Some images of Martin Howse’ solo exhibition at the Fish Factory (Falmouth’s experimental gallery/reclaimed art space).
This exhibition consists of dot matrix printouts, large scale plotter prints, photographs, German VHS cassettes and a mass of technology – and clearly focuses on how it interferes with us physically though our bodies, and in a wider scale through our geography via mapping and recording experiments. His work is presented here without explanation, which means it must be taken on face value – quite a challenge as so much of the material he’s working with is invisible, or hidden inside both intricate custom devices and reclaimed/adapted circuitry from various sources.
It’s a challenge I like a lot, and equally intriguing is the difficulty in detecting ‘edges’ of the different exhibits on display. Extensive use of EM radiation (transmission and reception) means the whole thing seems to be alive, working as a whole – signals spilling over into each other, with surging, clicking and roaring. Moving close to a massive coil, the attached drill becomes activated by the circuitry on my camera when I take a picture, and doesn’t calm down till I move away. Video documentation shows how devices recorded signals from the surrounding landscape were used to generate the images on the walls of the gallery.
The devices are also communicating with the heavy industrial activity outside in the ship repair dockyard. The muted vibrations of hammering seemed be communicating with the tattooing device controlled by process information from an attached Linux laptop.
