Turbulence Artists’ Studios: Reflection (hope and reconciliation) by Michael Takeo Magruder [Needs Internet browser with Flash 9+ plugin and stereo audio. 512+ kb/s connection recommended]

Pervasive mass-media in the information age offers us a continuous stream of mediated realities. Countless events of varying and often questionable significance emerge as scrolling columns of headline news and then quickly fade into the soon-forgotten annals of our time. Within this saturated datascape of history, there are singular defining moments that rise above the ubiquitous monotony of the everyday. These events shape the consciousness of individuals and nations alike by transcending their epoch, and are indelibly situated within greater historical overviews that inform the perceptions of both present and future generations. In an era of unjust wars and monumental acts of terror, some of these events have eroded our most precious institutions and sustained fear within all strata of society, while others have instilled within us hope and offered us a means to reconcile our past transgressions. Reflection (hope and reconciliation) re-mediates one such moment. Through the distillation of its aesthetic elements – images, words, voice, music – we experience the event with changed, but undiminished intensity.

Michael Takeo Magruder is an American artist based in the UK working with new and technological media within contemporary arts practice. He is a long-standing member of King’s Visualisation Lab located in the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College London. His artworks have been showcased in over 200 exhibitions and 30 countries. His work blends information age technologies with modernist-like aesthetics to explore the formal structures and conceptual paradigms of the networked, digital world. He seeks to create artworks in which there are no divisions between technologies, aesthetics, and concepts.