National Portrait [the last transmission]

In Liverpool, on the 1st December 2009 the analogue TV signal was turned off at midnight.

The installation records the sound of the very last 24hrs of the five analogue terrestrial TV channels as they were broadcast live across the city. This forms a sound portrait of a day in the life of Britain, and reveals how we define ourselves through our channel hopping mass media. It celebrates the first generation of television history at the switching point between analogue and digital culture.

In the gallery five TV cabinets and the surrounding walls the are boldly painted with vertical test card stripes in red green blue black & white. The cabinets frame a collection of classic old TV sets with a black & white pulsing screen.. Each TV plays the sound of a whole days broadcast from one of the terrestrial channels, 120 hours of audio in all. This is cut up into 1000 random length clips that are played back in shuffle mode, producing a varied series of sound bites. Across the five sets this produces a cascade of jump cut sound sentences ricocheting around the gallery. News bulletins blend with reality shows, as childrens tv collides with late night programming. An infinite remix of a portrait of the nation . . .