SLURP! News from the School of Art, Architecture and Design

A new interactive installation has been created specifically for the ice well under the London Canal Museum by artist and Cass MA Fine Art alumna Nye Thompson.

Date: 22 August 2014

A new interactive installation has been created specifically for the ice well under the London Canal Museum by artist and Cass MA Fine Art alumna Nye Thompson.

The installation imagines that some strange technological relics have been uncovered from the rubble filling up the old ice wells. These relics have been put on display in the museum, but as we look at them, are they looking back at us? And if so, what’s the purpose? This exhibition explores our relationship with the seductive technologies that increasingly mediate or even construct our interactions with the world. As we put more and more of our lives and our private selves into the virtual arena, what does this mean in a time of government ‘data slurps’ and increased surveillance of our online activities “in the interest of national security”.

The installation was created using electronic waste -parts of redundant computing equipment and also uses DIY computing platform Raspberry Pi.

About Nye Thompson

Nye grew up in the quiet, isolated Welsh seaside town of Aberystwyth, moving to London to study Fine Art at Goldsmiths. While many of her classmates went onto become YBA superstars, she took a different path and started working with computers. When the Web was invented in the early 90s she was in the first wave of creatives to get involved. Since then she has worked extensively in web technologies, focussing on human/computer interaction and how data is transformed into meaning. She recently completed an MA in Fine Art at the Cass School of Art, where she was awarded a Distinction. A lot of Nye's artwork uses e-waste, the detritus of our fast-moving, technological lifestyle. She is interested in the history of these things as discarded parts of the great global network, emptied of their animating spirit, but also in their physical object hood. By dissecting and remaking them she is exploring the relationship between the tangible and the virtual, and also the interfaces where the two meet. Her practice takes advantage of new physical computing technologies such as Arduino, to create work that changes in response to its environment, and other external factors. Recent exhibitions include Thought Atlas and The strange impression of seeing things for the first time.