01_Davis_Untitled_2010 at the MINI Museum

The MINI Museum of XXI Century Arts is proud to announce “01_Davis_Untitled_2010”, the first site-specific work commissioned for its revolutionary exhibition space to the London-based artist Paul B. Davis.
The first artist to be featured at the MINI Museum, Davis decided to exploit this extraordinary opportunity to turn his interest in circuit bending and hacking systems into a form of “institutional critique”. When you turn it on, if there is no memory card inserted, the MINI Museum displays a default screensaver featuring three kitschy landscape images set, for some mysterious reasons, somewhere in Greece. Davis opened the device to see if it was possible to get those images out of it; but when he realized that, beyond its glamorous surface, the MINI Museum is actually a piece of «ghetto chinese engineering», he decided to simply take photos of the Museum when it displayed those demo images. Then he made «a screwed and chopped remix of Manuel Göttsching's seminal proto-techno track E2-E4»
(1984) and he copied both the track and the photos on the USB pen
drive. The final result has been documented here:
http://vimeo.com/19122996. According to Davis, «the behaviour of the
device in its “default” state is almost identical to this except
for some differences in the image quality which you can notice on
close inspection, and of course Manuel Göttsching.»
«It is exactly what I was expecting from Paul, but still it's a surprise», Domenico Quaranta, the MINI Museum Director, declared. «He could have easily uploaded a version of his wonderful compression videos, but he decided to make a comment on the Museum as both an institution and a piece of crappy technology. With his minimal intervention, he turned the original screensaver - a beautiful example of the vernacular images displayed by default on consumer technologies, from computers to cell phones - into art, hinting back at appropriation art of the eighties in an absolutely modern, post internet fashion.» According to Quaranta, «“01_Davis_Untitled_2010” also works as a tip for the artists who will come next, on the way to approach the MINI Museum.»
Up to now, “01_Davis_Untitled_2010” has been shown in a private exhibition in Room 3148 of the Los Angeles Airport Hilton Hotel in December 2010. A public show will be announced soon.
A founder member of the BEIGE Programming Ensemble together with Joe Beuckman, Cory Arcangel and Joseph Bonn, Paul B. Davis
lives and works in London, UK. In the late 90s he pioneered the use
of hacked video game cartridges as an art practice. According to Paul
Pieroni, «while the materials utilised are ready-made, the use
principle is entirely hand crafted; Davis altering the existing code
while adding nothing new.» He has exhibited internationally and his
work is represented by Seventeen Gallery, London. A recent interview
for “The Creators Project” can be found here:
http://www.thecreatorsproject.com/en-uk/creators/paul-b-davis--2
The MINI Museum of XXI Century Arts (also known as MMAXXI) is a 7'' digital photo frame bought on eBay equipped with a 4GB pen drive. Founded and directed by Domenico Quaranta, the MINI Museum will travel from node to node around a network of artists, and will host temporary solo shows by the artist owning it at the time.
Paul's MINI Museum tutorial: http://www.beigerecords.com/paul/minimuseum/
More informations: http://www.theminimuseum.org/
Stay updated: http://blog.theminimuseum.org/