The Spirit of Invention
JUDE MONTAGUE and CHRIS SIMPSON on Electro Studios’ latest art venture
One hundred years ago a young John Logie Baird was recovering from his chest condition in Hastings. He went for long walks to Fairlight. Baird was driven by an inventive genius and, as his friend Mephy put it, he became one of those ‘wireless nuts’, experimenting with transmitting visual information over radio waves, and picking up the signals using photo-voltaic receptors.
Baird was a compulsive inventor. Inspired by the Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell, he installed an electric light system in The Lodge, generating energy from a second-hand oil engine. But his first successful business was the Baird Medicated Undersock, which remained dry, despite sweaty feet, through being ingeniously sprinkled with borax. A project that needed more development was the pneumatic shoe. He bought large boots and put inflated balloons inside that made him wobble. The balloons finally burst. The boys who followed him on his work were delighted by the uncontrollable lurches of his wild walk. He continued to pursue new sidelines of the historic television technology, inventing Phonovision, Noctovision, and outdoor, stereoscopic and cinema television. Although his system was not the one chosen by the BBC or the one that came to dominate twentieth century broadcasting, his ingenuity has had a lasting legacy beyond his reputation: a later development of his invention was Phonevision used for the Moon Landing in 1969. The space team developed the small, robust television camera which enabled the live broadcast from the Apollo 11 mission.
The spirit of invention that drove Baird has never gone away, and today there are many who work outside of institutions, building machines in their bedrooms or sheds, dreaming up something new that could make a mark on their generation. Many developments now take place through the application of digital technology, coding and micro-computing. This new exhibition acknowledges the new technology but the focus is on real world making, encouraging the artists to display ideas of the inventive spirit through sculpture, painting, some audio-visual work and whatever the artists enjoy.
Over twenty participants are showing their work, much of which has been made specifically for the exhibition. They include Caroline Gregory and Monika Tobel (performance), Duncan Reekie (Exploding Cinema, Jury Service), Sam Dook (sonic art), Dan Howard Birt (image objects), Lucia Scazzochio (audio, graphic novel), and Sarah Pager (hyper-magical techno-sculptor).
The exhibition is part-curated by Chris Simpson (folding, suspension, chromatography in sculpture). Other works include those by Rachel Williams, Sinéid Codd, Markus Thonett, Mark Walter and photographer art-director Gary Willis.
Whatever your response to John Logie Baird’s experiments and the idea of a spirit of invention being part of the human condition, you are invited to join in the Friday scientific and experimental conversation with many artists from the Hastings area and beyond.
Spirit of Invention: John Logie Baird and the idea of invention
Electro Studios Project Space, Seaside Road TN38 0AL
10–12 May 2024
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