Packet Switching: Notes
Commissioned for the NET:REALITY touring exhibition funded by Arts Council England, the late Patrick Simons and I worked on Packet Switching for over 12 months from 2004-2005. A process of walking and talking about the work began to emerge.
In our life together Patrick and I had often found that walking enabled us to talk very freely about ideas and our future plans, whilst being firmly embodied in the present. We thought it might be interesting to include walking as a more conscious aspect of our collaborative practice. Patrick walked his own path and made his own connections; here, I record mine.
We explored the Situationists, and in particular the writings of Guy Debord. I began to see parallels between the intensification of the rationalisation of the lifeworld aligned with networked technologies, and the experiences of the Situationists and also the nineteenth century flâneur who responded to the intensification of the instrumentalisation of Paris. I wished to make work that challenged ongoing processes of rationalisation.
My starting point for the work was an attention to the idea of ‘everyday rituals’ which had slowly seeped into my consciousness. I was interested in how seemingly ‘ordinary’ activities like baking and gardening can be transformed into almost sacred ritual acts through a shift in attitude and context. Victor Turner described ritual as that which activates a state of liminality stimulating a spatial and temporal withdrawal from regulated life. Ritual as a possible challenge to instrumentaisation? I was interested in exploring the tentative connection between these qualities of ritual and the qualities of walking. The practice of walking supposedly liberates thought and engages the body’s unconscious rhythms, and perhaps for this reason, in many cultures is seen to embody a movement towards the spiritual.
The idea, then, of walking as ritual began to emerge and as part of our new work Patrick and I decided to make regular walks along the coast path close to our home over a period of twelve months. A particular route was established that took approximately 37 minutes to walk.
Playing with the conditions of instrumentalisation, we devised rules or conditions for our walks such as: we could collect found objects, take photographs and record sounds. We could walk alone or together. We could engage in conversation or be silent. Were Patrick Simons and I writing the rules, or were we the elements being enacted? Our rules sat dormant in a conceptual ‘database’ until called at runtime, or rather walk time, yet they were entirely outside the domain of the digital. Were we imposing the logic of the distributed network onto the logic of the everyday activity of walking? If that were the case, then formally, this piece of work seems to be rationalising the everyday activity of walking.
NET:REALITY was curated by Michael Takeo Magruder in partnership with 20- 21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe and Q Arts, Derby, generated from an idea by Michael Takeo Magruder and Jess Loseby. Their concept was to blur the boundaries between the tangible gallery and the transitory Internet, so as to merge the ethereal notions of cyber space with the aesthetics of a physical exhibition. Rather than having a 'theme' for the artworks, the common denominator was the media itself and the unifying connections between the web (Net) and the physical (Reality) elements of the compositions. For two years from 2005-2007 the work was shown in physical spaces as part of the touring exhibition.