David Rokeby: silicon remembers carbon
Rokeby, D. and Ride, P. 2007. David Rokeby: silicon remembers carbon. Liverpool 19 Apr - 25 May 2007
Rokeby, D. and Ride, P. 2007. David Rokeby: silicon remembers carbon. Liverpool 19 Apr - 25 May 2007
| Creators | Rokeby, D. and Ride, P. |
|---|---|
| Description | Ride curated this David Rokeby retrospective exploring the interdisciplinary focus of an artist whose work draws significantly on the science of computer intelligence. Ride also produced the online catalogue and wrote the introductory essay. Ride’s curation aimed to bring together a representative sample of the work of David Rokeby, a leading international media arts practitioner whose work has been rarely seen in the UK, and to present it in a number of contexts, including major shows in Liverpool and Glasgow. Ride aimed to show Rokeby’s work as a contemporary visual artist; to illustrate how the history of ‘new media as art’ can be indicated through a concerted look at a singular artist’s output; and to show how key concepts are developed by the artist across his body of work. Being the first retrospective devoted to Rokeby outside his home country, Canada, Ride’s primary curatorial objective was to address the issue of adequately representing an artist’s creative trajectory through a retrospective. There are few historical exhibitions of new media work due to problems of hardware obsolescence, therefore installations have to be re-created and re-contextualised for a contemporary audience both through supporting information and gallery installation. Another curatorial objective was to find ways to contextualise the work through a variety of approaches so that it appeals to a wide range of inter-disciplines. For example Rokeby’s work explores computer intelligence, how computers can ‘see’, ‘speak’ and communicate’ together as a ‘social’ network. Areas of interest include language and linguistics, music composition, cognitive science and visual culture. Each exhibition emphasises a different aspect of his work with different works included. An online catalogue (including 2000 word curatorial essay by Ride) revealed how the exhibition evolved in different venues. The project was developed over four years through close work with the artist and supported with £45,000 funds from Canada House, Canadian High Commission and ACE. Reviews include Literary and Linguistic Computing; Furtherfield; The List. |
| Year | 2007 |
| Web address (URL) | http://www.rokebyshow.org.uk |
| Publication dates | |
| Completed | 2007 |