How the mind comes to be furnished

Space In Between is delighted to present a collaborative exhibition of new work by James Irwin & Lilah Fowler to commence our 2016 programme. Considering today’s landscape as a cartographic human-made structure - where technology is the ink, or maybe even the paper - How the mind comes to be furnished addresses the physical, intangible and often hidden infrastructures of this landscape. Drawing on materials such as the architecture of remote data centres and the pattern of radio wave oscillations as they translate data activity, the collage of works on show treats the horizontal landscape as an immaterial networked space.

Having been brought together by Space In Between and invited to experiment with, and elaborate on, areas of research and interest within their practices, James Irwin & Lilah Fowler have created a collaborative sound piece, which gives the title to the show. How the mind comes to be furnished makes visible the invisible chatter of data that surrounds us, as the physical nature of the material world captured as a recording of wind turbine blades is disrupted by the data stream of local Wi-Fi networks.

This work will create an environment in which a collection of other works are shown including: a digested rock sample contained in a glass vial; a print made using the raw data of a file that has an image encrypted within it; a suspended solar panel that restson a grid powering, when it can, a small cooling fan. These experiments and disparate instances of transformation together explore how seemingly distant forces might shape or furnish our consciousness.