Tha Click - Paper Rad & Paul B. Davis [Beige] - Millais Gallery - Southampton - 16 January - 19 February 2009

It was like looking in your kid's bedroom, circa 1995, with programming books, a games console, several televisions, favourite T-shirts and 'zines, the odd record deck and a couple of animations projected on the wall... but this belies the interest once you actually start looking at the work.

The most interesting aspect was Beige's concept of 'intentional computing', hacking into home computer hardware, as part of their aesthetic. This DIY culture, deconstructs the 'mediascape', at the same time as it deconstructs the methodologies behind the software and hardware.

This was made clear in terms of Paper Rad's tour video, as well as Beige's improvised music videos, in the activity of making media production into an 'art form', by changing video effects from one state into another. This has the disconcerting effect of deconstructing media, while constructing something new and refreshing at the same time.

This obviously all takes some application, but they make it look easy and fun. Isn't this how culture should be? Well, sometimes... but there was some hope in terms of the crisis between media and art. This synthesis in terms of subverting the mediascape is part of demonstrating that it is still possible to make your own intervention, even with all the prescribed media and entertainment products and processes around.

Aura

Experimental and Techno Music Night - 19 February - 7pm -11pm - featuring Paul B. Davis, Dry Mouth, Scruff, Ed Harris, DJ Pepperminta and Tim Cook