We’re pleased to present a special edition vinyl record of Owl Project’s Study 10: Greta’s Speech Ant Optimised I, available to purchase from our online store for £15 including P&P.
As part of their 2019 residency with Fermynwoods Contemporary Art at Fineshade Wood, Owl Project produced a multichannel video and sound installation at The Arches. This show explored how natural systems have inspired algorithms that impact how we experience our daily lives.
One of these videos plotted portions of environmental activist Greta Thunberg’s speech to the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference along a graph. The vertices represented her referrals to herself or to others, as well as the emotion apparent in her voice. An ant-based algorithm then worked out the most efficient path between plotted points, playing the audio clips as it went. The result is captured on this vinyl recording featuring a fold out poster image of Owl Project’s installation.
Owl Project is a collaborative group of artists consisting of Simon Blackmore, Antony Hall and Steve Symons. They work with wood and electronics to fuse sculpture and sound art, creating music making machines, interfaces and objects which intermix pre-steam and digital technologies. Drawing on influences such as 70s synthesiser culture, DIY woodworking and current digital crafts, the resulting artwork is a quirky and intriguing critique of the allure and production of technology. The result is a distinctive range of musical and sculptural instruments that critique human interaction with computer interfaces and our increasing appetite for new and often disposable technologies.
This special edition vinyl record is produced by Birds Hit Records from recycled materials. All packaging is biodegradable.
This project was funded by Northamptonshire Community Foundation‘s Compton Fund.
