Darsha Hewitt is a Canadian sound artist that works primarily with technology, making artwork through experiments, pushing electronics to new uses.
Hewitt takes inspiration from Dr Ursula Franklin, who suggested that technology should be seen as a comprehensive human led practice, similar to culture or democracy. Hewitt believes that Technology is connected through history to structures, networks of people and nature. We need to not only value the end product of technology, but the preceding steps and advancements that led to that point. This ‘end product’ view of technology, Hewitt says, leaves us unfamiliar with the material aspects of the infrastructure that upholds it.
Hewitt places a lot of value on working with obsolete technology, this is partly influenced by the concept of post-growth. We live on a planet of finite resources, therefore populations and economies cannot grow infinitely. Post-growth is a term that acknowledges the eventuality that there will one day be a tipping point where economic growth will no longer be beneficial to humanity, after this point we will have to look for other indicators and techniques to increase human wellbeing. Hewitt is looking into ways to use technology that responds to this idea of post growth. Darsha thinks of obsolete technology as a naturally occurring resource, appearing in rubbish bins and sidewalks. This resource is a tool, to be experimented with, material to manipulate and reformat into art.
An example of using obsolete technology for sound arts:
Electrostatic Bell Choir-
In 2013 Canada switched from analogue to digital cable. Due to a failure to inform the public that the switch could be achieved with a converter (there was no need to buy a new TV), a lot of people bought new televisions, thus there was an abundance of televisions on the streets. Hewitt used this new resource to create an art piece. Curious to see if she could use the static from the screen to move something, Hewitt started experimenting. She found that she could hang electrostatic bells from telephones in front of the screens, and they would respond to the screen’s electrostatic discharge, causing them to ring.
After creating this piece, Hewitt found that in the 1700’s electrostatic bells had already been used in a similar way to demonstrate the potential of static electricity. Hewitt believes this is a first hand example of how ‘electronics are not only matter, unfolding through minerals, chemicals, bodies, soil, water, environments and temporalities. They also provide traces of the economic, cultural and political contexts in which they circulate.’ This practice of taking apart old technologies to understand and reformat the parts is called media archaeology.
Hi fidelity wasteland 1: 100 year old quicksilver cloud-
Central to this piece is a 100 year old piece of technology called a Thyratron typically used in industrial AC switching mechanisms. This thyratron contained a vacuum tube radiating a cloud of ionised mercury. This piece of technology interested Darsha as it was built before the concept of planned obsolescence, it was a functioning piece of technology’s history, and due to the transparent construction the infrastructure is visible. Darsha recorded the high pitched tones the thyratron emanated, and with help from a musician composed an audio/visual piece that gives an experiential glimpse into history.
Darsha Hewitt became interested in the idea of spontaneous DIY sound performance, and created a poster detailing how to create a sound performance with two telephones called the ‘loop hole generator’. I like this as it makes sound performance completely accessible to anyone as most people have phones, I also like that it has a collaborative/communal aspect to it. The piece creates one time, unique and dissonant sound pieces where small patterns would sometimes emerge, the user could also input sound into the phones and listen to how the sound travels and changes through the feedback loop. Darsha noticed that the feedback sounded like a whimpering baby, this gave her the idea to mechanise this movement and create another slightly different sound piece. She attached strings and motors to lots of old baby monitors, she described them as looking quite small pathetic and noticed a sort of anthropomorphisation happening. Darsha creates a mechanical system and lets it create its own patterns and sequences, and leaves it up to the listener to discern musicality from it. I’m interested in this idea not composing a piece of sound art, but composing the framework and context for a piece to grow and thrive within. This is very similar to Jessica Ekomane’s use of Max MSP to create parameters for a piece.
Researching Darsha Hewitt’s work and philosophy has given me an appreciation for the political-economic aspects of materials used in art, the value of obsolete technology as something to explore and reformat, and lastly the practice of creating the parameters for a performance or sound piece and letting it unfold organically.