-- . ... ... .- --. .
Video, 2009
-- . ... ... .- --. . consists of an LCD screen, housed in a small, clear-glass, bottle. The form alludes to both a ship in a bottle and to the idea of a message in a bottle, simultaneously suggesting both an impossible object and a desperate communication.
The LCD screen displays a video image of the mouth of a harbour. On either side of the entrance to the harbour are navigation lights, flashing green and red, to guide boats in and out of the safety of the harbour. As darkness falls the regular flashing of the navigation lights changes as they begin to flash in a different but distinct rhythm of short and longer pulses. The timing and regular rhythm suggests these flashes could be read as the dots and dashes of morse code. Indeed, they are flashing out the one bit of morse code we probably all know - the dot dot dot ,dash dash dash, dot dot dot of SOS.
In a world of electronic exchange and communication our understanding is increasingly reliant on systems of, 'reading', and translating data. In, -- . ... ... .- --. . , a simple, ON/OFF, navigational signal becomes a morse code message encoded within a video signal within a sealed bottle. Our technologically driven world is becoming increasingly opaque. The more heavily encoded our world becomes, the more ill-equipped we are to read it.
