WANDERING SNAIL

2014 Wandering Snail developed by Radix (a collaboration between Deborah Robinson, David Strang and Simon Rundle in association with Bronac Ferran) for exhibition at Fields – patterns of social, scientific, and technological transformations exhibition, organised and curated by RIXC. Arsenals Exhibition Hall of the Latvian National Arts Museum (LNAM).

Review: wemakemoneynotart

Wandering Snail

The artwork: Wandering Snail appears to be a scientific experiment in a gallery.  An artistic strategy of mimicry and the tactics of displacement are deployed as a means to identify fissures within an experimental system for the prediction of climate change. We invite the gallery viewer to participate in the act of ‘monitoring’ thus drawing attention to the instability of the gaze (moving between aesthetic/scientific). We take as a premise that scientific visualisations are premised on a relational positions of power between those who are scientifically educated and those who are not. We wanted to extend an invitation to the gallery viewer to reflect the scientific gaze as a means of evoking dialogue with the public from a starting point where they are themselves implicated

The installation is an improvised rigging of laboratory vessels and technology in a gallery context. The application of data (lab and field) has been developed through the work – investigating the control of lighting, sonification and physical vibration of elements in the installation. One aspect of the data explored is the connection of the name Radix balthica”, the snail, and “Radix Sort” a computer science based sorting algorithm (dating back to 1887 and the development of tabulating machines).