infra |ˈinfrə|adverb: below; further on.

Artist-researchers Jamie Allen and David Gauthier, in collaboration with transmediale 2014, present CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE, a media-technical landscape survey. The landscape/architectural survey allows direct observation, revealing the materials and systems that allow media arts, media artists, festivals and venues to exist and persist. An on-site inspection of transmediale 2014 afterglow is undertaken.

CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE is the result of a three months research and production residency in which the artists worked in a workshop format with local collaborators in Berlin. Through this process a technological sculpture has been created that will occupy the main foyer space of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), as well as suffusing into other aspects of transmediale 2014 afterglow.

A thicket of altered and unaltered metrological survey equipment is the principle element of the project, standing aloft in the colossal shell of the HKW, offering visitors precise perspectives on questionable data, through numerous viewfinders and reference markers placed in the space. Signals and data are visualised as graphs and charts, techno-aesthetically highlighting the reserves of materials, energies, signals and data behind everything going on around you.

This production residency project with transmediale is supported by the Media Arts Section of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Danish Arts Council and hosted by the Center for Art and Urbanistics, Berlin.