English

Net#1 (Airbrick)

Digital Dialogues

Test Bed | 19 September 2009 - 11 November 2009

Digital Dialogues comprise artists duo Darren Williams and Jason Davies. Using scanned images of objects to initiate conversations between themselves and their audience, they open up ideas around participation, drawing and sculpture. Net#1(Airbrick) is part of a series of works entitled World of Forms.

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‘Digital Dialogues’ comprise artists duo Darren Williams and Jason Davies. Whilst living in different locations, Williams and Davies developed the idea of collaborating by creating work through a process of email exchange to explore aspects of communication.

Using scanned images of objects to initiate conversations between themselves and their audience, they open up ideas around participation, drawing and sculpture. Net#1(Airbrick) is part of a series of works entitled World of Forms and illustrates the artists’ working processes and their interest in exposing the construction and outcome of dialogue and collaboration.

For Net#1(Airbrick), the artists sent visual files of a scanned airbrick back and forth to each other. The electronic file was accompanied with no or little information or instruction so that the receiver had to attempt to understand the sender’s intentions and to extract meaning. This simple procedure exposes the potential for miscommunication and the complexities inherent in conversation. At the same time, this technology exposes the potential for liberation away from working in each other’s physical presence and freeing the artists from the prejudices induced by appearance and behaviour.

Through a process of scanning, the understanding and reality of the original object shifted from its physical reality to a new pictorial reality. The final printed image on card now invites the gallery visitor to re-create a form of a brick from a visual representation. The final outcome of the work is therefore given over to the viewer. After constructing a brick each person is invited to place it within the inFOCUS space and, as additional bricks are made, the viewer can organise or re-organise the bricks in any way to create an evolving structure for the duration of the show.

The artists met whilst enrolled on the MA Fine Art course at University of Wales in Cardiff in 2004. They were part of a smaller peer group who discussed issues around art and technology, forms of communication and limitations within an artistic framework, ie. lack of space, capital, time etc. Due to their geographical separation their communication outside the course was extended by phone and email. This verbal and text-based dialogue evolved slowly over the course of time into a pictorial dialogue precipitating the collaboration they have since been involved in which places ‘communication’ at its core.

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