Catch|Bounce is an installation of five works presented at the Exhibition Research Lab, Liverpool, that propose a radical rethinking of the notion of the digital as a term defined solely by entrenched techno-computational narratives. It seeks to question preconceptions about digital art practices by taking an approach to materiality that further blurs the distinction between the digital and the physical. It is concerned with redefining the digital as an event in which the audience is held in a process of revealing and concealing that questions what it means to be present; to be a discrete event in time, to be digital. The title Catch|Bounce refers to the challenge of resisting the correlational impulse – the reflex through which we ‘catch’ or hold objects in human reason. It proposes instead a conception of the digital as the relational event itself – one in which things become themselves on the rebound.
The five works presented are:
- Catch 32 Bit, video projection of ball being thrown.
- Wait, life size CNC styrofoam dogs.
- In Receipt, swipe card activated text dispensing machines.
- Drop, ceiling mounted microprocessor-controlled mechanisms for basketballs.
- In Hand, polaroid photographs of pigeon.
Catch 32 Bit, video projection of ball being thrown. Video available at https://youtu.be/4TLu8xVGMHE
Wait, life size CNC styrofoam dogs from scans.
In Receipt, swipe card activated text dispensing machines.
Drop, ceiling mounted microprocessor-controlled mechanisms for basketballs.
In Hand, polaroid photographs of pigeon.
Extending the exhibition beyond the confines of the gallery, In Hand is centred on an public action made presented in the gallery by photographic means, it functions in a similar way to In Receipt, in that it focuses on relationality by drawing attention to unseen events. A pigeon was caught in Hamilton Square, Wirral and banded it with a simple blue leg band. The pigeon was photographed using an instant polaroid camera before being released again to the ‘wild’. The image questions the nature of the image as an event in reaction to the action.