Seven artists have produced new artworks based around the colour and greyscale configurations of traditional television test card images. These will be broadcast live throughout February and March 2009 on a new web based platform developed by PROJECKT as part of a wider exploration of curatorial outcome. The broadcast, viewable through downloadable software, sends the artists’ work to computer desktops where it is automatically updated, continually projecting different works throughout the broadcast period. Exactly one month after the start of the transmission the application will automatically uninstall itself and the broadcast will terminate.

The famous Test Card ‘F’ designed by George Hersee and featuring his daughter Carole made its last appearance in the UK on BBC1 in 1997, while the last use of a publicly broadcast test card was during a BBC power failure on 20th June 2000. Since the turn of the millennium, and against the fixed resolution of conventional TV screens, the advent HDTV has led to the redundancy of the test card as a functional entity, as the assurances that it offered of unbroken lines, even contrast, and colour removed from neon glare, have become surplus to this current technology.

Alternative mechanisms for making images visible, and, more importantly, making them relevant within an online medium, has become necessary as the wealth of content available through actual and virtual channels becomes increasingly generative and consumptive. TESTCARD utilises a new downloadable system that places access alongside experimentation, and returns to the concept of the ‘broadcast’ as an opportunity to engage an audience within the deployment of artworks through technology. The test card recalls a time when ‘testing’ was an allowable and appreciated phase of development. Produced by PROJECKT this practice of ‘testing’ and experimentation with technological platforms provides one of many potential methods for actively engaging artists and artworks. For PROJECKT the test card, as a signatory of service check, will be recurrent with a series of further durational broadcasts being transmitted throughout 2009.

TESTCARD has been curated by Charles Danby and George Unsworth in conjunction with artist Rob Smith. The second broadcast from PROJECKT will be TIMEBOMB (01 May – 31 July 2009). This will be downloadable from the PROJECKT site from 1st May 2009.

Websites

http://www.projeckt.org.uk/