Swarm Piece #4 [2022]
Click on the blue screen below on your personal devices and access Swarm Piece #4 to participate.
This version of Swarm Piece is virtual, internet hosted sound work. It will allow your device to play its own sound as generated by the game, at a pace and volume dictated by it - it will never repeat itself.
As the work has no ‘actual’ presence it requires participants to dip in and out of materialising the sounds, together or apart, anywhere on the planet, and at any time. It needs no special apparatus or particular space - just internet access and a device capable of emitting a sound.
This is just one of a series of works of which the aim is to investigate the overlaps and gaps between digital and analogue worlds as they exist and increasingly mesh together in everyday life.
Defining the term ‘media’ for my work is important. The dictionary would tell you it is ‘the means of communication’ - I would like to further define it as something that stretches more completely into the human psyche and affects the way we behave, how we live, and maybe more fundamentally how we think - the very language we use in our heads. They are an extension of ourselves.
In my work I hope to explore the changing structures presented by new digital media emerging over the last 30 years, both by utilising ubiquitous ‘new’ media and tools at my disposal, but also by exploring the new relationships forming with ‘old’ media. By applying this approach I hope to uncover new realities of our contemporary world, which are maybe all too often hidden by preconceptions and the overwhelming sea of data and content.
One might think you need a VR headset to access a window into virtual worlds and metaverses. The concept of an ‘internet of things’ has been around since the 1980s - and now more than ever that is a growing presence changing the very architecture of how we live and think - no headsets needed.