jessica curry composer and sound artist

Levels of Undo

Subprime

Toxic Assets

Recession

Location One Gallery, New York

Four artists from 4 different cities, who have never met and were forbidden to do so during the three months of their residency collaborate on a topic that they had no say in developing. Is this fair to the artists? Interesting? Were they even able to produce anything worthwhile under such arbitrarily stringent rules?

There were no expectations or requirements to complete any finished artworks, in fact the entire project could conceivably have existed as a blog discussion, but the four artists (two teams of two) Ben Woodeson (UK) & Ursula Endlicher (US), and Narinda Reeders (AU) & Jessica Curry (UK), who were given the topic "Levels of Undo" and precious little else, spent the last three months marinating in that theme and communicating via blog, skype, snail mail, telephone and IM so long as it did not include meeting face to face to create some exciting new works.

Regret? Shame? Not really.
Uses Dymo embossing tape to record collected Twitter Tweets. This is a reflection on peoples’ real experiences in the workplace and details the common daily frustrations, humour and resilience of employees across the globe. Regret? Shame? Not really also illustrates the collapse of the traditional boundaries between public and private, as tweeters post highly emotional and often incriminatory or inflammatory material without any apparent thought for consequence or who will be reading.

Danger: Recession Ahead!
A series of four short piano pieces using Morse Code as a base for composition. Titled “Recession”, "Subprime", "Quantitative Easing" and "Toxic Asset" each piece spells out the title in morse code continuously throughout. The piece makes something beautiful and delicate out of the words that are instilling such global terror. Danger: Recession Ahead! also employs a virtually obsolete form of communication to convey information and plays with the concept of "code"- both then and now. Each audio piece has an accompanying road sign that display the titles in morse code. The failure of these signs to communicate their meaning comments on our media culture’s attempt to communicate big ideas using easy to digest sound bites that create alarm and obscure the complexity of the reality.

Don’t Tell The Boss I Love You
An attempt to undo, just for a moment, idealized corporate ideologies by placing very personal notes, letters and cards about people’s real experiences in places normally associated with commerce and the impersonal flow of information. Fake letters, disciplinary notices, notes for friends, photographs of office celebrations and birthday cards were smuggled into places identified with work- or the lack of it. These drops were secretly filmed using commercially available surveillance cameras more normally used to film others without their knowledge, thus responding to the growing (ab)use of such technologies in the workplace to track employee behaviour.

OMG WTF CTRL-ZZZZZ
Two 14 year olds tweet continuously throughout the Private View of Levels of Undo, commenting on the gallery goers and anything else that takes their fancy.

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