Thomson & Craighead

Decorative Newsfeeds (2010)

The artistic duo of Thomson & Craighead (Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead) is based heavily in digital "new" media. They have been working together in London since 1993 and much of their work deals with how technology interacts with and alters the world around us. Most of their recent work takes live data like news feeds and status updates and uses it in different ways. Their gallery installation and, later, public installation, Decorative Newsfeeds (2010) is particularly interesting in how it deals with real-time and real-world data and turns it into something different. The work takes news feed headlines from all over the world and presents them on a screen in lines that move according to carefully prescribed coded instructions. As the installation runs, the lines of news text run across the projected screen in hypnotic patterns and shapes that create what Thomson & Craighead refer to as "readymade sculpture or perhaps...automated drawing[s]."

Decorative Newsfeeds (2010)

The images I have posted here cannot show the movement of the lines but the video on their website shows it well--how the words move in a snake-like fashion around the screen, just urging the viewer's eye to quickly follow and read the text. The "sculptures" created by these newsfeeds are totally engaging for me. If I was in the gallery, I would stand in front of this installation for hours. It's something that reminds me of aquariums or fire, the movement and shapes are beautiful and engrossing--the viewer becomes totally hypnotized. What I think is the best part about this installation is that the materials being used are news headlines. Thomson & Craighead are creating beauty out of information that is usually unpleasant and unwelcome--war, death, crime. Instead of ignoring or hiding from these realities, Thomson & Craighead merely embrace them in a different way, presenting them to the viewer in a pleasant and soothing manner.

There is another way to interpret this, though: the hypnotic characteristics of the installation might be intentionally meant to mimic how gory and gruesome news is hypnotic to some. Though the news today is usually bleak, it is what people want to know. Almost every household watches the news, even though the message it tells is almost purposefully geared to reflect only the negative happenings of the day. Despite the dark nature of the news, people regularly tune in and watch for hours. Indeed, there are whole television channels devoted just to news all day every day. I think Thomson & Craighead might be referencing this in the way they make their "sculpture" captivating in an almost bewitching way. There is no reason to be so entranced by an image, just like there is no reason to be so obsessed with the bleakest aspects of humanity as seen through news feeds.

The lines of text also seek to organize and order the world. As the subjects of news are usually not pleasant and, indeed, typically focus on the elements which most put our lives into chaos, the orderly-coded instructions for the "sculptures" of news text are almost a way in which Thomson & Craighead can bring order to a most disorderly world. The sculptural shapes move according to careful and specific directions--in this way, the news is being manipulated. But not only is it being manipulated by Thomson & Craighead, but, through that manipulation and defined order, it is being controlled. Perhaps, through this control, and the pleasant end product, Thomson & Craighead are trying to make something new and different with news that is constantly repeating itself. But perhaps I'm pushing the themes too far.

Decorative Newsfeeds (2010) Public Installation

Because the idea of this installation is so simple and so well executed, I find it hard to find a way in which it could be made better. The installation does not stay within strictly gallery walls and the duo does have a public installation of this project (seen above), altering it slightly to take up more of the window space and making the lines of text colored to add more visual interest. The addition of color, however, I think is unnecessary. I like the simplicity of the gallery-version's black and white composition. I think the addition of color complicates the message and makes the news feeds harder to read and follow. There is too much happening in this instance and I think it might be a little overwhelming for the viewer to take in. Again, as I felt with KIDing®, this might be the point. The multitude of news sources and the overwhelming abundance of new topics, new crimes, new deaths, new horrors might be what Thomson & Craighead are trying to get closer to by adding color to their work. With this added element, the work becomes more complicated and the message less clear, just as the world becomes complicated by news events.