On view from 19 – 23 Sept 2012

Organized by Kari Rittenbach for Peckham Artist Moving Image

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Thanks to Tom Lock, Lollypops, John McCusker, Harriet Blaise Mitchell, Jenny Richards, Josefine Wikström, Kazys Varnelis and the artists.

Private view with Jenny & JoJo Wednesday 19 Sept 18.00 – 20.00

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primaryworksurface.org.uk

12.00 – 18.00 daily

Lollypops Showroom 5 Choumert Rd London SE15 4SE

Tom LockThe Mercer Chronicles (extract, 2012)—color, sound

Marie LundBeginning Happening (detail) (2012)—color, silent

Mark TitchnerUp! (2012)—color, silent

Marlie Mul New !!! (2012)—color, silent

Kjersti Andvig and Lars Laumann Henry Rinnan (2012)—b/w, silent

Ian Cheng and Rachel Rose Enter Sandman (2012)—color, sound

James Richards The Power In New Power (2012)—color, sound

Melissa Gordon and Andrew KertonDots/Dervishes (One Man’s Pixel is Another’s Universe) (2012)—color, sound

Ethan Hayes-Chute Ways O’ The Woods (2012)—color, silent

Morag KeilController (2012)—color, sound

David Knowles Challenge Questions (2012)—b/w, silent

Celia Hempton Work That Body (2012)—color, sound

Lena TutunjianPurple Kisses With Special K and J (2012)—color, sound

Nicolas CeccaldiBathing Ape (2008)—color, sound

A ProgrammingLanguage

THE MODE OF ADDRESS

Many are interested in the idiom of a form,

few in the grammar.

Seth Price, Was Ist Los

This exhibition takes its name from Kenneth E.

Iverson’s unique mathematical notation, developed

for the IBM Systems Research Institute and first

published by Wiley & Sons in 1962. It describes

complex algorithms for communicating with a ma-

chine in an efficient and economical language for

which ‘ordinary English lacks both the precision

and conciseness…’

For a brief moment, APL empowered non-programmers.

It was even considered a method for ‘interperson-

al communication’ -- not exclusively a computer

language. Fifty years later, residual usage can be

found in actuarial and financial modeling, but as

one reviewer notes: ‘so many 1960s concerns have

been forgotten that modern readers will struggle

with the discussion just as they might struggle

with Chaucer’s English’.

The utopian interpretive capability of vintage

APL is difficult to imagine in the context of

smoothly standardized web 2.0 environments, where

algorithms are increasingly deployed to antici-

pate our qualitative preferences, cultural affin-

ities and consumer desires. What complex syntax

underwrites the surface layer of representational

interaction otherwise known as the internet?

Everyday life today is affected by interpersonal

communication between individuals across screens,

from machine to machine to machine, no matter the

media in which artistic and other modes of produc-

tion find final form. How do the ways we work with

and interact through language, image and idiom

mask or reveal the contingencies of operating in

a material world? A casual -- even illiterate --

attitude toward mediation still implicates a host

of barely visible geopolitical issues, never mind

the relentless fiberoptic transmissions which echo

into the void without ever finding a sympathetic

optical receiver.

This screen-based compilation of sound and imag-

ery represents attitudes, experimental gestures

and excerpts from the everyday activities and

ongoing collaborations of the participating art-

ists, which do not necessarily depend on a dig-

ital environment for presentation, but transpire

through its vagaries nevertheless.

Kari Rittenbach

TOWARDS A NEW TECHNOLOGICAL VERNACULAR

During the last half decade, architects and art-

ists have become obsessed with the possibilities

that new technologies present to us, and a move-

ment is emerging around responsive environments,

locative media and interactive surfaces.

Typically, after avant-garde trends reach their

apotheosis, their forms and methods become

co-opted and degraded by second-rate practi-

tioners and marketers as new avant-gardes come to

the fore. Some avant-gardes, however are accompa-

nied by both conscious adoptions and unconscious

parallels from below, as individuals outside the

art world tackle the very issues confronting the

avant-garde. Thus, we might contrast a paint-by-

numbers version of Monet’s water lilies -- which

is merely amusing in its derivative qualities

-- with the exaggerated, pop interpretation of

modern architecture undertaken by practitioners

of Southern California ‘Googie’ architecture.

In utilizing exotically cantilevered roofs, bold

colors and dingbat ornaments, Googie’s practi-

tioners addressed an audience heavily immersed in

media culture and in so doing, helped pave the

way for the Pop Art movement of the 1960s, and

its similar motives.

The Lollypops Showroom at 5 Choumert Road, Peckham

is a contemporary example of such a vernacular,

bridging architecture and technology in ways that

parallel the architectural avant-garde. Video

screens embedded in the floor and above the en-

trance echo OMA’s Prada Beverly Hills, but whereas

the videos in the Prada store are custom-tailored

to the space, here the selection of music videos,

news and other media announce to the visitor that

they are not merely in a store but in a node

within a global informational network. Contempo-

rary fashion, be it haute couture or subcultural,

announces one’s membership in a particular order

of the world, an order often transnationally

recognizable while indiscernible to those not in

the know. Seeing fashion against the context of

embedded video screens, we understand that we are

living in a world in which the boundaries between

media and life are disappearing. As technology

becomes cheaper and more accessible to everyone, a

new, technological vernacular is emerging, which

Lollypops represents. Imagine, then, a world in

which responsive walls and embedded screens will

be as common as MDF, not just in Mayfair but in

Peckham as well.

Kazys Varnelis

A Programming Language