WORK-IN-PROGRESS

'Applied Mono', by Clay Gold, is a media/sound art sculpture which presents a young, female mannequin head and torso positioned narcissistically in front of various images of herself which are continuously being replayed on a wide-screen TV. The mannequin, as seen in the images portrayed on the TV, is gold and shiny with a gold, rotary-type telephone receiver attached to one ear. She is beautifully lit and with seductive backgrounds. The TV sound is turned down low and provides a continuous stream of muffled, bass-heavy advertising and other messages; disguised and distorted information, flowing into the present.

The mannequin in the room, in the present time, is the same mannequin but has been distressed, with much of the gold removed. She presents a shadow of her former glory, that which is displayed on the TV as a series of images from the past. Her telephone receiver is painted green at the earpiece, symbolic of the free flowing promoted information, or propaganda, to which she is subjected; and red at the mouthpiece to denote a suppression of her freedom of speech, or ability to communicate.


From the ear-piece of the telephone receiver in the room can be heard another continuous stream of chatter which is thin and tinny in character. The phone supplies the past and the present with a symbolic connection. The unintelligible stream of information, from TV and telephone, form a memetic instruction, a relay from history resulting in entropy or degradation.