fig.: Poster of the exhibition 'His Master's Voice: On Voice and Language' at the Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV) at the Dortmunder U (located at the revitalized building of an old brewery), 23 March until 7 July 2013. Poster design: www.laborb.de // Photo: (C) Daniel Hofer. The photographer of the image of the poster is Daniel Hofer whose 'Manuel' from the series 'Sunday Morning' (2009) will be exhibited at 'His Master's Voice'. The series portrays members of the Christ For All Evangelic Ministries (CFAEM), a predominantly Ghanaian Pentecostal church in Dortmund-Huckarde. The photographer leaves it open to the viewer if the ten-year old boy in the pinstripe suit is singing or shouting.

Computer networks, art, language and identity

From 23 March until 7 July 2013, the culture organisation Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV) in Dortmund, Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany exhibits under the title 'His Master's Voice: On Voice and Language' art works that visualize the performativity of voice and language. Part of 'His Master's Voice' are photographs (like Daniel Hofer's image; on view right on this page), installations with video (like Bruce Nauman's 'Good Boy Bad Boy' - excerpt below) or Julius Popp's installation that is driven by computer networks and visualizes words which are currently important in our culture, as falling water drops.

German artist Julius Popp speaks in a documentary about his network-based installation 'Bit.Fall'. He uses a search program which grabs for currently important words. He says that "The link to internet actually means a link to the culture. This means whatever is running on the machine has currently value in a culture and is meaningful somehow." The installation makes the viewer aware of the fast changes of values, meanings in today's society. For Julius Popp, Bit.Fall is the examination of the haziness of personhood. Watch the short documentary (with English subtitles) about Julius Popp's 'Bit.Fall'.

Video: Excerpt of the two-channel video installation 'Good Boy Bad Boy' (1985) by Bruce Nauman at the Art Institute of Chicago. The left video shows a white woman, the right video a black man. Their speech centers around the conjugation of the verb 'to be' in conjunction with the words 'good boy' and 'bad boy'. "Beginning with a monotone, neutral voice, they become more and more upset until finally, at the fifth repetition, they seem genuinely angry," introduces HMKV into Bruce Nauman's art work at the exhibition guide of 'His Master's Voice'.

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