Exhibition
Wilkins Hill
Windows impersonating other windows
5 Mar – 10 Apr 2010
Artspace
43–51 Cowper Wharf Roadway
Woolloomooloo NSW 2011
Sydney Australia
Wilkins Hill's multimedia installation Windows impersonating other windows addressed the structures of communication through abstracting relationships between words, objects and meanings. The installation was to be understood as extending the artists' interest in the underlying processes involved in the communication of meaning between an artwork and an audience, building upon earlier works such as The Plague of Inheritance (2006), Sunny (2005) and the True meaning of Christmas (2004).
Throughout 2008 and 2009 Wilkins Hill participated in residency projects in Berlin, Paris and Hamburg during which time they began experimenting with language translation, utilising the inherent gaps and misunderstandings between languages as departure points for creativity. Produced when in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts, their video work Lemurs, roswell, wheat, pyramids, mosquitoes, yellow skin, humans that lay eggs, bestiality, nazi aryanism (2009) incorporated speech recognition software and automated translation websites as a way to generate poetic texts and narratives that were then edited into a corresponding visual structure. Windows impersonating other windows incorporates translation devices in a similar fashion, creating a space for deeper consideration of how meaning is extracted from our physical environment.