Under (Cover)

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After a week of everything being turned upside down it was good to have a new project to think about. We were set the theme of ‘Under (Cover)’ using our current situation as a catalyst – ‘think about the domestic and how it affects our art practice.’ I wanted to link it to the themes of my core body of work so inevitably digital came to mind. I had also been wondering about my next book object and the notion of ‘cover’ seemed like a good fit.

Given the current context and that so much of my work is about impermanence and mortality I decided to give myself a bit of a break and focus more on the digital than death for a while. I had recently been doing research into the history of the internet and came across the Intergalactic Network, led by Joseph Licklider and credited with some of the early thinking about the world wide web in the sixties. I had also come across Kleinrock and bought a copy of his book ‘Communication Nets’ (Kleinrock, 2007) to make an altered book with. Having flicked through the pages, many of which are unintelligible to me, I came across various diagrams that outlined the nature of networks and the most effective way to transfer packets of communication across those networks. These formed the inspiration for the pages of my book. I also wanted to include texts from both Licklider and Kleinrock as the inside covers. Coincidentally, Kleinrock published his original thesis on which the book is based in 1962, the year I was born.

It is gratifying to look back at my work reported in 1962 and identify how it anticipated so many of the elements we find in today’s Internet technology. (Kleinrock, 2007: vii)

Initially, I thought I’d use rectangular card which I would hinge together but the stringing didn’t work, and I decided to go back to square format with a circular cut out. One of the joys of setting up my home studio is having helpers drop in! Fortunately, I still have a reasonable collection of papers and opted for a heavyweight grey cartridge to make an accordion. I also thought I would use Cat5 cable for the threads as it is ‘under cover’ in making our internet flow throughout the house. Unfortunately, while they worked on the stiffer card, they were too stiff for the paper. So, I opted for copper thread, as copper runs through the core of the Cat5 wires.

Using three of the Kleinrock diagrams I decided to leave the first circle empty to signify the notion of isolation. The following three circles then get more complex as my connections have built over the week. It is hard to imagine how social distancing would have worked before we had the technology we now have to keep us connected – physically distanced but socially connected.

After just a week of almost back to back Zoom, Teams & Google hangout video conferences it was a real relief to get away from the screen and back into making. I am pretty happy with the end result and will think about where I might take it from here. I made a mock-up of a tunnel double accordion book a while back and think it’s a format I’d like try next with this subject matter.

Maybe I’ll also have time to work more on my video skills, it’s something I don’t use very much but is particularly useful if I’m going to be making more objects while we are confined to our homes.

References

KLEINROCK, L. 2007. Communication nets: Stochastic message flow and delay, Courier Corporation.