SWITCH/OVER

About

SWITCH/OVER at Wimbledon Space, Wimbledon College of Art, brings together six artists who explore the current divide between analogue and digital technologies. The exhibition will coincide with the final deactivation of analogue television on 18th April 2012, marking this significant moment with an evening of performance, commissioned for the show. Due to rapidly changing technologies, sizable shifts are continually experienced regarding the ways in which we record, process, store, and preserve forms of audio and video. The resulting dialogue between analogue and digital media has lead to conflicting concerns with regards to the preservation of both formats. The analogue is disregarded and fetishised in equal measure, with an increasing sense of nostalgia towards older, tangible technologies such as film photography and the evocative sound produced by tape and vinyl recordings. Fluctuating attitudes towards technologies alternate between apathy or contempt by those whose lives it has transformed. SWITCH/OVER offers a perspective from which the audience can experience these continual shifts prompted by the imminent death of analogue broadcasting. Binary opposites such as materiality and immateriality, virtual and reality, analogue and digital are amongst the themes communicated by the presented artworks. These works activate and encourage ongoing discussions surrounding the disposability and preservation of technologies within contemporary society.