anyway, Hannah got sent an invite to the opening of the new Rafael Lozano-Hemmer exhibit at Manchester Art Gallery but because she has gone back to London for the new uni year so she couldn't make it. and because she is top, she gave her invite to me.
look, there i am with the invite. Although, it is in slightly worse condition than when i recieved it.
Anyway, I just got back from it and it was fantastic. Before tonight I knew nothing of the artist, but having experienced his work and ideas first hand tonight, i would recommend anyone with any interest in installation work or how modern technology can be combined with innovative art seriously check out theis exhibition. it's free so there is actually no excuse.
there is a picture of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer himself, rattling on in his perculiar accent, in the entrance to the main gallery. doesn't manchester have a top gallery.
Anyway, run by AND (Abandon Normal Devices), a festival of new cinema and digital culture in manchester, the exhibit is titled "Recorders" because all the works record the audience in some way. They are all directly affected by input from those who view it, whether it be voice recordings, pulse measurements or video-footage, all the devices are fitted with a memory so as it records you, you are being exhibited people who viewed it in the past - making the audience integral to the experience.
I'd hate to give anything away because i'd love you all to see it, but one example would be one of the installations (it's name escapes me), which the cover design for the blue flyer below was based on, was room filled with suspended rows and columns of lightbulbs which would appear to be flashing in a random order. However, each row of lights, being systematically moved along every time a new entry was made, was actually based on the heart beats of people who had it measured when they entered the room. Or a series of microphones, which when you spoke into them recorded what you said and then played back to a random recording in one of the potential 60,000 recordings it had made before.
featuring 7 or 8 installations, 2 of which are world premieres and 4 UK premieres, I really would recommend you to go and see it, it definitely gives you food for thought about modern technology, the ethics of surveillance (incidently, did you know the UK was the third most government-watched/spyed/surveyed country in the world, with only the Russian and Chinese governments wtching their population more than the UK), the potantial "cognitive" humantiy of technology and how important the consumer is to the nature of art.
"In Recorders artworks hear, see and feel the public, they exhibit awareness and record and reply memories entirely obtained during the show. The pieces either depends on perticipation to exist or predatorily gather information on the public through surveillance and biometric technologies" Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
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