this is the website of tom o'dea
this is the website of tom o'dea
When you fold a paper map, two places that once were apart on the maps surface now occupy the same point. This same folding but in space time, Kurt Gödel thought, as he solved Einstein’s equations for general relativity, creates the possibility of time travel. Two worlds separated across space and time collapse on top of each other, just like on the map.
Technologies can seem to fold worlds too. One minute, sitting in your room you can suddenly find yourself in a meeting, a classroom, on a date or talking to a friend - the sun setting behind them as you look out at a night sky. Telepresence – by video call, phone, social media or other technology – tries to collapse different places, times and contexts on top of each other. Electrons vibrate an invisible tether between different realities.
But our worlds have weight, not all of them can be bound together by these light-thin wires, and so the tethers stretch and break.
A fold in the map across which electrons jump is a research workshop by the Department of Embedded Knowledge and The Lab Gallery examining our use of telepresence and its context.
Totem - noun | to·tem \ˈtō-təm\ | A totem is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage, or tribe.
As ubiquitous connectivity becomes an ever-more essential part of our
communication Totem seeks to explore the hidden signals that surround us
and keep us in touch with our family, friends and our work. By capturing
and representing these signals in the public realm totem creates an
interactive conversation between about the technology that underpins our
societies.
Through its playful form, Totem reacts to both "passive" and "active"
participants in the public space by converting the mobile phone signals
that surround us into a three dimensional array of sound and light.
Totem was created as part of Bitone Collective.
Totem was commissioned by Canary Wharf as part of Winter Lights.
Drakaea glyptodon, is a species of orchid characterised by it’s mimicry of the female Thynid wasp in order to propagate its pollen.
Drakaea, a light installation at PifCamp, Soča, Slovenia explores the hypermediated connections created between our subjective experience and The Network. Mirroring the virtual omnipresence of global communications; Drakaea transplants the location of the headquarters of the ten largest owners of copyrighted natural and modified seed material into the unmediated natural landscape of Trenta Valley. Using quantified representations of remote weather as a data stream, in opposition to the designified impressions of PifCamp taken as part of Michael Page’s unmediated images project, Drakaea is a mimic that shows only its failures.
Drakaea was created with Mick Murray as part of the PifCamp Project run by Ljudmila , in Soҫa, Slovenia