Liberty Quinn: The Void Went Flash

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Focusing on Antarctica, a region deeply affected by climate change, Quinn screenshots moments where Google Earth's portrayal of the ice continent’s surface as faultless and pristine breaks down, either due to glitches in Google’s algorithm or the ravaging effects of global warming.
 
These moments at once reveal how Google Earth constructs its images by combining decades of satellite data into a seamless illusion of an Earth without rotation, clouds or weather systems, and explores the artificiality of this representation and its ecological implications. In the artist’s own words, “it is almost as if when a technological glitch occurs, an ice sheet melts”.
 
Presenting the screenshots using audio-visual and printing technologies, Quinn brings viewers back to the digital source of viewing, aspiring to correct what she considers the sensory abstraction of satellite images and processes of acceleration, to instead - through virtual proximity and a slowing down of the viewer’s perception - allow us to reflect on alternative temporalities and durations.

Based in London, Liberty Quinn works across print, sculpture and audio-visual technology to investigate the breakdowns and shifting space of the Anthropocene. She recently obtained a Masters from the Royal College of Art and has shown throughout the UK. Selected shows include Proximity at Fold Gallery, Unfolding Traces with Pigeon Park and Un/Sense at Christie’s. 

Words by Francesca Dobbe.