Walking through the desert to where technology meets art
HE synergy between art and technology is exemplified in Irish artist, John Gerrard’s exhibit, Exercise (Dunhuang), which is on show at UCC’s Glucksman Gallery as part of Boolean Expressions.
This exhibition reveals how artists use logic and technology. Gerrard’s three-screen piece portrays a simulated maze-like desert landscape populated with the avatars of 38 Chinese factory workers, traversing the arid territory in different directions based on the algorithms used in GPS systems.
The dynamic in this scene is a type of competition. Occasionally, two of the characters meet and the winner is the one that has walked the furthest, in the shortest length of time. The winner continues to walk while the loser simply sits down. The last man standing is the winner in this perpetual ‘game’.
Shake off that #fridayfeeling by viewing John Gerrard's amazing Exercise (Dunhuang) @glucksman from 3pm. #gaming #art pic.twitter.com/0Xui1OggUp
— UCC Ireland (@UCC) July 24, 2015
Gerrard’s background is in sculpture. “In the mid 1990s, I made a commitment to computing and particularly real time 3D which originated in the military with the use of flight simulators and battle simulations. It was then used in popular culture through virtual gaming.”
Describing his triptych in the Glucksman, Gerrard says it is a portrait. “Everything you see exists. The workers exist in what’s known as residential production facilities. They get up in the morning, form a squadron and march into a factory where they work until 7pm. They’re fed in the factory and there’s an 11pm curfew. Sites such as this are where computers are produced.
“In the west, they’re considered to be progressive places. All our social media devices are made in these places, in environments that are quite regressive in terms of rights and people’s ability to move through the world. This particular work is a portrait of a found place which is a military facility in the Gobi Desert. It was cut into the landscape by the Chinese military. I travelled to this place although I wasn’t allowed to access the site.”
John Gerrard is showing his work Exercise (Dunhuang) in Ireland for the first time at Boolean Expressions @glucksman pic.twitter.com/N6AbeyDKNe
— UCC Ireland (@UCC) July 23, 2015
Gerrard and his team commissioned an American satellite imaging company to scan the landscape from space. The image was produced to be understood by a computer. Gerrard and a colleague travelled daily to Guanzhou (the third biggest city in China) to try and recruit a group of industrial workers involved in producing computing objects.
“It wasn’t very easy. For some reason, they thought we were pornographers. Finally, we managed to source 38 workers. The reason we wanted 38 workers is because the maze-like grid has that number of exit points. We wanted to place a character at each of these points.”
The first work in #BooleanExpressions is an equation handwritten by George Boole #GB200Art @UCC @georgeboole200 pic.twitter.com/em8iFxJLeY
— The Glucksman (@glucksman) August 9, 2015
Each of the workers was asked to walk, sit and wait and be videoed, providing a portfolio from which Gerrard worked. He enlisted renowned Cork-born Beckett actor, Conor Lovett, performer Emmanuel Obeya and dancer Esther Balfe, to create a simulation of the human body that is forlorn, comic and mortal.
“The work of the performers gave this very cold virtual work almost a soul, a sort of emotional impact. What I have provided for the public is a piece of perpetual theatre. As I was preparing for this work, I paid very close attention to Beckett because, in a way, this simulation is a very interesting place to take the legacy of Beckett. It’s a world and a stage on which pointless endless actions unfold for real.
“When people stand in front of the piece, their relationship is to a figure walking on an ambiguous site. At the heart of computing is, like surveillance, tirelessness. In a way, the characters are post human. They will never tire, they will never end the game.”
Boolean Expressions: Contemporary Art and Mathematical Data is at the Glucksman Gallery, UCC, until Nov 8.
