CONCORDANCE MUMBLER
2009
A web artwork by Andrew Forster
URL: www.reluctant.ca/rosetta

"Concordance Mumbler" begins with the idea of "code cracking" which refers to a very instrumental idea of translation: that one word represents one idea or thing, and that this signifying relationship between word and idea/thing is identical in another language. The piece focusses on translation as a process in which the incommensurateness of meaning is amplified and extrapolated. As a contribution to this multi-artist web project, "Concordance Mumbler" is a text-based work that uses a database of poems to generate and display content according to themes selected by the viewer. An interlocking fabric of language will be assembled from the database. Reload the page or click on another word and a new assemblage of words, phrases, meanings will appear. The piece explores the relationship of form (word) to content (thing/idea) in new media work. Is what we normally call "content" on the web or "theme" in literature really the meaning of the work? Do new media and the world of the electronic virtual have a place for "meaning"? Or do they turn meaning into gibberish in order to fill up space? This piece will explore where meaning can coalesce in the space between language and the simple software-generated structures of the web.

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Andrew Forster lives and works in Montreal. His work now crosses over between installation, performance, dance, new media and projects for public space. Early work consisting predominantly of forgeries and deliberate biographical falsifications was encapsulated in an exhibition entitled Museum Stories at the Power Plant, Toronto. More recent work includes: a production of Samuel Beckett's That Time; the winning design in a competition for a new entrance to Place des Arts, Montreal (with architects Atelier Big City, 2001); a performance for 75 people entitled En masse (with choreographer Suzanne Miller, 2003); Cinéma, an outdoor multi-media performance for an audience seated indoors at the Société des arts technologiques (SAT), Montréal (2004); MOAT, a performance and video installation recorded in the moat surrounding Canada House on Trafalgar Square in London, exploring surveillance and political violence. His critical writing about performance, photography and visual art has appeared in several publications and catalogues, most recently in Artpapers and Fuse magazines. In 2003, Forster established the production company Push [Montréal] as an umbrella for collaborative and cross-disciplinary work.

For more information about the artist and his work: www.reluctant.ca