UTV

UTV is the transposition of our Internet identities from Twitter feeds to an over-the-air TV broadcast.

UTV is part of an exhibition entitled "Ill Communication", which examines the role of technology in our understandings of community and communication. The format of the exhibition is such that each of the participating artists presents a work that spans two halves of the gallery space - essentially, an "interface" and an "output".

Interface

The UTV installation begins with an open presentation of the technology behind the television broadcast. A laptop computer connects to a display, which shows the real-time workings of the scripts and patches that gather Twitter feeds from people in the Chicago area. A camcorder then converts the image into a ready-for-TV signal and finally leads to a UHF transmitter that broadcasts the content to any television sets in the area. The corkboard above this makeshift TV station contains my notes, sketches and observations about the technical process, comparisons between the sociopolitical histories of Internet and broadcast TV media, and the re-appropriation of the obsolete medium of analog TV for the purposes of broadcasting local community-produced content.

Output

In the second half of the gallery, a pile of TVs and their rabbit-ear antennae are tuned to UHF channel 14½ to receive the reconfigured broadcast. The commentaries and mini-monologues from the once-digital medium scroll past the TV screens at varying speeds. The translation of this content to the fuzzy world of analog TV happens as the medium reaches the final stage of its gradual appropriation for purely commercial purposes. When it is discontinued this year, its final remains will be sold to private corporations and its demise as a medium for geographically relevant, freely available, community-driven content will be complete. UTV is an effort to filter "local" content from the world-wide medium of the Internet and funnel it back into the communication void that will exist during the final days of analog TV and beyond. This project also serves to expose this sociopolitical history of analog broadcasting and compare it to the power struggles that the Internet has and will face in the future.

Photos: Lucas Blair