How to Talk to Images Exhibition by Richard Wright at HTTP Gallery. 4th July - 3rd August 2008 Opening Reception: Friday 4th July 6-9pm Exhibition open: Fri-Sun 12noon-5pm www.http.uk.net
No one is sure how many images there are on the Internet. Google has nearly a billion. Some say it is hundreds of times more than that. People say that you can find a picture of anything on the internet, as though the entire visual world is reflected there. For How to Talk to Images at London's HTTP Gallery, Richard Wright has compiled a database of 50,000 random Internet images as the raw content for two artworks. The Internet Speaks and The Mimeticon both explore new conceptions of the image, called for by the sheer quantity of visual information now available via the Internet. In this era, finding our way through the world of images is so overwhelming, that the dominant mode is to “search” rather than to “see”. An image is an answer to a question, a search query. The Internet Speaks gives us one of the simplest imaginable ways of searching this set of images, stepping through them, one by one in random order, without context. In contrast, The Mimeticon is a wilfully complex and ‘baroque’ search engine that allows us to search for images by visual similarity rather than by typing in keywords. These 'search images' are 'drawn' by us using letters from the history of the alphabet. As part of How to Talk to Images, Richard Wright’s first solo exhibition in London, a selection of Wright’s animated films demonstrates the development of his current interest in the Baroque. The exhibition is also the occasion of publication of a limited-edition poster featuring an essay by the artist illustrated by the entire visual history of the Western alphabet – from its pictorial Egyptian origins 5,000 years ago to its perfected form under the Romans, as well as a new book documenting the artists twenty year long practice. Richard Wright is a visual artist working in the fields of digital moving image and networked interaction. During the 1990s, Richard was one of the pioneers of digital animation as a distinct artistic form, with films being shown at numerous festivals and exhibitions and broadcast by television channels around the world. In 1998 he received a PhD in the aesthetics of digital film making and has published nearly forty book chapters, articles and reviews. In 2004 he joined Mongrel – an artists group internationally recognized for their work in software art and 'free-media'. Since 2007 Richard has been Artist in Residence at Furtherfield.org in London. HTTP Gallery Unit A2, Arena Design Centre, 71 Ashfield Rd, London N4 1NY. Friday - Sunday: 12noon - 5pm http://www.http.uk.net HTTP Gallery is Furtherfield.org’s (www.furtherfield.org) dedicated space for exhibiting networked media art. Furtherfield.org is a not-for-profit, artist-led organisation. Based in Harringay, North London, we provide an online and physical platform for creating, exhibiting, commissioning, and discussing networked media arts. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour