Michael Freeman Badour & Liam Crockard / Heatsink
organized by Roberta Pelan
June 23 - August 7, 2016
http://www.rockawaytopless.com/
Liam Crockard
Liam Crockard
Michael Freeman Badour
Michael Freeman Badour
This is what heat looks like. The disheartening electrical heat produced by the condensing of information. Within our smart technologies data integrity and the efficiency of exchange is at risk with such heat. Our dematerialized world is a vast landscape of micro-furnaces that burn our .ZIPs. Central processing units rely on tiny heatsinks just to keep this information from destroying itself. Like an electric blanket, heatsinks emit waves of energy away from the coordinates of information exchange to maintain optimal operating temperatures. Whether passive or active, the heatsink’s sole concern is with the redistribution of heat.
An active heat exchanger, this is the artist today. Negotiating how to redistribute the heat and energy produced through the condensing of information. First as a passive recipient within professionalized institutions, then as an active heat exchanger, slowing down information exchange, thereby cooling it. By reworking and reanimating modern designs with pails of wood glue and discarded wood scraps, initial core concepts remain but with a new finish, a new vernacular. One that causes hesitation within those quick to ascribe meaning. The rapacious consumption of information is slowed and core temperatures remain optimal.
The exchange must be active, reworking established concepts of the recent past, breaking them down and building them back up. Passivity is the role of the repeater. The repeater receives and retransmits. The artist avoids this, allowing distortion to effect their signal. By archiving the processes at play within information exchange the infobahn can take form. The archive incorporates the bi-products of exchange which distorts its image. We may have to squint if we want to make out this picture but this too is cooling and will allow us to step a little closer to the fire.