Linda Dement I Know You Think It's Too Late 2007
An installation of three networked computers that takes a systems theory approach in considering human impulses to violence.
Each monitor and its projection shows a morphing mutating substance; a hairball struggling and turning, drops of blood pulsing, human fat accreting over the screen. Each program sends and receives information, reacting to the incoming data and modifying its own behaviour and outgoing data accordingly. The exchange of information can cause all three to snowball out of control if not interrupted by a user exploring the work.
Hair, blood and fat, bodily substances as might be left behind after violent death, form a system that if left alone will escalate out of control. It is as if the bloody fragments of death refuse to decay, instead they accelerate and compound, violence triggering more violence which triggers more violence ad infinitum.
The escalations decrease as users explore the details of individual programs. Malevolent text appears under the mouse. Bass sounds and voices of a choir play and images of faces, flickering light and transluscent blue shards appear. Bullets line up. Flowers made of bayonets unfurl.
I Know You Think It's too Late gives voice to a strange distributed entity that inhabits and grows from the detritus of violent death. If left unchecked it leads to the compounding runaway growth referred to in systems theory as a positive feedback system. A user's interaction can bring the processes back into the steadiness and balance of what is termed a negative feedback system.
Sound: Jane Castle
Choir: Nothing Without Belinda