Shift ^6 | Kelsey Sharpe
Shift ^6 examines the internet as an invented space.
The internet has no ruler although many have tried; a space for liberation, a space for entrapment.
The internet digs itself into us and etches our skin onto its liquid crystal. Its umbilical wire stretches from my ear to its loins, “always connected”, or rather “always digitally connected*”.
I’ve been fascinated by the way humans have steadily become entangled with digital technology over the past 20 years and especially throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic.
In what ways have we made digital what we could no longer physically experience?
… nightclubs,
… coffee shops,
… movie theaters,
… libraries,
… the classroom,
… museums…
Process
… In nightclubs we escape into hedonism, fantasy, demagoguery, escapism, “if only for a night” we will dance til our legs fall off as long as it’ll confirm to us why we are here. In coffee shops we talk shit, share and conspire, cry, heal, improve, grow, create, and maybe for some the hedonism continues from the night before, stopping for coffee if only it’ll delay the inevitable crash.
Shift ^6 embodies what it can mean to adapt to our environment at its most basic: when it is changing. It depicts our natural tendencies to pick up and pivot, adapt, alter, transform, and create anew the parts of ourselves we have lost.
Shift ^6 struggles with leaving behind its physicality, its memory, forcing it to grieve the physical world in exchange for this digital-physical iteration. Shift ^6 finds itself frozen in transition between two worlds, left behind at Elsewhere as an ode to our ever-changing universe.
Shift ^6 uses assemblage, sculpture, wiring, and sound design.
Objects included from Elsewhere’s collection: a Western Electric AC Unit from 1973, computer keyboards, speakers, wifi routers, a Sony Walkman, floppy disks, pieces from old lamps and miniature figures.
Visit Elsewhere’s first floor to see it in real life!
