Intermission is a flexible, adaptable and proactive virtual space for the dissemination of contemporary art via digital broadcast.

About Intermission

Intermission launched as a pilot at Spike Island Open Studios 30 April – 2 May 2011 by presenting a new work by Oliver Sutherland, The Rider broadcasted from The Dispatch Office.

The programme is curated by Katie Daley-Yates and over the course of the next six-months Intermission will deliver content that manifests itself through an online format, but may also have constituent parts that take place in other locations. Programmes will include:

• Audio Guides, audio introductions to contemporary art exhibitions, events and commissions in Bristol and across the South West available to download;
• City Brakes, regional city reports for the hungry culture vultures;
• Curators Corner, an opportunity to hear specially curated programmes that are themed around a particular artist, cultural movement and moment in history, influential figure or current event;
• Recital, short programmes conceived by artists that have a particular affinity with music or audio within their practice.

Intermission has a particular ambition to work towards a body of new commissions with artists that will result in an audio element. The commissions will begin to develop towards the end of 2011 and further information will be available then.

Oliver Sutherland

Oliver Sutherland’s work examines through a variety of media the more esoteric language of digital media and digital processes, reverting it to create highly visual hybridized artwork.

For the launch of Intermission Oliver Sutherland will be presenting three new audio artworks, which exist as a series entitled The Rider. Each track, or chapter consists of an original text re-shaped by feeding through text-to-speech software, which uses a preset voice. This alteration has skewed the emphasis and delivery of these texts and the result is a stuttered, jerky and computerised version of the original, which removes any familiarity you might have had if reading the texts yourself or hearing them read by an un-altered voice. The chapters have a particular structure, which gives the impression you have entered halfway through – gobbets alluding to fictional places, animals or events that have the capacity to remove you from your immediate surrounding. As you hear the words you might find yourself trying to fill in the gaps or create visual images from the information given.

About the artist

Oliver Sutherland is currently studying an MA in Sculpture at the Royal Collage of Art, London. His recent exhibitions include: My Friends Speak HTML, Nrml, San Pedro Garza Garcia, Mexico 9 March 2011; Trade Routes (Part 1), PiArts, Istanbul 4 March – 7 April 2011; Premiere, bubblebyte, 31 January – 26 February 2011 and Nothing for Chromakey, Trade Gallery, Nottingham 2 August – 19 September 2011. He also undertakes visiting artist workshops as part of a range of gallery educational initiatives including: Mounts Bay School, Cornwall; The Exchange Gallery and Newlyn Gallery; Cornwall and Tate St Ives, Cornwall.

The Rider will be broadcast across Open Studios from the Dispatch Office, but you can also list to all three chapters here.