Von: Rumpsti Pumsti (Musik)
Betreff: Exhibition: Stephen Cornford
Datum: 5. Januar 2014 15:12:22 MEZ
STEPHEN CORNFORD
ARCHIPELAGO
Kinetic Sound-Sculptures
Exhibition:
January 11 – February 8, 2014
Opening Reception:
Saturday, January 11, 4-9pm
Stephen Cornford’s work stems from an abiding fascination with consumer audio electronics: how these devices that we are sold to consume music and images increasingly frame our engagement with the audio-visual world at large. Reconfiguring these media from the inside, re-imagining their functionality, defying their obsolescence and searching for their intrinsic poetry are for him strategies with which to challenge normative use, social conformity and the myth of technological progress.
ARCHIPELAGO, Cornford’s latest work, is a sculpture for more than 50 portable CD players. The work inverts their normal role as the source of audio, turning them instead into receptors of sound: ears. In doing so the work asks how these machines might behave were they able to hear.
Electromagnetic recordings of the machines are played back into their motors, causing them to twitch, tremble and spin unpredictably. These mechanised spasms are then amplified through an array of small speakers encircling them. The abandoned portable stereos of the past, a technology designed to enable solitude and isolation in even the most crowded of spaces, are transformed into a network of nervous electronic eavesdroppers. Visually reminiscent of a model cityscape or biological test laboratory, Archipelago subjects domestic technology to the pressures of urban dwelling.
Additionally to ARCHIPELAGO this exhibition will show FIVE INTROVERTED MACHINES (2012), a small piece for five identical first generation cassette players. The tape head of each machine is detached and extended allowing each machine to probe its own electromagnetic emissions, in an uncanny display of self-awareness.
Rumpsti Pumsti (Musik)
Am Treptower Park 17 – Berlin 12435
Donnerstag & Freitag 15-20 Uhr
Samstag 13-18 Uhr & nach Vereinbarung
Tel +49 (0)30 28860615
http://www.Rumpsti-Pumsti.com
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