Category: hi-tech

Social distancing – Week 11: The state of our lives

 

In the past weeks, we saw people dying from a new virus. We locked ourselves in our homes and started wearing masks to protect us and our beloved. We started working remotely, and everything went digital. We met on Zoom and had virtual dinners with friends. Exhibitions and art fairs have been converted into VR. Private views happened online. Museum collections have been made accessible to the public online. Gallerists, artists, critics, and collectors talked on live streams. Podcasts and online Yoga sessions boomed. Many of us lost their jobs. Many of us have been furloughed. Nearly two million people claimed Universal Credits. Air transport has been stopped, and planes grounded. We pledged for the universal basic income. We mourned for the killing of George Floyd.  “Please, I can’t breathe” reached the ears of the whole world but the ones of his murderer, the policeman Derek Chauvin. Rage stirred up our hearts. We flooded the streets to protest in support on BLM and against systemic racism. We tore down colonialist monuments of slave-traders. City officials boarded up monuments in London to prevent further damage. Far-right supporters arrived in London to counteract BLM protesters. Protecting British monuments was their pretence. “All lives can’t matter until black lives matter”. We have been alone but together. Parks are full of litter and oceans of plastic. Climate change and global warming are still happening. Our planet is still in an emergency. Now we are preparing for the reopening. Lockdown rules have been relaxed. From Monday, some art Galleries will open again by appointment only. We keep using masks. Planes are still mainly grounded. Anyone entering the UK has to self-isolate for 14 days. France closes its borders to Britons reciprocally. BA, Easy Jet, and Ryanair combined to sue the government over the quarantine. The country GDP reached its lowest record in history (-20% in April). Recession is knocking. Brexit trade meetings are ongoing. Turmoil is the state in which we live.

Social distancing – Week 9: “Piper in the Woods”, an online exhibition

After having visited tons of online exhibitions and VR rooms, I found one show that finally made use of the digital space acknowledging its dimensional characteristics. “Piper in the Woods” (live until 15th June 2020) is an online group show responding to the pandemic organized by the art platform Isthisit?, curated by its founder and director Bob Bicknell-Knight.

Piper in the Woods screenshot
Piper in the Woods screenshot

The exhibition presents five videos and one sound work by five artists – John Butler, Stine Deja, Emily Mulenga, Tamsin Snow and Petra Szemán. The works look at possible futures in which technology and AI impact and govern our daily lives. As Bicknell-Knight explains in the press release, the show takes its title from the 1953 short story of the same name by Philip K Dick.

Imagination_195302_cover taken from Piper in the Woods - Wikipedia
Imagination_cover taken from Piper in the Woods – Wikipedia

The science-fiction plot sees an army doctor, Henry Harris, examining the strange behaviour of several soldiers who, after returning to the Earth from an expedition to asteroid Y-3, claim they have become plants. With this belief, the soldiers stopped working and passed their time in the sun, like plants, meditating about how work is unnecessary and even harmful for our well-being. The story is part of the display and can be read on the left of the screen while navigating the exhibition space.

The videos are arranged to use the space horizontally rather than vertically. Thus, the exhibition occupies a space that goes outside the borders of a standard web page. The background is white mimicking both the white cube gallery space and, as the curator explains, “the soldiers’ deviation from the norm and into the unknown forest.” The only environmental feature in the room is given by the loop of “Last Resort” (2020), a sound work by Stine Deja which accompanies the visitor’s journey by offering the acoustic ambience.

The artists’ works tell the stories of individuals who, in a hi-tech world, spend their lives in solitude with no or little interaction with other humans. “Piper in the Woods” introduces us to a series of unappealing scenarios which, in this time, seems more likely to happen than ever before.

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