass without record.
If Jennie Savage opens out the communications loop by expanding the gap between sending and receiving, Paul Cabuts short circuits it. For the series Transmissions he has photographed telecommunications masts across South Wales. The range of these masts stretches across Wales and the UK, yet their surroundings are specific to South Wales. Transmissions illuminates the didactic nature of these structures, which are at once fixed yet transient, anchor points in the ebb and flow of cultural expediency and information exchange.
You are invited to the preview of the show on the 10th February from 6.30 at g39 Wyndham Arcade, Cardiff CF10 1FH. >OVER runs from 11th February to 18th March 2006. g39 is open 11-5.30 Wednesdays to Saturdays.
Posted by jo at February 10, 2006 06:25 PM
