'Old Media' season at Arnolfini, Bristol

LoveLetters_1.0. MUC=Resurrection 2009

Last week I had a rather lovely day trip to Bristol to collect my drawing from the Centrespace Gallery that was in their October Big Draw exhibition, and to visit the exhibitions in the 'Old Media' season at the Arnolfini.  The series of exhibitions and events explore 'outdated' technologies, and how this media related to society at the time of its use.  The current exhibitions include 'Fun with Software', 'Coal Fired Computers and Tantalum Memorial' and 'Status Project' run until 21st November (11am  - 6pm, excluding mondays). 

The largest, and most engaging group exhibition, 'Fun with Software', does what it says on the tin.  The curator, Olga Goriunova, a Senior Lecturer in Media Practices at London Metropolitan University presents a range of works by artists; David Link, Erik Thiele, Christoph Haag, Martin Rumori, Franziska Windisch & Ludwig Zeller, Harwood, JODI, Shulgin/Laskin; and the RunMe archive that explore humourous approaches to software and processing. 

'Open Circuit', Christoph Haag, Martin Rumori, FranziskaWindisch and Ludwig Zeller

'Open Circuit', is an interactive sound installation, whereby participants can move speakers around a large scale open track circuit that pick up signals of "everyday sounds".  I particularly enjoyed the formal aesthetics of this work, which the audience were able to play around with creating sounds upon the copper tracks.

'London.pl' is a series of large digital prints that rewrite William Blake's London in Perl.Perl programming language.  The language of Blake's original poem is translated into codes and comments.  The most imposing work in  the exhibition through scale and production value is 'LoveLetters_1.0 MUC=Resurrection by David Link - which is reproduction of the Ferranti Mark 1 industrial computer with a built in random generator that produces love letters.  Members of the public can use the software to generate a love letter, which will then be projected onto the wall in the main entrance to the gallery.

'Status Project', Heath Bunting



On the upper gallery, Heath Bunting, who lives and works in Bristol, presents 'Status Project' - work from an ongoing project that seeks to document notions of class systems and identity, through information that is held in administrative databases for the multitudes of organisations and institutions we must be involved with to live our lives as a citizen.  The mapping languages used by Bunting in the large scale recreate interesting topologies of our categorised identities from minor and major personal and commercial decisions.