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Text describing the exhibition, from the exhibition website anaglogueuk.co.uk:
Interventions across Manchester with newly commissioned, inspirational and experimental artefacts that reflect on the invisible sub-structure of data that permeates our world. Featuring physical analogue works growing out of the invisible lines of technological communication in our everyday environment. The city’s networks and rich technological history become a gallery. Digital hubs, conceptual venues and historical hot spots have been selected along specific routes that run from the Northern Quarter via Chinatown and up on Oxford Road. 18 artists and collectives play with the surreal and unexpected, bridge the gaps, map the two spheres and provoke the differences. Their responses to the given theme represent a fascinating kaleidoscope of kinetic devices, ready-made objects, and delicate and decorative sculptures that are imaginative and unique in their very own ways. Resolutely analogue, yet mirroring most recent technological processes that range from mapping via hybrid and mobile media to distortions of the body and models of audience involvement.
My response was to create these stone markings. Contemporary technological symbols are carved onto stones; the symbols themselves have a much older history (even neolithic), thus linking our contemporary culture with our long-standing history as technological beings. My description in the catalogue:
There are mobile phone masts and Wi-Fi networks wherever we walk, especially in central Manchester. Invisible waves flood the atmosphere and power our devices without needing our day-to-day awareness of them. Recent research by Nokia showed that future mobile devices could be charged and even operated by ambient radio waves that are already in the air and would not need any extra energy. Satellites from behind the sky beam down signals to antennas and allocate information through wires in the ground. They activate our devices and we don’t even think about the materials that make them work. We use symbols and references to help us understand this world around us and they are indirectly related to marks that have been used since the beginning of writing. This work consists of a series of stones with carvings of contemporary technological symbols that have a striking resemblance to ancient stone markings found in the British Isles. These stones represent a grounding, linking us to our past and serve as a reminder that we have always been technical.
Sid Volter is a new media artist, finding alternative forms of communication and questioning the function of digital technology.
The symbols mark ethereal forces (such as wireless networks) that are in the air, things that power our devices without our needing to understand how they work, or even think about a satellite beaming signals down to us from space. These are now inverted - they are part of the ground, our history, our roots - the earth instead of the air, representing the materials that our buildings and devices are made of.
Incidently, if anyone reading this is aware of Heidegger's concepts of 'earth' and 'world' I'd appreciate their opinion as to if this qualifies..
A history...
Symbols are often re-used, with or without knowledge of their prior meaning, and it is interesting to see the ones that are used most often and kept within the cultural memory. England in particular - with its long history of different cultures, where runic forms were used via the Anglo-Saxons before being replaced by the Latin Alphabet. Where possible, I have interpreted from the Norse Eddas with the first two. The 'wireless' symbol is self evident, and there appears to be no known 'meaning' to these neolithic markings:
Bluetooth:
The word evidently comes from Harald Bluetooth, or Harald I of Denmark, the symbol being a runic binding of Hagal and Berkanan (HB). The reason being that he united Denmark under one rule, in the way that bluetooth aids communication between devices. Of course the letters themselves are older - hagal meaning 'hail' and berkanan meaning 'birch' so this interpretation can lead further past the intended meaning..
Bluetooth
Mobile Phone signal:
Found on most phones next to the bars to denote signal strength. It looks as if something is coming from the air into the ground, like an antennae. I haven't been able to find the reason why this was used, but probably because of its antennae-shape, like the electricity pylons It has most likely come from Algiz, which means 'elk antlers' - all the more interesting to me for the antennae link. Although it also has a resemblance to the Tau Cross, used in ancient Egypt and later adopted as a Christian symbol - Christ's cross; or even the wooden beams used in some houses. Again, there is this link to 'reception' of some kind - phone signal, God, gods, healing etc.
Algiz
Wireless:
Quite amazingly, some neolithic carvings known as 'cup and ring' markings have an uncanny resemblance to our wireless symbol, which I can only assume is a coincidence. See this link for another example. They are found throughout the British Isles.
Wireless symbol
Cup & ring markings. Image taken from Wikipedia, by Iantresman
