“A library is a machine for organising knowledge”
“If you want to hear the dead talk, visit a library”
The Disinformation project’s “Language [as] Meta-Technology” exhibition was staged in November 2018, as the first event in the Passen-gers Offsite series, at the Sluice HQ exhibition space in Hackney, East London (see links). The second exhibition, “Uncertain Ruins” by Julie F. Hill, was staged at Swiss Cottage Central Library (the iconic modernist library designed by architect Basil Spence) from October 2019 to January 2020. The events series for “Uncertain Ruins” featured a “Language [as] Meta-Technology” lecture – a short talk, followed by extracts read from “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco and “The Book of Sand” by Jorge Luis Borges – on 5 November 2019. The core ideas from the original installation were discussed in that talk and in the “Uncertain Ruins” publication, launched on 9 January 2020. As documented in that publication, the “Language [as] Meta-Technology” sound installation uses cutting-edge commercial voice synthesis technology to articulate a number of propositions and aphorisms…
1. “The earliest form of sound recording technology was not a machine, but was written language”
2. “Language is meta-technology. Language is the technology that contains all others”
3. “The ultimate form of communications technology is language itself”
4. “Art is not necessarily science, but science is always art”
5. “All literature and poetry are forms of sonic art”
6. “All artworks are psychology experiments”
7. “Words themselves are weapons of sound”
8. “The medium is not the message”
9. “Speech itself is an art form”
Extrapolating the architect and town-planner Le Corbusier’s assertion that “a house is a machine for living”, the article also argues that since “the intersection between architecture and language… manifests in the form of a library”, therefore “a library is a machine for organising knowledge”. Since (as stated) the “earliest form of sound recording technology… was written language”, extrapolating the critique of so-called Electronic Voice Phenomena (ghost voice) recording put forward in the “Rorschach Audio” project, the article also states that “if you want to hear the voices of the deceased, talking to you, personally, then read books” – so “if you want to hear the dead talk, visit a library”. The publication features contributions from artists Joe Banks, Crystal Bennes, Thom Bridge, Libby Heaney, Julie F. Hill, Paula Smolarska, Mark Siebert and Mary Yacoob, from programmer Doug Neal, and from cosmologist and statistician Dr Roberto Trotta. Thanks to everyone who came to the events!
Buy the book – https://www.passen-gers.co.uk/uncertainruinspublication
36pp soft-back with inserts and jacket – ISBN 978-0-9572687-5-3
https://rorschachaudio.com/2018/11/12/language-as-meta-technology/
Disinformation performed at the Bibliotèque Solvay, Brussels, 29 Oct 2000 and a “Rorschach Audio” talk took place at the British Library, London, 28 June 2013.
Artworks + Texts Copyright © Joe Banks
The Disinformation video installations “Spellbound” [aka “An Allegorical Portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer”] (2001) and “Ammonite” (2009) featured in the “Light | Sensitive | Material” conference at the University of West London, 1st to 2nd November 2019. Both works were exhibited on rotation throughout the conference – “Spellbound” as part of an artists’ showreel, featuring work by Verity Adriana, Disinformation, Sylvia Grace Borda, Tim Daly, Karel Doing, Rebecca Goddard, David Kendall, Vrinda Seksaria, Carolin Lange, Joseph Moore, Andrea Muendelein, Sam Nightingale, Paul Proctor, Sonya Robinson and Ana Teresa Vicente; while the “Ammonite” exhibit played-out “solo” – as a self-contained, split-screen installation, displayed across two broadcast monitors. Special thanks to Michelle Henning and Theresa Mikuriya for programming the artworks.
The conference also included papers by Abelardo Gil-Fournier, Daniel Rubinstein, Elizabeth Howie, Howard Caygill, Joel McKim, Kim Knowles, Lara Thompson, Laura Marks, Liz Watkins, Lucy Mensah, Michelle Henning, Niharika Dinkar, Ohad Zehavi, Paul Frosh, Peter Bennett, Peter Buse, Pierre Pernuit, Stephen Turner, Susanna Collinson, Theresa Mikuriya, Tomas Dvorak, Tonje Sorenson and Victor dos Reis.
Click on “Artist Programme” – https://www.uwl.ac.uk/light-sensitive-material
“Spellbound” also screened at the Moving Image Salon, Film & Video Umbrella, London, 13 Sept 2019.
International Lawns + Disinformation + the Rural College of Art
Friday 5 July to Sun 28 July 2019
11am to 6pm Fridays to Sundays
Closed Mondays to Thursdays
White Box Gallery
5 Hare & Billet Road
Blackheath
London SE3 0RB
Opening reception Friday 5 July 6pm to 8pm
In his essay “Meanings of Landscape” (“Places of the Mind”, RKP 1949) the critic and curator Geoffrey Grigson described how “some people have ignored the personal factor” in writing on landscape art, and have attempted “to deduce from landscape rules of its own aesthetic”, describing the influence on art (and on art writing) of “a romantic pastime of English travellers in the eighteenth century” who sought to postulate “a kind of psychology divorced from the individual soul”. Particularly in response to the work of the painter John Constable, “Places of the Mind” proposed the alternate hypotheses that “landscape is you and me”, discussing how “we project ourselves” into an actual or painted landscape, “which then reflects our own being back to our eyes”.
https://www.domobaal.com/artists/international-lawns-bio.html
https://www.domobaal.com/artists/david-gates-bio.html
Exhibition Guide – https://tinyurl.com/y4f3z3xe
https://www.instagram.com/internationallawns/
https://www.instagram.com/xxruralxx/
Exhibition dates, Weds 21 Nov to Sun 2 Dec 2018
Fri to Sun 12 to 5pm (or by appointment)
Launch / reception, Sat 24 Nov, 6pm
Closing event, Sun 2 Dec, 3pm
Sluice HQ (formerly Vision Signs)
171 Morning Lane
Hackney Central
London E9 6JY
The philosopher C.W. Morris defined semiotics as “the science of signs”, the writer Umberto Eco stated that “semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie”, and the telecommunications theorist Colin Cherry stated that “information can be received only where there is doubt”. For the first instalment of the Passen-gers project off-site series, electronic music and installation art project Disinformation visits the Sluice HQ exhibition space – the former workshop of Vision Signs, a former commercial sign-maker in Hackney, East London – to present a series of audio-visual exhibits, archival presentations and installation artworks. The book “Rorschach Audio – Art & Illusion for Sound” states that “the earliest form of sound recording technology was not a machine but was written language”, and the “Language as Meta-Technology” installations use a variety of speech recording, speech synthesis, psychoacoustics research and speech coding technologies to articulate (among other propositions) the hypothesis that “language is the technology that contains all others”.
Best Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/p/BqvC4DllqL2/
Passengers Offsite – http://www.passen-gers.co.uk
Exhibition Guide – https://tinyurl.com/y7bv6ayp
