Detour<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n Created between December 2000 and June 2001, Detour<\/em> was hosted on Peter Gabriel\u2019s Real World website as part of the Slipstream<\/em> 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<\/em> extends Tilson\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Tilson\u2019s related online project Tell-Tale Signs<\/em>, commissioned for the.year.dot<\/em>, used a custom web crawler called exegesis<\/em> 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. 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/em> and Atlas<\/em>, before launching TheCooker<\/em> 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<\/em> at Liverpool Street Gallery, Sydney (2024), #notquitedisney<\/em> at Jealous Gallery, London (2024), and The 3rd edition of An exhibition of small things with big ideas<\/em> at White Conduit Projects, London (2024\u201325).<\/p>\n Year:<\/strong> 2000\u20132001 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5012,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,30,28,29,9,36,31,33,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biennale","category-commission","category-curating","category-exhibition","category-projects","category-publication","category-research","category-site-specific","category-web-projects"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5009"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7723,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5009\/revisions\/7723"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithwhittle.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nTogether, Detour<\/em> and Tell-Tale Signs<\/em> demonstrate Tilson\u2019s early engagement with the internet as both a medium and a space for artistic research. While Detour<\/em> captures the sensory experience of place, Tell-Tale Signs<\/em> uses digital searching to uncover connections between language, geography and contemporary culture.<\/p>\n\nBio<\/h5>\n
Project Details<\/strong><\/h5>\n
\nArtist:<\/strong> Jake Tilson
\nProject: _slipstream\u00a0<\/strong>
\nPlatform:<\/strong> Real World
\nFormat:<\/strong> Web-based\/internet artwork
\nCommissioned by:<\/strong> Film and Video Umbrella
\nSupport:<\/strong> Arts Council England, New Media Fund
\nCountry:<\/strong> United Kingdom<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"