Semiconductor

Last Wednesday I went to the Semiconductor exhibition at FACT in Liverpool, semiconductor are a Brighton based duo who do volcanic video installations, needless to say I have been wanting to go to one of their exhibitions for a while. They did a residency in Ecuador studying volcanoes and also the practices involved in studying volcanoes, the methods used and the people who do it. The videos from Ecuador really showed how much the volcano is part of daily life, workers were playing football in the foreground of the volcano and there were also pictures of it drawn onto the windows. There were also images of volcanoes in beautifully untouched landscapes which gave a sense of timelessness and absence of the man made which was juxtaposed with images inside laboratories reminding me how modern science compels us to understand and research everything. While I do find beauty in scientific findings there is also great beauty in mystery and bizzare yet logical interpretations of it. Other videos were the formation of crystals which were created from sounds, this is so like Bjork's single, which isn't a criticism as similar things often happened around the same time like convergent evolution which is one of the coolest things in the world. And I if could convergently evolve to be like Bjork I'd be pretty happy. 

While Bjork and convergent evolution are of course incredibly relevant, they weren't actually what the exhibition was about. There was however a room which looked like a junkyard of discarded TVs which showed archive videos of people studying volcanoes. Again one on hand it showed how much a volcano becomes part of life, while monitoring people were eating sandwiches and drinking coffee, but it also showed the wide range of completely mental ways people study volcanoes such as running up to lava lakes with massive sticks and ramming them in and then using whatever is on the end of the stick to light cigarettes. But I can really understand how people do become that obsessive (especially about volcanoes) and I always love to see it probably because I can see myself becoming one of them. There was also a room where you could make your own volcano, by make I mean pour some bicarb, vinegar and washing up liquid down a papier mache volcano, but it was amazing. Sadly it has now finished so you can't go and make your own volcano but I suppose you could actually make your own volcano.