The Inevitability of Obsolescence – Winnipeg Free Press

WHAT'S THIS: Living room Winnipeg artist Lawrence Bird is a multi-layered multimedia installation currently on display at Video Pool. It's part of Video Pool's series of programs exploring the “midlife crisis,” as the organization notes, in celebration of the artist-run center's 40th anniversary.

ABOUT WHAT: Its name a nod to wheat cooperatives, Video Pool was founded in 1983 to allow artists working in video to come together and share equipment and expertise in the spirit of Prairie cooperation.

Bird's work pays homage to that history, which one Video Pool artist called “The Matrix meets rural Manitoba.” The installation is loosely surrounded by rough, gray wooden panels that look like old outbuildings. In front of them are piled up worn, dilapidated AV and technology equipment—transistors, computer boards, TV monitors, light bulbs, wires and cables, some covered in rust and dust.

Alluding to the big analog days of tapes and camcorders, it's a poetic representation of obsolescence and a reminder that even our sleek, sleek tech gadgets will one day become obsolete.

In front of these piles of equipment is a three-cornered screen that takes in layers of time, space, technology, and meaning. Bird began with a rotating series of video footage drawn from four decades of work by Video Pool artists, including Ryan Takatsu, Gilles Hébert, Brenna George, Dominique Rey, James Dixon and Raine Vermette.

Working as an architect and urbanist, Kus focused on images of buildings and urban spaces, including hazy impressions of skyscrapers, suburban homes, and warehouses in the Exchange District.

The shadows of the branches above these images evoke the natural world. The technology is powered by advanced generative software that reads the room – literally – and then expands the dots into moving, radiating lines for a fluid, interactive experience. (As I stood there, I saw the program lift me up, my striped dress abstracted and projected onto the screen in jittery white lines.)

As its name suggests, Living room interactive in an old-school way: Participants are invited to pick up pencils and draw, while white screens are now covered with sketches of faces and figures, scrambled words and phrases.

Bird's exhibit also includes a second-floor window projection visible in the Artspace lobby, which features an abstracted video game figure that seamlessly moves through images generated by Google Earth's Winnipeg terrain model. With a mesmerizing rhythm of repetition and variation, the bird imagines these digital images spreading from the gallery to the real city that surrounds it.

WHY IMPORTANT: So much of our world is now experienced digitally, a continuous stream of data conveying a mediated truth where the lines between communication and disinformation can be very slippery. Just as the Video Pool artists of the 80s responded to the landscape of commercial television and advertising, many media artists now create work that references the digital terrain of computers, phones, and game consoles.

For Bird, video art is a way to help people stop, look, and learn about the medium and how it works, encouraging us to think critically about this relentless barrage of digital images instead of passively accepting it.

[email protected]