Alison Berry & Sonia Griffin:
Developing further our interest in communication and language, we have produced a projected digital image with Ruth Payne’s work forming the tower of Babel and Val Bolsover’s work creating radio type signals radiating outwards through the air. The tower is situated in Piccadilly Circus, London at dusk with it’s famous illuminated boards advertising mass communication and global products. It is a garish, mad scene with members of the public looking up at the tower which itself consists of a plethora of adverts and junk mail.
Accompanying this projected image we have mass produced a small advertising paper flyer for the fictitious www.babeltower.com. It is crammed with all the ways in which we can link in, keep in touch, blog and communicate.
In the biblical story of Babel, all people originally spoke the same language and they decided to make a name for themselves and build a tower to reach the sky. God saw that with one language they possessed great power and so He confounded their speech. The tower was abandoned as the people could no longer understand each other and they dispersed over the world developing their individual languages. God could be interpreted as being resentful or as the father of multicultural diversity.
Over the top, brash and not entirely serious, our work raises questions about the bewildering forms of mass communication paper and digital, the quality of interaction and the loss of diversity.
