Textually Active with Driftingspace

Gabrielle Hoad  - Data roll

Textually Active took place at Karst, Plymouth on 10 April 2014 with contributions from Tabatha Andrews, Sally Hall, Jason Hirons, Gabrielle Hoad, Rosie King, Holly Knowles and Steven Paige. Fifty-five people attended.

For the event, I considered source data from my flight mapping project (generated by glider pilot Rowan Smith and research scientist Dr Steven Portugal) as text. This included transcribing two seconds of pigeon flight data through automated text-to-voice software and presenting it alongside animated archive images of bird flight by E.J. Marey from the early 1890s.

The session focused on seeing, hearing and holding data (printed out as a roll) which allowed us to appreciate the its rhythms, its sheer quantity and density, and also its narrative qualities (it describes a connected series of events). But, despite their precision, numeric co-ordinates are too abstract for ordinary human comprehension when presented this way. They have to be translated and contextualised. 

Common themes emerged from the evening around data, surveillance, linear progression (narratives), digital processes (binary states), rule-based works, and measurement of space and time.  Details of the other artists' work can be found here.

Textually Active provides a critical space for debate and performative practices in Plymouth and the South West of England. Curated and run by Driftingspace, a collaborative art practice, it's an ad hoc, nomadic event running cultural activities that incorporate art, performance, installation, and writing.

Art that isn't looking away #4

Emily Speed Littoral Zone - Plymouth Arts Centre

I had a bit of a moan a while back about the art world's seemingly wilful attempt to distract us from the big issues confronting the planet. However, there are two excellent exhibitions in Devon galleries at the moment that run counter to this trend.

S Mark Gubb's 'History is Written by the Winners' at Exeter Phoenix (28 March -10 May 2014) draws widely on the social and political culture of the 1980s and 1990s -- from fake Libyan hit squads (supposedly sent by Colonel Gaddafi to assassinate President Reagan in 1981) to conspiracy theories about the assassination of President Kennedy. The most prominent work (possibly because its familiar smell pervades the entire gallery) is A New Physics Based on Nightmares. This invites you to prepare Pot Noodles while timing your snack against the four-minute launch protocols for a nuclear attack.

Reading the gallery blurb is a must to get the best from this show - it's definitely art that needs commentary. Amusing yet pointed, it encourages a healthy scepticism about the structures of modern power.

Emily Speed 'Littoral Zone' at  Plymouth Arts Centre (22 March - 25 May 2014) is a much gentler, subtler show that takes its name from the unstable, liminal space between the high and low tide marks. Exploiting a small, gloomy gallery space to maximum effect, Speed uses projections, sound, sculpture and airstreams to create a space reminiscent of the drippy, dark, decaying spaces under a British seaside pier. There's a sense of shelter but also of vulnerability.

An improvised structure of timber and draped fabric (with feet of clay) is used as a rippling, unstable canvas for film of people doggedly erecting windbreaks on a bleak and breezy South Devon beach.  It's matched by images of sea defences and empty sands, and suggests our noble yet ultimately futile struggle against time, tide and the elements.

With the main railway link to Devon and Cornwall only recently re-opened after catastrophic sea damage, this work seems perfectly timed and perfectly placed.