Christopher Baker: Hello World!
Chicago-based artist Christopher Baker’s work addresses the complex relationship between modern society and its technologies. Originally trained as a computer scientist, Baker is inspired by the interconnectivities, both visible and invisible, present in the 21st-century human landscape and the practical implications of our increasingly networked lifestyles.
Hello World! or: How I Learned to Stop Listening and Love the Noise, focused on the mobilisation of individuals to voice their opinions and experiences to an audience across the globe, in a large-scale audio-visual installation comprised of thousands of video diaries gathered from the internet.
Each of the 5,000 videos that make up the installation featured a single individual speaking candidly to a prospective audience from a private, domestic space such as a bedroom or a kitchen. The multi-channel sound composition moved between individuals and the group, allowing audiences to listen in on individual speakers or become immersed in the overall cacophony, where the private and public collide. Social media has enabled us to become more proficient communicators, but have these multiple platforms helped us to any listen better?
2020 commemorated the Mayflower embarking from Plymouth to establish a settlement in a ‘New World’, the implications of the voyage have been far reaching. Hello World! invited audiences to consider what came back 400 years later and the increasingly significant part it plays in all our lives.