COPY PASTE - THE BANDWIDTH PROGRAMME - Reviewed
Copy Paste is an image abstraction piece by collaborators Jonathan Pratt and Tom Gibson, that experiments with the distortion, disturbance and representation of digital objects. As a performance that exemplifies human inefficiency in contrast to machines, it demonstrates a quiet encouragement to consider the overlooked capabilities of technology, in an age where a lack of understanding has lent it largely to negative connotations.
Acting as the characters Ctrl - C (COPY) and Ctrl - V (PASTE), Gibson - (Ctrl - C) relays the numerical values of an image to Pratt - (Ctrl - V), who then writes this data into a blank document. Once saved, the extensive mass of numbers representing the image (its ‘hexadecimal’ data) should return to an exact image replica that has been manually rendered. ‘Should’, perhaps, is the key word here, as when considering human error, the slightest mistake could corrupt the image or totally abstract the visual information. This multiple hour, eye straining slog at a computer would be the work of a moment - with a far smaller risk of error - for a machine.
Demonstrating a long-winded way around the extensively used commands ‘Copy’ and ‘Paste’, the artists show in real time the extensive effort and concentration needed by man to complete what is an incredibly mundane task to a machine. It raises questions of the limitations of man and how perhaps machines are somewhat an extension of the self - created by human minds but possessing far more power and efficiency in many ways than us. Used to complete what would be tedious tasks to us, they allow us to do more, consume more, know more. In essence, machines are a slave to us (albeit a very powerful one), and Copy Paste seeks to challenge the common narrative around technological advancement that considers it worrying, and instead shows us its capabilities as a very powerful ‘prosthetic enhancement’, as Pratt puts it.
In a somewhat satirical power inversion, the performers become rusty cogs in a state- of- the-art machine, which is also a soft critique on performance art itself. By undertaking an arduous task that is totally unnecessary, and exemplifies their own uselessness, the artists subvert the centrifugal role of a traditional performance artist and set themselves up to be ridiculed. However, ironically, it is with this consideration that an underlying statement of the piece becomes apparent: we still control computers - just as the artists have controlled the perception of themselves in comparison to this machine of our creation. Without our input, computers cannot do much, but given a task, they exceed any power known to man.
Perhaps it is this undeniable power that has begun to cause discomfort in a species not used to being outperformed.
