Signal To Noise at The National Communication Museum
The National Communication Museum (NCM) officially launched in September last year – the first major museum to open in Melbourne in 25 years. Its mission is to explore the relationship humanity has with technology, both educating about our past and researching our future.
Upstairs, its permanent exhibition is known for a fully interactive cyber cafe, with computers straight out of the ’90s – retro games and MSN included. Downstairs, you’ll find the museum’s newest exhibition, Signal To Noise. The show explores how artists work with signals and noise (glitches, disruptions and interference) in communication technologies, from radio and television to the internet and AI.
Bringing together international artworks, new commissions and technology collections, the exhibition has been curated by NCM’s artistic director Emily Siddons, together with researchers and artists Joel Stern and Eryk Salvaggio. While Siddons and Stern have worked together throughout the years prior to NCM, they first became friendly with Salvaggio at the start of 2024.
Among the many visually and sonically striking artworks, standouts include South Korean artist Nam June Paik’s 1994 video sculpture Internet Dream. On loan from Germany’s ZKM Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, the enormous work combines dozens of television screens, playing hypnotically fast, synchronised images.
There’s also artistic duo Jodi’s My Desktop, which plays an endless, chaotic loop of a Y2K computer desktop glitching – a pioneering work from the anarchistic internet artists. The exhibition concludes with Salvaggio’s own work titled SWIM, a short film projected onto a huge screen that blends archival footage with a backdrop of failed AI-generated images.
Signal to Noise* runs until September 14*.
Share
