25th September to 22nd November 2010
http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/
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Old Media Season
Arnolfini presents a season of exhibitions, film, music and performance entitled Old Media. The theme investigates redundant technologies, and considers their cultural and political relationship to their time. Over the last few years, artists have been revisiting old technology, and this season looks to consider the reasons behind the impulse for using such media, despite being seen today as outmoded.
Heath Bunting’s Status Project looks at contemporary understandings of class systems for human beings and their management. Bunting has produced a significant number of maps as well as personal portraits that look at networks of influence and mobility; and are representations of the self in terms of their relationship to the UK’s administrative systems.
Bunting who lives and works in Bristol considers our identity as something that is constructed, and believes that there are three main levels that determine class status today. The exhibition will display a large number of status maps created by the artist available for viewing.
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David Link, Erik Thiele, Christoph Haag, Martin Rumori, Franziska Windisch & Ludwig Zeller, Harwood, JODI, Shulgin/Laskin; and the RunMe archive.
Fun with Software looks at the history of software, and its relation to humour and fun.
Making and using software can be experimental, humorous, and eventful. Alongside today’s rather dull use of forms, databases, schedules and processors, an element of fun has informed and guided the development of software from its beginnings. A good example of this is Love Letter Generator, conceived in the 1950s by one of the first programmers, Christopher Strachey, working with Alan Turing at Manchester University on one of the first computers, and reconstructed in this exhibition by David Link. This exhibition follows the development of software over the last fifty years through playful experimentation and art.
Curated by Olga Goriunova, Senior Lecturer in Media Practices at London Metropolitan University.
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Media artists YoHa (Matsuko Yokokoji and Graham Harwood) present their Coal Fired Computer. This recent work responds to the displacement of coal production to emerging economic superpowers like India and China after the UK miners’ strike in the 80s. Coal Fired Computer also reflects on the complexities of our global fossil fuel reliance as well as the histories of labour and industrialisation.
Alongside this is Tantalum Memorial, produced by Harwood, Wright & Yokokoji. This work is a telephony-based memorial to the people who have died as a result of the coltan wars in the Congo.
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