On Friday, 23rd, a group exhibition titled “MIЯЯOЯERROR” by KIWA and Toomas Volkmann opened at Vaal Gallery.
According to information theory, ideal communication is where a signal passes through a channel without noise or errors. However, there is no perfect message because a signal always collides with noise. The further a signal travels, the more noise fractures it. The message scatters, the code breaks, the meaning slips. The mirror does not reflect, the mirror errs.
MIЯЯOЯERROR brings together Toomas Volkmann’s curved mirrors broken down into elementary particles, and the poetics of error and emptiness created by Kiwa. What happens when the perfect message is interrupted – not only technically, but also on an existential level? Could a new code emerge between broken data streams, new signals that the person from the past cannot understand – and perhaps our own perceptions aren’t ready for it yet, either? The digital space around artists’ creations is like a landscape, the vulnerable parts and possibilities of which are revealed by glitches and allowed to be explored from a new angle.
The sound frequencies created by Kiwa and artificial intelligence bring to life the ancient worm patterns of Estonia with an unknown language of the future. The books fill with the meaning of emptiness and nothingness; the mirrors reflect something that cannot be seen with the naked eye – the hidden essence of oneself. In Kiwa’s work, there is nothing wrong that needs to be fixed – the glitch itself is information. Error is a feature.
According to Claude Shannon, the founder of information theory, information is only those messages whose performance cannot be predicted by the receiver. The old hard drive of Toomas Volkmann opened out as unexpected foci on a technological surgery table. The breakage of images and the collision of bit pieces have brought together strange layers. If you could see what I hear, the creaking and intermittent echo of the citizens living reverberates from the hard drive. Technological error can become an uncontrollable creature, whose temper decides which messages about us will exist today and forever. While the technological goblin that intervened in Volkmann’s photographs has produced a lush, glitched foam of noise, Kiwa’s work is dominated by a search for emptiness and nothingness, a striving for an unfoamed whole.
Between the beats of MIЯЯOЯERROR, a techno-tonal remix of “Hell” plays, glitter flashes, and a brightened spirit emerges in the reflection of the mirror. Different sounds meet, and the party is just beginning.
Curated by Bianka Soe
Design by Tuuli Aule
Thank you to Marleen Suvi, Mihkel Soe, Daniel Vaarik
The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Põhjala Brewery.
The exhibition will remain open until 28th of June, Tue–Fri 12–6 pm and Sat 12–4 pm.
Photography: Vaal gallery
