Alt-w | Aberdeen Ships

Cycle 13 Alt-w Production Award - Cliona Harmey
www.clionaharmey.info

April to June 2019, daily. FREE
Music Hall, Union Street, Aberdeen AB10 1QS

Explore the romance and reality of the sea courtesy of Aberdeen Harbour and the MarineTraffic API. By tracking the location of ships, the constantly updated names of the most recently arrived and most recently departed vessels are juxtaposed on the Music Hall's Stepping In Space screen, creating a form of poetic writing.

Irish artist Cliona Harmey's work attempts to interrupt the speed of this instantaneous data stream and return it to the speed of movement of real entities in space. The names include references to Scots and Nordic culture conjuring up historical figures and distant places in this localised iteration of her previous work Dublin Ships (2015).

twitter.com/aberdeenships

As engagement with creative technology is often cyclical, so Harmey turns technologies back on themselves. Old media becomes new media to new audiences. Harmey takes inspiration from these early forms of technological invention particularly the processes of capture and communication, revealing many pitfalls and possibilities.

This 4.5m high LED screen will offer creators from around the world an ongoing opportunity to present and develop work that dynamically engages everyone visiting the building. We'd like to thank Aberdeen Harbour Board for their data and Dublin City Council’s Public Art Programme and Dublin Port Company for their initial support.

Co-commissioned by Aberdeen Performing Arts And New Media Scotland’s Alt-w Fund with investment from Creative Scotland.

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