John Wild (here and here) is someone I stumbled across on youtube (actually he stumbled across me but that’s the joy of social networking) who works a lot with invisible transmissions / networks and their effects as source to create sound or imagery within video, installation or performance contexts. Invisible Geographies 50MHz-6000MHz (image above top left) are:

psychogeographical experiments in datspace [sic]

which:

consist of looped video footage of geographical locations overlaid with field recordings of microwave communications recorded at the same locations.

Below are two example of Invisible Geographies 50MHz-6000MHz at Hogs Back and Harlesden.

The Messenger (image above top right, video below) is a work along similar lines which:

shows video footage of the 15 foot gilded angel, which turns in the wind, atop of Guildford Cathedral, concealing a mobile phone mast and several antennas. The Video footage is overlaid with field recordings of microwave communications been transmitted from the Angle.

Other related works by John include The Conduit (image above bottom left) and Digital Babble (image above bottom right). While strictly speaking only one of the works mentioned here is a performance, The conduit, all four have a performative element to them which reveals the invisibility, pervasiveness, noisy and chaotic nature of broadcast transmission networks.

Respam, a work by Alex Dragulescu is a:

net.art platform for the collection, implementation, and cultural integration of unwanted, abject data in the form of solicitous messages (heretofore referred to as spam). In an age of unparalleled digital communication, spam accounts for up to 65% of all email. Research into this phenomenon is taking all over the world as spam threatens to turn the once utopian cyberlanscape into an abyss of junk emails, adverts, and attempts on the part of the spammers to harvest individuals’ data for malicious use.

The latest incarnation of Respam, entitled Inbox, uses the 50,000 spam message database within a VJ performance context where messages, images, and text are queried and retrieved live.

Originally seen here in the context of PixelACHE 2005, Helsinki.

Symphophony #1 (video below), a performance at the PixelACHE festival in Helsinki, April 2005, employs Ophones (image above) created by Unsworn. The Ophones are very simply:

a loudspeaker with an attached telephone receiver. When an ophonist has recorded a sound into an ophone, it is repeated infinitely until another sound is recorded into the same ophone.

Watch the video below (windows media format), it’s self explanatory.

Global String (images above), created by Atau Tanaka and Kasper Toeplitz, is a multi-site network musical instrument connected through the internet and used for performance and installation (see diagram below):

It is a musical instrument where the network is the resonating body of the instrument, by use of a real time sound synthesis server…The concept is to create a musical string (like the string of a guitar or violin) that spans the world. Its resonance circles the globe, allowing musical communication and collaboration among the people at each site.

Re-seen in the post here, Rope Instruments.

This relates to earlier posts on lines including Line by Andrew Neuman, Oneline.com and Liners.

At the moment I am planning an event simply titled Network with a collaboration I am a part of, Open Ear, which is directing much of the research I’ve done here into a form other than my writing and my own practice.

I will be creating a new performance work especially for this event (early days yet) but feel it’s important to make connections between artists diverse work dealing with networks in a performance context and to contextualise my own practice. It’s problematic on several levels as it’s essentially self-curating and as an academic (my double live) I’m sure I will will also be criticised as self-publishing, a crime punishable by death by RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) in England (well sometimes it feels like that) and that’s something I have to deal with.

As an artist however, and that’s what I am first and foremost an artist who employs research for his own practice and not a researcher who practices art, I don’t have a problem with this. For me organising this event is a continuation / progression of the research I pursue demonstrated in other forms and hopefully beneficial to anyone who might attend. This is something which is now being loosely termed as knowledge transfer within academia, essentially do research and disseminate it in a form that is not the classic publish route. Not only does it provide a healthier recognition of the many outcomes to research but it also helps to widen participation within higher education (oh how I love these academic buzz words). To me there seems like a natural progression from writing about artists work so that I am more aware of what’s happening, documenting the research and sharing it so that others can use it as a resource (including my students so if that’s not good practice as an academic what is?) to now actually curating an event where people can come and see the work which should smoothly create a tangible link between theory and practice.

Is self-curating as an artist a bad thing? It definitely can be, but at the same time it can also give a unique point of view into a particular topic / theme / practice that a curator will simply not have the depth of knowledge to do justice to. Most artists self-publish unashamably, if they didn’t we would never see their work. Since my work is going to only be a small part of this I feel the benefits cancel out any real negatives here but time will tell.

Anyway because I’m putting a lot of energy into this, posts over the next few weeks will hopefully tend to move in the direction of performance work to help me focus.