an information deliverer | exhibition at borås art museum november/december 2001

Project   Installation   Movies

Overview Ten plastic tubes, 2 m high 20 cm in diameter, rise from holes in a 3,5x6 m podium, 40 cm above the floor. There are two electronic fans controlled by a micro-controller mounted underneath each tube. A computer program records and plays back a radio news channel in ten independent "threads", each one controlling the fans of a tube.   Each tube will "deliver" about 50 "pieces of information" each day. The information was based on major news event during the 20th century, such as the first man on the moon, the assassination of president Kennedy, the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, etc.   The installation at Borås Art Museum was built to run for 23 days. During these 23 days, "news" piled up on the podium changing the empty surface into a complex landscape of yesterdays news still lying there to be read and to be reflected upon. At the end of the exhibition, there were approximately 11 500 unique pieces of fabric lying on the podium.

Textiles A unique collection of pieces of fabric was designed for each tube and each day. The text fragments were printed using UV-luminescent colour on different kinds and qualities of fabric. About 50 fragments of texts and images were collected from news articles covering each of the news events. Each collection was made in a specific material and each piece had its own shape, folding, etc. In this way, each piece of fabric would float and fly through the tubes in specific patterns.

Instruments Everything in the room, including the podium and all pieces of fabric, were white and thus the text is visible only when illuminated with UV-light. Therefore, a special "instrument" consisting of a UV-lamp mounted on a stick, had to be used to read the information.