Transformations
Above: Overview photo of the exhibition Transformations. Click to view more.
Transformations was an exhibition at Borough Road Gallery, London on the 23rd, 26th – 30th of June 2017.
The exhibition Transformations proposed a contemporary art practice that employed as its premise the role of networks as transformative. This practice, termed networked art, defines networks as more than just technological constructs. Equally manifesting themselves within and across a number of social, cultural, biological and financial domains, networks within networked art become all at once a means, site and context for artistic initiation, creation and discourse to engage with these domains.
Defined by a conceptual framework the practice of networked art involves two stages, arrangement and behaviour. Artist, artwork element, that is forms or concepts that compose the artwork, and observer-user, a term that combines observer from pre-digital practice with user from digital practice, are defined as nodes by the framework. The nodes are arranged in various configurations by the artist to create a networked artwork. The subsequent behaviour between nodes produces what is in effect a performative artwork.
Transformations presented a series of networked artworks conceived on this basis over a four-year period. This included:
- Sculptures for Distant Places
- The Distinction Between Here and There, Now and Then
- Transformations: Actions to Matter / Matter to Actions
- Auction Action ? Commission an Artwork
- Tran$actions
- A network of people who attended an exhibition and contributed to the creation of this work
- This is Real Virtuality
- We Entomb Memoir
- Remote Encounters: Connecting bodies, collapsing spaces and temporal ubiquity in networked performance
Each artwork provides an example of transformation. This includes the transformation of what is arranged as part of the conception of the artwork and as a consequence of behaviour the transformation of what can be considered as an artwork. The artworks arrange a variety of node types including the concepts of ‘virtual’ and ‘real’, media that is original and appropriated, performed actions and objects, performance and labour, situations and people.