Blind Sites
Giclee, variable dimensions.
2014-2024
The history of masts is a tale of technological innovation and environmental exploitation. For centuries they were the literal backbone of a global network of trade and colonisation. The masts that once sailed the seas now sit silently amidst us, their invisible signals drawing us into a world of disembodied interaction. Despite the almost benign appearance of these skeletal extrusions, they support trans-global systems that are transforming our concepts of place, identity and experience.
Like blindsighted sailors navigating a sea of data, we are promised progress and prosperity, but at what cost?
53°30'13.0"N 2°22'46.2"W
53°32'16.8"N 2°18'05.9"W
55°10'05.5"N 7°14'37.5"W
Island identities were once founded on the historical and cultural sense of belonging defined by their borders. But contemporary trans-global communication systems interrupt this pre-digital condition and produce a dematerialisation and remoteness from experience of place. The infrastructure necessary to support these systems has an industrial functionality that disguises the depth of their impact on our material relations with the landscape.
Blind Sites
Digital Humanities research into the 'Digital Anthropocene' reveal the unarguable interconnectedness of human fields of agency. Concepts of place, belonging and identity are viewed against geological deep time as well as contemporary social / political / technological / cultural upheavals. In 'her 2008 essay 'Shadow Places and the Politics of Dwelling' Val Plumwood wrote of the 'shadow places' that produce, or are affected by, our collective consumption of commodity. In raising key arguments around 'dematerialisation and place', 'environmental consciousness', and 'attachment to place' she underscored the necessity for each of us to be conscious of the deep time relationships between the material and immaterial world that we produce.
Blind Sites
Blind Sites