DIFFERENCE ENGINE: I-VI “JAMMING IS A FORM OF ERROR DETECTION” CHARLES BABBAGE*
* Charles Babbage is attributed with having graced the world with what has become generically known as ‘the computer’. The motivation behind his early 19th century efforts, it seems, lay in his desire to bring
Difference Engine is an evolving touring exhibition, a model of autonomous artist curation, by artists Mark Cullen, Wendy Judge, Gillian Lawler & Jessica Foley, featuring Gordon Cheung. For D.E: Accumulator, at WCAC, we welcomed special guest collaborator Paul Green, into the fold. The intention of this project is to elaborate upon the dual meaning of the term jamming – in one sense ‘jamming’ signifies stasis, shock, or rupture, and in another, opposite sense, it signifies a kind of fluid and changing improvisation between players. With this in mind, the artists and their works attempt to riff off each other and the site/space of exhibition, evolving an expression of contingency, hopefully developing a meaningful correspondence and communication with each other and the visitor. The challenge today is to be concernful of our place in nature, our space, our time, our neighbour – sustaining a cognisance of the ever-presentness of the past, and the illusory image of the future. The project of Difference Engine and its artists is one that acknowledges the challenges of our time and folds these into imaginative representations and gestures. The project concerns itself with science and the unparalleled marvels which human curiosity, perseverance and bloody-mindedness have brought into reality. The project concerns itself also with structures, systems and architecture – all of those frequently rigid phenomena that succumb only to the trickery of time itself – and the mood, affect and influence which these human-devised meta-forms have upon human experience and behavior.
into being ‘the first successful automatic calculating device to embody mathematical rule in mechanism’, thereby eliminating ‘human error’ in the tablature of numerical calculations. The Machine would produce a uniform numerical certainty that the human could not, thereby ensuring precision & automation within the major fields of the day dependant upon the tabling of data: Astronomy, engineering, banking & insurance, navigation, construction & finance. Babbage did not live to see his Difference Engine exact it’s existence leaving the legacy of his designs in his wake he declared ‘Another age must be the Judge’ http://differenceengine2010.wordpress.com Difeng Publishing Cat:01 Edition
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DIFFERENCE ENGINE: I-VI 27/11/09, MANIFESTATION I: CAKE, CURRAGH CAMP, 10/06/11 MANIFESTATION III: C.S.V. NEW YORK KILDARE The sweat was pouring off us and all the electrics were WARNING: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENCE: The making of failing and the men in shoes kept blaming the blow-ins sketches pictures or photographs in this area is unlawful for short-circuiting their hundred-year-old-school-house. penalty for breach fine and/or imprisonment… Star gazing But we prevailed. Classrooms of a time gone by. Empty from a bullet holed basement… Observing, but then going corridors filled with wandering strangers. Dark rooms filled backwards into a place of study with the rolling wall and with magic. The sound tore through the barriers. Tiered another stairs and then the other stair but not the main faces looked on, drawn into the chamber by multiple stairs. The stairs below ground led to the lieutenants office, robotic origami… Folding papers lining shelves, Folding and along with that room there were many other rooms papers lining corridors, Cubed pits slotted with works, that wore latticed and tiled walls and floors and more Lights and Putrid Heat – swollen organs stopped, given up were red, with posters. Battle plans are conjured up in mechanics, sweating works, exhausted plugs. The calming secret dark rooms below. For music remembered from a comes when you sit afterwards, in the ambient sounds. Lie previous life: that of a band hall, reinvoked with the spirit down on the floor, face to the cracking paint and observe of the end. A force of instruments that once practised, but how mice have left their prints in the Sulphur. Giant mice typically silent along with the bellows, a drednaut in the make homes in miniaturised mountains. Theatres leading well, and the cannon runner. to Theatres. The tunnels made me want to lie down and dream… 09/06/10 MANIFESTATION II: SUBSTATION, THE BLACK MARIAH, CORK 13/08/11 MANIFESTATION IV: WEXFORD ARTS The tapering of rooms as one ascends the stairs. The CENTRE, WEXFORD compass suspended delineates the way but is distracted Curtains show the way it seems. Hung from the upper from truth by a force acting in misorientation – the guiding view, in unison catapulted through time. A sub surface force of the powers that be – the mystery of control. No ocean of polished darkness reflects everything around it. other thing to do, often times, but take to the armchair Mechanisms unwinding, the black folds highlight yellow and travel. And this is not to be passive, but perhaps it is powdered piles. Magnets, drilled instruments and obtuse a radical action to reunite the brain and its bureaucratising grids. A hammer leads the way to a walk less taken, when of the senses. These imaginings are more powerful than a quiet zone amidst the din of dark passages and floating you might think… the low and the dark. The pillars were anomalies, gives the traveler rest in respite. A little tried straight and mathematical – cross hatching the black, from the travelling, but strangely enough our voices punched with the guts of jamming, Batteries operated were the strongest they’d ever been. In the theatre we by cranes and pullies. Rooms filled with too much energy. spoke to the crowd about our motivations and our work – The void demanded a response: Do not go beyond the preaching to the converted a little. But who is not guilty of second floor! this. Despite everything that had happened, breakdowns
and distortions. The matter seemed to remain somehow consistent, somehow tangible, somehow meaningful. Bizarre. That’s what it seemed like from the inside at least. The landscape of the crowd might have a different sight of it all… Where do you draw the line? 28/10/11 MANIFESTATION V: SOMA CONTEMPORARY, WATERFORD Rooms slashed into angles, a labyrinth hiding a padded dark box – a zig zagging chronicle of the past heading for the future. They were determined this time, solidarity had set in, even the dog could see it. The precise balancing of light and dark, of transient future architects and tourists declaring“ keep going, it might get better, it might get worse!” The change is all. Acute angled walls where windowless rooms emit artificial light. An exit door over shadowed by crumbling buildings. Garish bars lit against a grey to purple hue, a turn out to rocks at the rear. Out front on the range making entrance. Loaded up on information and intricacies, all the time mapping at source. Industry once dwelled here, now it houses industrious minds who plan long, long sleeps, the sleep of the voids. Watched over by the presence of Zainah. 21/04/12, D.E: ACCUMULATOR: WEST CORK ARTS CENTRE, SKIBBEREEN future (adj.) – about 1380 future, futur, in Chaucer’s translation of Boethius’ "De Consolatione Philosophiae"; borrowed through Old French futur (feminine future), and directly from Latin futurus – about to be; history (n.) – before 1393 histoire story, legend, biography, in Gower’s "Confessio Amantis"; borrowed from Old French histoire, estoire, estorie, and borrowed from Latin historia narrative, account, tale, story, from Greek historia
a learning or knowing by inquiry, history, record, narrative, from historein inquire, from histor wise man, judge, earlier istor, from Indo-European wid-tor, root, weid-/woid-/wid see (Pok. 1125); related to idein to see, eidenai to know; present (adj.) – being at hand, not absent. About 1303, in Mannyng’s Handlyng Synne; borrowed from Old French present, learned borrowing from Latin, and borrowed directly from Latin praesentem (nominative praesens) present, immediate, prompt, from present participle of praeesse be before (a person or thing), be at hand, take the lead; past (adj.) – before 1325 past gone by, ended, over, in "Cursor Mundi"; later passed (about 1380, in Chaucer’s translation of Boethius’ "De Consolatione Philosophiae"); from past participle of passen go by. Written by Jessica Foley, Gillian Lawler, Wendy Judge and Mark Cullen on the 30th March 2012.