Digital Practices May

My latest column for a-n is out now. It starts like this:

A collaboration between Harris Museum and Gallery and Folly, ‘Current’ is an experiment into collecting digital and new media artworks, on show at Harris Museum until 4 June. The exhibition comprises Lost Calls of Cloud Mountain Whirligigs, a viewing station by Boredomresearch duo Vicky Isley and Paul Smith that shows mesmerising, scientifically-inspired, virtual creatures; Michael Szpakowski’s House & Garden, an intimate and poetic visual encounter with the domestic using low-fi animated GIFs set into a soundtrack; James Coupe’s The Lover video camera and projection-based installation that recognises, records and reveals vignettes of gallery-goers according to a bespoke algorithm; Graham Harwood, Richard Wright and Matsuko Yokokoji’s Tantalum Memorial – Reconstruction, a large rack of telephone stepping switches connected to an archived database of calls made by Telephone Trottoire (the international Congolese diaspora’s network). Finally, Thomson and Craighead’s The distance travelled through our solar system this year and all the barrels of oil remaining is a dual clock installation combining a count of all remaining oil barrels in the world with the distance the earth has travelled this year, making emotive connections between people and data.

For the rest, see here…