Soliphore Tower #4

From the Press Release:

Eric Hagan presents new work that explores physical means of communication, choreography of message sending, and signal clarity in the presence of visual noise. The Soliphore Towers (2018) are mechanical flag signaling towers that allow the viewers to broadcast messages through semaphores, the remote messaging alphabet that uses flag positions to represent letters. First showcased this year at the Governors Island Art Fair, the work uses digital fabrication and mechanical construction. Hagan has expanded his project beyond the towers to include painting, a digital semaphore-based public chatroom, an art book, and a video performance. The title of the work is a portmanteau of ‘solecism’ (a pejorative term the Athenians used against the people of Soloi, whom they believed were “butchering” their language) and ‘semaphore’. The absurdity of employing anachronistic flag communication in our hyperconnected digital society, coupled with the challenges inherent to sending complex messages from a flag tower, are analogous to attempts to nuanced civil discourse with bad faiths actors and their stubborn adherence to false equivalencies. The agency granted to gallery visitors through their control of the double crank mechanism conveys the futility of the endeavor.