DATAMOSH

About

DATAMOSH came about when artists Paul R Jones and Guy Mayman discovered a large archive of 35mm slides, audio cassettes and A4 booklets earmarked for destruction at the Art School where they were working. This material was no longer wanted because of a perception that it had been rendered obsolete by the digital hardware and Wi-Fi access ubiquitous in the 21st Century.

Jones and Mayman were fascinated by the analogue equipment required to access this material, the degraded quality of the sounds and images held within, resonating strongly with their childhood memories of 1980's schooling and the difference in atmosphere between the analogue media of 30 years ago compared to the perfect fidelity of the digital. The 1980s was a period coloured by an optimism regarding the nascent industries of microprocessing and industrial farming, juxtaposed against the paranoia of an era engaged with the ideological battles of the cold war. Political and social upheaval in the United Kingdom, a growing awareness of deceases such as AIDS and the environmental threat of acid rain were subjects which permeated the classroom on a daily basis.

Guy Mayman's work re-contextualises existing imagery and texts through zines, film and objects.

Paul R Jones' work is based on the idea of geography as an epistemological structure visualised through performance, photography and texts.

This archive presents the artists with an opportunity to collaborate on a project incorporating montage, performance and sound to engage again with these virtually forgotten artefacts of the recent past, using them as raw material to fashion new narratives and render information committed to slide and tape with the intention of imparting factual information into something fluid, mysterious and sublime.