Michael Teters

"Babel"

July 6 - 29, 2012

On Friday, July, 6 2012 Speakeasy Art Gallery held the opening reception for Michael Teters: Babel. On a daily basis, we are exposed to much more information and data than we can ever absorb. Most of this information is delivered to us via technology; smartphones, portable computers, fax machines, television, LCD advertising or whatever the machine will be invented, re-invented or re-purposed tomorrow. It seems that as a society, we are in love with our gadgets, and the endlessly deep data stream of 1’s and 0’s that they access. But what does all this information do for us? (Or perhaps the question should be, what does it do to us?) If our brains cannot process, use or remember the vast majority of words, images and sounds we are exposed to then it all just becomes a jumble of cryptic nonsense. Despite all this interchange of information, it seems we are becoming more isolated from the lack of real human contact.

Michael Teters explored this idea in the series of artwork, Babel. Land and seascapes with cryptic data streams, random binary code, encryption, buried messages, and a hint of the inevitable system breakdown, leaving only… Babel. This work is mostly made of beeswax, an organic, natural, non-toxic substance made by an old school labor-intensive method requiring thousands of workers. Bees are also stressed by our techno-lifestyle. The ocean of cell phone frequency radiation we live in is a suspected cause of honeybee colony collapse which is happening around the planet.