Going Dark by artist Tim Shaw is a temporary radio station, visual installation and multi-channel sonic performance created especially for Sanctuary 2017, within a UK dark sky space, on a dark site with no Internet connection and no cellular phone signal.

The project has been developed with REACH a portal through which people can contribute audio, visual and written material in advance of Sanctuary, and in response to a series of prompts relating to how we experience ‘darkness’ today.

Contibute to REACH before it goes dark and offline at Noon 23rd September for the 24 hours of Sanctuary

The REACH archive will feature in Going Dark as a corpus of material with which Shaw has considered expanded notions of darkness and how technology features in our experience of going dark.Two Going Dark artworks, Radio Television and The Darkest Space, use the darkness of the Sanctuary site location and material collected through the REACH portal as a space for experimenting with communication and connectivity.

Radio Television

During Sanctuary 2017 Shaw will transmit user submitted images via radio across the event site. Short-range radio transmitting towers will occupy a variety of positions across the site, broadcasting images to a number of screens.

Radio is central to  Sanctuary. The Dark Outside FM is a temporary radio station transmitting sound across the site for 24 hours. There is no  sound system at Sanctuary, instead visitors bring small handheld radios to listen to the Dark Outside FM creating a unique diffused sound-space and festival dynamic like no other.

As images are sent across the dark space of the site, natural interference and interruption will alter and distort the images. With Radio Television, Shaw uses the inherent precarity of radio as a creative medium for generating and affecting visual content.

Sanctuary visitors will also be able to tune their radios to hear the images as they travel between radio towers.

The Darkest Space

In this space Shaw will present an ever-changing visual constellation of contributed images and sounds through a multi screen installation. Using a variety of techniques, including granular synthesis, application of GPS coordinate data and data audification Shaw will manipulate material contributed through the REACH portal to present a visual installation accompanied by a multi-channel sonic performance during Sanctuary 2017.

Tim Shaw is an artist interested in the relationship between site and technology. Presenting work through musical performances, installations and site-responsive interventions his practice attempts to expose the mechanics of systems and to reveal the hidden aspects of technology. Tim has presented artwork all over Europe, in the USA, Canada, Australia and Hong Kong. He currently works as a lecturer in Digital Media at Culture Lab, Newcastle University.