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esse magazine spring 2018

My work Swarming Emotional Pianos is featured in an essay written by Lindsay Leblanc in esse magazine 93 – Printemps / été 2018. The essay also features two media artists that I respect very much, David Rokeby and Jean-Pierre Gauthier.

Following is an abstract:

Sketchy Machines: Propositions Around Three Robotic Artworks

With the increasing presence of machines in public and private life, we continue to find new ways of articulating our relationships with them. In this article, the author uses the sketch as a frame of analysis for machine artworks by Canadian artists David Rokeby, Jean-Pierre Gauthier, and Erin Gee, and argues that the sketch is a fundamentally interdisciplinary and material state that accounts for machines’ complex engagements with human and other-than-human agents. Highlighting the sketch’s unfinished, imperfect, and adaptable qualities, the author attempts to define a “sketchy materiality” as it occurs in robotic art.
Lindsay LeBlanc

To learn more, or to purchase this magazine as a digital PDF  –
https://esse.ca/en/sketch

Erin Gee - 7 Nights of Unspeakable Truth at Nuit Blanche Toronto 2013

7 Nights of Unspeakable Truth

7 Nights of Unspeakable Truth at Nuit Blanche Toronto (2013)
7-channel audio installation, woven blankets, text work
8 hours duration

2013

It’s a search for disembodied voices in technotongues.

7 Nights of Unspeakable Truth is a recording that consists of dusk-till dawn searches for number stations on shortwave radio frequencies. Arranged in order, from day one to day seven, the installation allows one to physically walk through seven evenings of shortwave, synchronized in their respective times, in physical space. This spatialization of each night allows listeners to observe patterns and synchronicities in Gee’s nightly search for unexplained broadcasts that consist only of numbers, tones and codes.”

This body of work is informed by my fascination with mystery, symbolic organization and communication. I take on the nocturnal patterns of a solitary listener, connecting to other enthusiasts via online chat in order to share an obscure passion. The patterns of my searching during 7 Nights of Unspeakable Truth are woven directly into blankets, another evening activity partaken during Nuit Blanche 2013 in which I encoded and wove my audio searches into a physical form that you could wrap yourself in while you listen – two different versions of encoded time on radio airwaves.

More on this work:

Gautier, Philippe-Aubert. “Multichannel sound and spatial sound creation at Sporobole: A short account of live performance, studio design, outdoor multichannel audio, and visiting artists.” Divergence Press #3: Creative Practice in Electroacoustic Music (2016).

Exhibition/Performance history

Nuit Blanche Toronto (2013)

Links

Additional Research by Erin Gee
Academic article by Philippe-Aubert Gautier

Video

7 Nights of Unspeakable Truth (2013)

Gallery

7 Nights of Unspeakable Truth (2013)