Artists Statement
PARTNER EXHIBITION 28 July, 9:30pm till late. 72-13 Mohamed Sultan Road. Free admission
SPEKTR! is a unique performance in which tactical media workers conduct an audiovisual ‘mapping’ of the electromagnetic spectrum to create sound and video landscapes. The events begin at dusk as the sun sets, and often end at dawn as the sun re-emerges as the ascendant in the radio sky.
88 frequency zones will be mapped in real-time, structured together with a fifteen-year archive of digital and analogue signals that the artists have been collecting from all over the globe. For Singapore, the team will concentrate on the prolific output of electromagnetism created by the dynamics of world trade, shipping, aviation and control systems along the Straits of Malacca
The SPEKTR! structure is based on the filing of the U.S. Patent 2,292,387, that was granted to avant-garde composer George Antheil and Hedy Kiesler Markey (a.k.a. Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr) in 1942. This early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies and was intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect. The idea was not used until 1962, when it was deployed by U.S. military ships during the Cuba blockade. Today their frequency-hopping idea serves as the basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology used in devices ranging from cordless telephones to WiFi Internet connections.
Artists: DelRay (Matthew Biederman), Brian Springer, Nullo (Aljosa Abrahamsberg) and MX (Marko Peljhan) . DelRay, Nullo, Springer and MX have collaborated in different settings since 1995. rx-tx.org
- Marko Peljhan (aka MX) is the founder of Projekt Atol, co-founder of LJUDMILA (Ljubljana Lab) and the main mover behind the Makrolab projects. As well as award-winning art projects and installations, he has developed flight and spaceflight based systems, has flight directed art/science related research at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Moscow since 1999 and is one of the founders of MIR (Microgravity Interdisciplinary Research consortium). He is currently associate professor in interdisciplinary studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
- Matthew Biederman (aka DelRay) has been performing, installing and exhibiting works which explore themes of cut-up electronic image delivery, media saturation, and data systems since the mid nineties. His installations have been exhibited in the US, South America, and Europe_ Currently, his artistic operation is set up in exile in Montreal, Canada.
- Brian Springer is a media artist whose work explores ways in which new communications technologies redefine notions of public space and private enterprise. He has exploited social and technological loopholes, extracting images, sounds and data from within traditionally dosed systems of power. His 1995 documentary Spin uses unpackaged and uncensored satellite news feeds to offer a behind-the-scenes look at the American political process. In his recent work, Springer has strategized methods for recovering hidden information from digital text files and is active in the Antioch Papers network.
- Aljosa Abrahamsberg (aka Nullo) has been active as an electronic soundscape creator since the mid-80s in Slovenia, where he has started with a band/project entitled Sound Experiment of Film. He has created soundtracks for a variety of films, videos and performances, among others the Egoritmi and Atol series with Peljhan in 1992/1993 and has been collaborating in the Projekt Atol Signal-Sever!, Spektr! and Scatter! performances since 2001.
Co-produced by PROJEKT ATOL and RX-TX. Supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, City of Ljubljana Cultural Department, Canada Council, City of Nova Gorica Cultural Department and Euroinvest d.o.o. The project was commissioned by AV Festival 08 in March 2008.