Stephen Cornford - Archipelago | Exhibition Berlin

[WCrap]

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STEPHEN CORNFORD
ARCHIPELAGO

Kinetic Sound-Sculptures

Exhibition:
January 11 - February 8, 2014

Opening Reception:
Saturday, January 11, 4-9pm

Rumpsti Pumsti (Musik)
Am Treptower Park 17, Berlin 12435
http://www.Rumpsti-Pumsti.com





Stephen Cornford (b.1979) is a British sound-artist, sculptor, and performer of experimental electronic
music. His work stems from an abiding fascination with consumer audio electronics: how these devices
that we are sold to consume music and images increasingly frame our engagement with the audio-
visual world at large. Reconfiguring these media from the inside, re-imagining their functionality,
defying their obsolescence and searching for their intrinsic poetry are for him strategies with which
to challenge normative use, social conformity and the myth of technological progress.

ARCHIPELAGO (2013) is a sculpture for more than 50 portable CD players. The work inverts their normal
role as the source of audio, turning them instead into receptors of sound: ears. In doing so the work
asks how these machines might behave were they able to hear. Electromagnetic recordings of the
machines are played back into their motors, causing them to twitch, tremble and spin unpredictably.
These mechanised spasms are then amplified through an array of small speakers encircling them. The
abandoned portable stereos of the past, a technology designed to enable solitude and isolation in even
the most crowded of spaces, are transformed into a network of nervous electronic eavesdroppers.
Visually reminiscent of a model cityscape or biological test laboratory, Archipelago subjects domestic
technology to the pressures of urban dwelling.

Additionally to ARCHIPELAGO this exhibition presents two of Stephen Cornford’s previous works:

FIVE INTROVERTED MACHINES (2012), a small piece for five identical first generation cassette players.
The tape head of each machine is detached and extended allowing each machine to probe its own
electromagnetic emissions, in an uncanny display of self-awareness.

IN SEARCH OF A CONCRETE MUSIC (2010) is a composite digital scan of all the individual components
of a Grundig TK5 reel to reel tape machine. Similar to the exploded diagrams of a service manual,
it maps the three dimensional space within the machine from left to right across the page with real
parts which all show signs of use and age. Rather than illustrating the machine’s functionality, our
understanding of its operation is confounded by the isolation of the parts, the internal speaker is the
sole clue remaining.


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[lukaz]

totally recommend this if you are in Berlin ... i was lucky and privileged enough to be involved in the first showing of Archipelago on Sonica Festival in Ljubljana ...

[fslmy]

I'd love to hear more about Stephen's ideas on the 'myth of technological progress' I enjoy his work immensely but I'm not sure how it challenges that area exactly or what he is trying to say.

[Charon]

I'd love to hear more about Stephen's ideas on the 'myth of technological progress' I enjoy his work immensely but I'm not sure how it challenges that area exactly or what he is trying to say.

artspeak?

regardless, it looks like a great exhibition, would love to see it.

[Hayao Yamaneko]

If it is artspeak (whatever values you want to attach to that) then I think that's one of the more honest and clear examples doing the rounds. I'd say Stephen is pretty notable as someone whose work integrates ideas and material pretty closely and who doesn't really ever make claims for his work that stretch credibility.

A quick, dirty and reductive take on it (obviously not Stephen's):
Most of his work focuses on technologies either recently obsolete or in the process of becoming obsolete - in itself this points up the tendency of technological progress to create abundant waste, which is, kind of implicitly, a critique of the fairly clean and lubricated notion of progress we tend to receive.

Also there's a tradition that sees technology as defined by a rigid, experience-narrowing kind of purposiveness. The notion I guess is that our experience is mediated by our technologies, and that modern technologies aim for an illusion of transparency, making themselves and their mediations invisible.
When those aspects are combined - the purposive, resource-centric nature of technology becomes an almost invisible and difficult to resist part of our experience and framing of the world.

Quite obviously, a lot of Stephen's work uses objects against their purpose, at the edges of their normal functioning, where their errors and non-purposive qualities - the things that exceed and interfere with their design intent and the ideal of transparent mediation - are foregrounded.
These are presented for aesthetic engagement, serving an end other than the originally intended uses of their components, while at the same time making their link to the original heavily intentional objects very clear.

So while it's not like the works present arguments against technology in any linguistic sense, they do seem to me to be meaningful and critical interventions in our relationship with technology and technological progress.