Art in Odd Places, New York

October 6, 2016, 4-7pm

In October 2016, as part of Art in Odd Places, chukwumaa staged Signal Drop along East 14th Street and Union Square, a street performance that attempted to give form to something usually experienced only as interruption: the moment a Bluetooth signal drops out.

Carrying a phone, portable speaker, and a device they made and cheekily called a “Bluetooth divining rod,” chukwumaa moved through the surrounding streets listening for interruptions in the signal. Whenever the speaker’s sound began to stutter, distort, or disappear altogether, a mark was placed on the ground, pointing back toward the questionable fidelity of the connection. Repeated across the street, these marks accumulated into a drawing of the failures of Bluetooth’s promise: seamless connection without wires or contact.

Rather than mapping where Bluetooth worked, Signal Drop took the breakdown between signal and street as a way of describing the stubborn dependence this technology has on the material world. Architecture, distance, interference, human bodies, and the density of the street became legible through moments of lost connection. What emerged was an improvised cartography of an invisible wireless network supposedly liberated from physical connection. The drawings, however, revealed the glitch in this liberation. By giving these interruptions a perceptible measure, chukwumaa unearthed an otherwise unseen field organizing the relationship between signal and space. The street became not just a drawing surface or testing ground, but a kind of user’s guide: a map for anyone passing through of where Bluetooth’s promise might fall short.

chukwumaa: Signal Drop is organized by Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi

Performance view, chukwumaa, Signal Drop, Art in Odd Places, New York, October 6, 2016. Courtesy of the artist.