Detour
Project Description
Detour is an online artwork by Jake Tilson (b. 1958, London), a British artist, graphic designer, writer and publisher whose multidisciplinary practice explores the textures, rhythms and visual languages of everyday life. Working across collage, photography, sculpture, sound, publishing and digital media, Tilson draws attention to overlooked elements of urban environments, including street signs, packaging, local dialects and found objects.
Created between December 2000 and June 2001, Detour was hosted on Peter Gabriel’s Real World website as part of the Slipstream project. The work features sound recordings made in 25 hotel rooms, paired with still images that document the particular atmosphere and sensory character of each location. Reflecting the international ethos of the Real World platform, the project brings together the local and the global, transforming fragments of everyday experience into a digital journey.Detour extends Tilson’s longstanding interest in travel, place and the accumulation of seemingly insignificant details. By transferring these observations into an online environment, the work explores the possibilities of digital space as a site for artistic intervention, storytelling and exchange.
Tilson’s related online project Tell-Tale Signs, commissioned for the.year.dot, used a custom web crawler called exegesis to search the 1,300 words of the Book of Revelation. The project identified 127 terms that corresponded to real-world businesses and resulted in photographs of 18 shop signs from around the world. The work reveals unexpected connections between biblical language, commerce and the visual landscape of everyday life.
Together, Detour and Tell-Tale Signs demonstrate Tilson’s early engagement with the internet as both a medium and a space for artistic research. While Detour captures the sensory experience of place, Tell-Tale Signs uses digital searching to uncover connections between language, geography and contemporary culture.
Bio
Jake Tilson (b. 1958, London) is a British artist, designer, writer and publisher whose interdisciplinary practice spans digital art, photography, sound, collage, sculpture, publishing and typography. His work explores travel, food, urban environments, visual culture and the relationship between physical and digital forms of communication.
Tilson studied at Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College of Art, and taught Communication Design at the Royal College of Art from 1987 to 1999. He founded The Woolley Dale Press and published Cipher and Atlas, before launching TheCooker in 1994, an early artist website combining design, storytelling and digital media. His work is held in collections including Tate and MoMA. Recent exhibitions include Gift Salon 2 at Liverpool Street Gallery, Sydney (2024), #notquitedisney at Jealous Gallery, London (2024), and The 3rd edition of An exhibition of small things with big ideas at White Conduit Projects, London (2024–25).
Project Details
Year: 2000–2001
Artist: Jake Tilson
Project: _slipstream
Platform: Real World
Format: Web-based/internet artwork
Commissioned by: Film and Video Umbrella
Support: Arts Council England, New Media Fund
Country: United Kingdom