Myth and Meaning in the Digital Age1989

In 1987 I received a commission from the Arts Council of England to investigate the effects of the incoming and deepening digital manipulation available - but I also approached Channel 4 to ask for the opportunity to respond to the ideas of Jean Baudrillard and Paul Virilio as expressed in a friend television essay “L’Object D’Art Dans L’Age Electronique”. This work was called “The Inevitability of Colour” and was transmitted on Channel 4. A year later, because I’d examined the story of Echo and Narcissus as a cypher for image and sound processing along a narrative timeline, I then made a piece called Echo’s Revenge which was exhibited at the Tate, London. Some time later I created The Object of Desire to describe what actually fascinated Narcissus when he was fascinated by ‘his own image’ in the pool on mount Helicon - these three works were premiered at the 1992 Bonne Biennale as the Colour Trilogy. Time passed and I created more responses and eventually put out a 7 part work called the Colour Myths which exhibited at various galleries internationally. I continued making works which examined the idea or telephoning someone - communicating with them - and found a video of myself in 1977 ringing Noam Chomsky - but he didn’t answer (in fact I met Mr Chomsky on another project on American Foreign Policy in 1987). So the idea hit me - I could ring anyone in history - but of course they would never answer. In a sense this is the bubble of the individual - even if you do speak with people will you actually communicate with each other or speak your truth to a reflecting pool only to bounce back and fascinate you with your own words and ideas? So this work was complete in 2018 and has many parts such that I no longer bother to count these chapters, instead I simply accept there is a development over time which enabled me to bridge from the analogue to the digital period. This work is experiential and examines the idea of durational moving images.