Title: Parallel Realities: Entropy Through Black Matter 2014.

How can new technologies give insight into a different way of thinking about, and representing the world?

This digital artwork uses networked cameras to produce a real-time experience of multiple places linking them together virtually. What you see in the artwork are real time images from surveillance cameras from each location sourced from over ninety networked cameras all fused into one real time visual artwork experience. Black and white photos from the past and present in the same three locations are also merged into the visual narrative creating a generative process. This artwork links three famous coal mining areas or 'Black Countries'; Dudley in England, Bytom in Poland, and Charleroi in Belgium.

The process revealed is of constant change and re-generation. The artwork creates what the artist Stanza calls a “Parallel Reality”, merging multiple experiences of the same place into one fused realisation. The vision you see is constantly changing, ongoing and moving forward in time. With or without your participation this artwork is constantly changing forever or until the system breaks down. This artwork sits in the middle of a romantic reflection about the hard working industrial past and a future when the whole concept of work may become obsolete. The series of “live” data streams alternately stutters in and out of existence and flow into abstract patterns and textures. As a generative work, it calls into question the fixed perspectives of other types of media. This is a digital artwork using computer code to capture images. A generative algorithm presents the images to the screen. To view the online version you need shockwave installed.

The Gallery Version installation consists of three computers and three 48 inch screens, cables and internet connection.

How / Technology

This is a digital artwork using computer code to capture images. This continues the series Stanza has been working on sicne 2001. A generative algorithm presents the images to the screen where they get manipulated and controlled into the aesthetic experience you see.

Exhibition

Wolverhamton Art Gallery September 2014
Kronika Centre For Modern Art. Bytom In Poland 2014

Keywords: Online, net art, artwork, system, networked, surveillance, real time.

Commissioned by Wolverhampton Art Gallery.

On show at Wolverhamton Art Gallery 2014

As part of the research and development for this project I spent some time in the Black Country and also visited Bytom in Poland.

Bytom is a city in Silesia in southern Poland, an area that shares many characteristics with the Black Country. The landscape has been shaped by its coal and steel industries and major automotive manufacturers. Today the area is forging a new post-industrial identity.

After consultancy with staff at Kronika Centre For Modern Art I arranged trips to several mines in the area. I also learnt the town of Bytom is actually sinking because of the mining techniques used. It seemd like an odd tourist destination but I decided to walk to and visit these sinking sites in Bytom. One area of the town has completely collapsed; literally. It's almost as if the town has been forgotten and is being absorbed back into the earth. Despite this obsolescence it doesn't stop its creative use. Playing among the rubble smiling children would pop up from all directions. I had an entourage of fifteen kids amazed that I had visited from London they stood in the bricks and rubble waving me goodbye as I walked off.

Some of the live cameras before capture

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