Passen-gers
110 Foundling Court (Entrance 3), Marchmont Street
London
WC1N 1AN
United Kingdom
Passen-gers is pleased to present its first off-site exhibition ‘Language [as] Meta-Technology’ by artist project Disinformation that responds to the site of Sluice HQ, formerly ‘Vision Signs’, a commercial sign-maker in Hackney, East London.
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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 remarked that ‘information can be received only where there is doubt’. The book Rorschach Audio – Art & Illusion for Sound states ‘the earliest form of sound recording technology was not a machine but was written language’.
Disinformation’s site responsive installation Language as Meta- Technology draws from the above references in using 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’.
A selection of other works which resonate with the revelatory and religious associations of the former name of the premises, ‘vision’ ‘signs’ will be also exhibited. Spellbound (2001) is an installation which alludes to ethical dilemmas similar to those explored by the plays Copenhagen (1998) by Michael Frayn and Oppenheimer (2015) by Tom Morton-Smith. Spellbound is an allegorical portrait of nuclear scientist, J Robert Oppenheimer – the ‘sign’ being an image of Robert Oppenheimer’s eye, which appears in an aerial photograph of the ‘lake’ of glass melted into desert sand by the world’s first thermonuclear test. Theophany (2000), meaning the ‘voice of God’ – is a recording of VLF-band radio noise radiated by a single lightning strike: ‘The voice of the Lord strikes with flashes of lightning’ Psalms 29:7. Theophany is the world’s shortest sound installation, lasting just 0.083 seconds.
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Disinformation is an electronic music, arts research and installation art project, whose work focusses on communications, electricity and language – exploring the creative potential of electronic messaging technologies, investigating psychology of perception and illusion, and examining relationships between auditory signs and their visual representations. In describing research that informed the development of early Disinformation artworks, the Australian art journal Discipline described how ‘while other young artists were subscribing to Artforum’, Disinformation producer, ‘Joe [Banks] was devouring journals on defence electronics and communications psychology’.
Disinformation artworks have been described as being ‘visually sophisticated’ and ‘distinctive and intelligent’ by Art Monthly, as ‘actively thrilling’ by the Financial Times, and as ‘mesmerising’ and ‘sublime’ by Aesthetica Magazine. Sound Projector magazine described Disinformation recordings as producing ‘potent drug-like trances of utter black mysteriousness’, while the Metro newspaper described Disinformation as ‘the black-ops unit of the avant-garde’. Disinformation has exhibited at the Hayward Gallery, Freud Museum, ICA and Domo Baal (London), Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge), Talbot Rice (Edinburgh), CCCB (Barcelona), Kiasma (Helsinki) and NIMK (Amsterdam). Disinformation producer Joe Banks has held AHRC funded research posts at the University of Westminster and at Goldsmiths College. rorschachaudio.com
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Please note this is an off-site project that will be hosted by Sluice HQ at the following address: Sluice HQ, 171 Morning Lane, Hackney Central, London E9 6JY
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Passen-gers is a site-specific, curatorial initiative by artist Julie F Hill that explores the historical, social and material context of various sites and architectures. It does this through a core series of site-specific exhibitions and events within the architectural studio of Gauld Architecture in the Brunswick Centre – a grade II listed Modernist residential and shopping centre in Bloomsbury – as well as an off-site series and public programme. www.passen-gers.co.uk
Gauld Architecture is an architectural practice based in the Brunswick Centre who are interested in encouraging wider discussions about the built environment. www.gauldarchitecture.com
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Sluice – run by artists and curators – assumes the form of a collaborative, provocative artwork. The authors of which are everyone that comes into contact with the project. Sluice strategically adopts structures in order to showcase artist, curator and emergent discourse, projects and galleries. Currently Sluice exists as a biennial fair, an international expo, a biannual magazine and a gallery known as SluiceHQ. sluice.info