Thomson & Craighead where invited to remake A LIVE PORTRAIT OF
TIM BERNERS-LEE (AN EARLY WARNING SYSTEM) for the Information wants to be free exhibition at the ADM Gallery, Singapore.
A live portrait of Tim Berners-Lee (an early warning system) is a drawing made from two live cameras located on opposite sides of the world and eleven time zones apart from each other. The image updates every sixty seconds and so as the earth rotates and orbits the sun, night becomes day and day becomes night, which makes the image invert every twelve hours or so. Drawing on the development of digital technology and networks, the artists in the exhibition consider and critique the online information economy that governs our daily life; and raise important questions about the commercial exploitation of personal information, and compromised autonomy as a result of Big Tech.

The title, ‘Information wants to be free’, references an aphorism made by Stewart Brand, editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, at a hackers conference in 1984 when he referred to how the emergence of digital technology enabled information to disseminate easily and escape proprietary barriers. Soon after in 1989, computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of the World Wide Web advanced the desire to create free open access to information, encapsulating the idealism at the heart of digital free culture.
Curated by Kristine Tan.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/38477