Thursday 18 February 2010

DATA - DHSS INTERVIEW - 1980'S

DATA was the brainchild of Dundee artist, Pete Horobin. It stands for - Daily Active Time Archive. The concept behind it was to document 10 years of his life on a daily basis, from 1st January 1980 to 31st December 1989, using art, films, audio recordings, journals, photography and a few other methods. A rather hefty project to undertake! He was based at 37 Union Street, with his living quarters & studio known as "The Attic", which was also open to like-minded artists who he collaborated with. A couple of examples of DATA output here - The image above is his introduction page from a book published by AAGA Productions called "Views From Urban Dwellings - 2" dated 1983. PH was one of 9 contributors to the book, containing poetry, stories, observations, graphics etc. Below is an audio recording he made during an interview with the DHSS using the name DATA DD1 4BS. A great piece of work using layers of cut up loops, similar in style to Steve Reich. The repetitiveness of certain sections is a good reminder of what it's like signing on over & over again, a situation that feels like you're trapped in a never ending cycle, and one that could possibly drive you crazy!! It lasts 7 minutes, so you've been warned..!!

 

4 comments:

  1. The Captain here poting btw....

    Ah - yeah - I went to his work/living space a few times - I recall his fastidious neatness (almost anal retention/attention to small detail)- it wss full of little skinny wooden filing cabinets with 'DATA' cards all logged and cross referenced and such- became a sort of a 'blog' before online blogging.... and glass cases reminiscent of Victorian museum exhibits of stuffed animals - except it was like old sandshoes and pebbles and sand from his day at the seaside on display kinda dealio.... he was also a rather 'abstract' performance artist on ocassion... 'happenings' type events...... I remember one such at Laing's where the theme appeared to be 'out of the frying pa into the fire' and invoved 'hiking' round the room with a backpack on...... all very amusing and mysterious to the art students at the time...

    I recall there was another side to him too - disinformation/intellectual terrorism of sorts, lol. He got nimself banned from the Art College Library after getting caughtswapping out slides of 'famous' works of art for his own slides.... and altering pics and info with convincing looking nonsense of his own.... and other such naughty tamperings with 'historical art data'.....

    He came to visit me in London in the 80's, last I saw of him since.... nice guy

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  2. Hmm...well, that's 7½ minutes of my life I wont get back.

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  3. Never met the guy BUT he did produce very interesting badges for Stobswell Rugby Club about 1979 for the visit of their Welsh contemporaries,Treherbert RFC. Then in 1988 after crossing Scotland with Neil Watson as part of The Great Outdoors Challenge,and winning same,he got my place with aforesaid Mr Watson and completed the 21st Karrimor Marathon.(My employers would not allow me time off ...F*** the Polis,especially Hissing Sid)

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  4. I met Pete in the mid 90's under a different name by then, which may have been changed as a project also?
    Pete was curating an outsider art exhibition and I was lucky enough to get some work in. This was actually the first exhibition I had work in outwith the scene I was involved in. Cheers to Pete for sorting me out.
    I think he lives in Glasgow now?

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