Electronic Arts: Yuko Mohri

This talk examined Bairdcast Media: A History of Machine Translation, the first UK residency and solo exhibition by emerging Japanese media artist Yuko Mohri. Focusing on the project’s development, historical research and experimental technologies, the talk explored how Mohri revisited the pioneering television experiments of John Logie Baird to reflect on the evolution of broadcast media at a pivotal moment: the transition from analogue to digital television.

Bairdcast Media: A History of Machine Translation focused on John Logie Baird, the pioneering Scottish inventor of the “Televisor” an early semi-mechanical television system. In October 1925, Baird transmitted the first recognisable television images with gradations of light and shade, followed by a demonstration to scientists from the Royal Institution in January 1926. Despite his groundbreaking achievements, his work remains relatively little known beyond specialist museums. Mohri’s residency offered an opportunity to revisit his legacy and explore the evolution of broadcast media from a different cultural perspective.

Developed in Tokyo and Newcastle upon Tyne, the project drew on research undertaken between June 2006 and February 2007, including access to Baird’s original “Televisor,” arranged with the assistance of his grandson, Iain Logie Baird, and the curator of television at the National Media Museum, Bradford. Using components sourced from Tokyo’s Akihabara Electric Town, Mohri constructed her own experimental broadcasting ‘gadget’.

Replacing Baird’s selenium cells with CCD scanner sensors and his Nipkow disc with rotating glass discs bearing images of a dummy’s head, Mohri’s apparatus evoked “Stooky Bill”, the ventriloquist’s dummy featured in Baird’s pioneering television experiments. At the receiving end, a consumer inkjet printer produced imperfect, lined ‘photographs’ every ten minutes, gradually pulling itself along a monolith-like platform towards the source of transmission. Through this Heath Robinson-like fusion of analogue and digital technologies, Mohri raised complex questions through seemingly absurd means. Bairdcast Media: A History of Machine Translation invited audiences to reconsider the evolution of broadcasting, from Baird’s experiments in 1925 to the emergence of YouTube in 2005, and reflect on the changing nature of image transmission and reception.