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1981
Into/Across the Sea
  • ISSN: 1477-965X
  • E-ISSN: 1758-9533

Abstract

This article traces the author’s utilization of the sea as both generative device and communications channel, from an early student experiment sending out messages in bottles, and , an exhibition made in response to the pioneering telegraph communications station at Porthcurno near Newlyn in Cornwall, one of the first places to be ‘on-line’ in a contemporary sense, to the present day. Reflecting on an ongoing series of works employing imagery captured and transmitted by network cameras pixel by pixel in real time from remote locations, including , which took in the panorama of the south-east coast of England, to the most recent, , where the camera is situated within the sea itself, the article explores the sea as both an actual and metaphorical open system for generating artworks. It examines its role as collaborative ‘actor’ in the making of the author’s works, reflecting on the parameters it offers in the form of real-world analogue variables – comprising light, day, night, weather, the sun, the moon, the tides and the seasons and how this can surface new ways of observing and understanding temporality, our environment and ourselves.

Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • Arts Council England and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (Award AH/G01065X/1)
  • National Touring Programme of the Arts Council of England
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/content/journals/10.1386/tear_00128_1
2025-01-28
2025-03-15
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References

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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): environment; generative art; Seascape; time; transmission; variables
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