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Artist Focus 2: Mike Downing

12 September, 2013


Mike Downing- Come Here, I Need You

Photographer, Multi Media Artist and Tutor Mike Downing has been living and working in Lincoln for the past thirteen years. His new work Come Here, I Need You considers the visible and invisible disturbance that telephone and data communications has on our landscape and in the environment. By tapping into the data streams that permeate our skies, this multimedia piece seeks to make visible the invisible all around us, and represent these ever present signals and transmissions through multimedia art.

Come Here, I Need You asks what it means to live in a world where the very air we breathe is charged with the traces of digital spirits from a myriad of communication technologies.

Failed Heirlooms

Mike Downing returns to Frequency, after showing Failed Heirlooms at the first Frequency festival in 2011. Failed Heirlooms looked at the emotional and financial value we place on objects and how in an increasingly objectless digital age, these once precious symbols end up broken, sold on and deemed worthless.

Watch the trailer here.

Revolution

How has technology impacted our everyday life? From mobile phones, to Twitter, to live streaming data and video conferencing; there is always a new piece of tech to get to grips with, and little thought as to how these new modes of communication effect how we as humans interact with each other. With such a rapid increase in the amount of users of these modes of communication, should we pay more attention to how these changes affect our conversations, our opinions and potentially our health? Mike examines these questions through Come Here, I Need You to present a debate on our dependence on these forms of technology, and to ask if they are help to our society, or if we too readily accept technological advancements.

‘In my work and research I seek to scratch at the surface of how new media forms shape our reading and response to the world around us and to what extent we can be said to shape or be shaped by them. Human interaction is changing – the pace of which leaves many floundering to grasp just what these changes mean for our future.’ Mike Downing

Come Here, I Need You will be premiering at Frequency Festival 2013

 

For more information: http://bit.ly/17uNbSn

Tune in to Mike’s news:  http://bit.ly/17uMp7U

Follow him: @MikeDowningUK

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