Joakim Sandqvist
Universitetsadjunkt i fri konst
Noise to Signal
Författare
Summary, in Swedish
With the introduction of information theory in the middle of the 20th century, the concept of noise came to be contrasted with signal. The exhibition Noise to Signal mainly consists of two projects that highlight the relative nature of these terms.
The three textile works, all with the title Untitled (Noise), appear abstract but also represent a grainy filter that is usually applied to digital images so that they appear natural to the human eye. The filter is created with an algorithm programmed to mimic the organic clutter that human vision is adapted to. It is meant to prevent the eye from perceiving disturbing patterns in the image's pixels. A certain amount of noise is required, in other words, for the signal to get through. In Sandqvist's weavings, the noise becomes an image in its own right and is thus both noise and signal.
The irregularity of Sandqvist's woven images intuitively contradict the fact that, like all weavings, they were created through two perpendicular thread systems. They are made with a loom where each warp thread is individually controlled by code so that complex patterns can take shape. The Jacquard loom, which was invented at the beginning of the 19th century and was then controlled with punched cards, fundamentally changed the textile industry and has been historicized as a precursor to modern computers. In Untitled (Noise), the chaotic image hides the fabric's basic logic, which becomes difficult to deduce visually.
The sculptures in the Untitled (Västra hamnen, Malmö) series look like red brick chimneys that were hastily built a long time ago, whose edges have been eroded by the weather and which are now about to slowly give way to the test of time. But if you look at them more closely, you find that the edges of the bricks were rounded before they were joined together. The occasional barnacle reveals the bricks' marine past. Demolition materials from the city were used for new land mass when the Västra hamnen area expanded out into the Öresund. Some stones washed out into the sea, were ground round by the seawater and washed up on the Ribersborg beach, where they were found by the artist.
Untitled (Västra hamnen, Malmö) is an image of how a city cannibalizes itself and its own histories. Mud becomes bricks which become houses that are demolished and become land again as the city grows out into the sea. We pick up traces from the past and piece together history in the hope of finding the way forward.
Together, the two groups of works raise questions about what we can perceive, formulate, and imagine. They embody an experience of instability in our attempts to grasp reality, to separate the signals from the noise, when only a subtle shift in perspective is required for what we have hitherto perceived as noise to emerge as a clear signal and vice versa. Noise to Signal shows concrete images sprung from an abstract, deceptive, and insurmountable reality.
The three textile works, all with the title Untitled (Noise), appear abstract but also represent a grainy filter that is usually applied to digital images so that they appear natural to the human eye. The filter is created with an algorithm programmed to mimic the organic clutter that human vision is adapted to. It is meant to prevent the eye from perceiving disturbing patterns in the image's pixels. A certain amount of noise is required, in other words, for the signal to get through. In Sandqvist's weavings, the noise becomes an image in its own right and is thus both noise and signal.
The irregularity of Sandqvist's woven images intuitively contradict the fact that, like all weavings, they were created through two perpendicular thread systems. They are made with a loom where each warp thread is individually controlled by code so that complex patterns can take shape. The Jacquard loom, which was invented at the beginning of the 19th century and was then controlled with punched cards, fundamentally changed the textile industry and has been historicized as a precursor to modern computers. In Untitled (Noise), the chaotic image hides the fabric's basic logic, which becomes difficult to deduce visually.
The sculptures in the Untitled (Västra hamnen, Malmö) series look like red brick chimneys that were hastily built a long time ago, whose edges have been eroded by the weather and which are now about to slowly give way to the test of time. But if you look at them more closely, you find that the edges of the bricks were rounded before they were joined together. The occasional barnacle reveals the bricks' marine past. Demolition materials from the city were used for new land mass when the Västra hamnen area expanded out into the Öresund. Some stones washed out into the sea, were ground round by the seawater and washed up on the Ribersborg beach, where they were found by the artist.
Untitled (Västra hamnen, Malmö) is an image of how a city cannibalizes itself and its own histories. Mud becomes bricks which become houses that are demolished and become land again as the city grows out into the sea. We pick up traces from the past and piece together history in the hope of finding the way forward.
Together, the two groups of works raise questions about what we can perceive, formulate, and imagine. They embody an experience of instability in our attempts to grasp reality, to separate the signals from the noise, when only a subtle shift in perspective is required for what we have hitherto perceived as noise to emerge as a clear signal and vice versa. Noise to Signal shows concrete images sprung from an abstract, deceptive, and insurmountable reality.
Avdelning/ar
- Konsthögskolan i Malmö
Publiceringsår
2023-05-06
Språk
Svenska
Dokumenttyp
Konstnärligt arbete
Förlag
Galleri Obra
Ämne
- Visual Arts
Status
Published