TNWK

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The work includes: material gathered from journeys in on and around the A10 corridor between Cambridge and Ely, flarf* from google search engine results, images and sound recordings from the Whittlesey Straw Bear festival; interviews with industrial software programmers on a company bowling outing in Newmarket, with estate agents based at Cambourne Business Park and with the Miller at Swaffham Prior Windmill. The work features digital and analogue variations on a 17th century English folk song The Girl I Left Behind Me. This song was adopted as an American Civil War song and is now almost irretrievably associated with John Wayne and the ambivalent romance of frontier as depicted in the central movie of John Ford’s iconic post-WWII trilogy She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (1949).

*Flarf is a bricolage text-generation method that employs internet search engines. For example: you search Google for two disparate terms like “silicon” + “fen” and using the quotes captured by Google you stitch words phrases, clauses and sentences together to assemble new texts. We’re interested in the conversation between the process of editing implied by this approach and the activity of reclaiming land. Flarf has so far been interesting for a number of reasons- its collaborative texture, its anthropological implications (the sampling of an enormous variety of public speech based on a common word or phrase shared) and its comedic potential for critique.

far from silicon fen is one of three commissions currently online at www.silicon-fen.net

far from silicon fen	a ten minute image-text-sound work for the web browser interface that playfully explores the origins and ideologies of naming places to perform a critique of techno-romanticism. Sound is crucial to this work - please ensure that your speakers are switched on. Strategic random text elements mean that each viewing of far from silicon fen will be subtly different. view work (opening in a new window)

commissioned by Norwich School of Art and Design & Film and Video Umbrella
*more details >* The work includes: material gathered from journeys in on and around the A10 corridor between Cambridge and Ely, flarf* from google search engine results, images and sound recordings from the Whittlesey Straw Bear festival; interviews with industrial software programmers on a company bowling outing in Newmarket, with estate agents based at Cambourne Business Park and with the Miller at Swaffham Prior Windmill. The work features digital and analogue variations on a 17th century English folk song The Girl I Left Behind Me. This song was adopted as an American Civil War song and is now almost irretrievably associated with John Wayne and the ambivalent romance of frontier as depicted in the central movie of John Ford’s iconic post-WWII trilogy She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (1949). Flarf is a bricolage text-generation method that employs internet search engines. For example: you search Google for two disparate terms like “silicon” + “fen” and using the quotes captured by Google you stitch words phrases, clauses and sentences together to assemble new texts. We’re interested in the conversation between the process of editing implied by this approach and the activity of reclaiming land. Flarf has so far been interesting for a number of reasons- its collaborative texture, its anthropological implications (the sampling of an enormous variety of public speech based on a common word or phrase shared) and its comedic potential for critique. far from silicon fen* is one of three commissions currently online at www.silicon-fen.net