Thomas Kneubühler – Landing Sites
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The New Gallery 208 Centre Street SE, Calgary, Alberta T2G 2B6
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Thomas Kneubühler, "Landing Site (East)," 2018
With Landing Sites, Thomas Kneubühler looks at the communication cables between Europe and North America, and the change in speed over time. At the centre of the project is the fibre optic cable FLAG Atlantic-1, put in operation in 2001, which connects the US directly with France. It was the first submarine cable able to transmit high quality video. It enabled the internet as we know it today, with all its streaming applications.
Kneubühler went to both landing sites of the FLAG cable, one located in Bretagne, France and the other one in Long Island, New York. The search for signs of the cable turned into an exploration of cultural differences, but also how culture, which is transmitted precisely through this fibre optics cable, becomes interrelated. Before the first telegraph cable was laid down in 1858, it took three weeks for a message to cross the Atlantic by boat. When the first telegraph became available, it took 10 minutes to communicate one single word. In 2001, FLAG Atlantic-1 made it possible to transmit 200 hours of video every second.
The experience of an immigrant in North America is rather different these days with all the communication channels available, which allows you to stay connected with your country of origin; and yet, there are still remote places with no high speed connections, among others, Canada’s far North. Ironically, it’s also a place where mining companies keep looking for precious metals, integral in the production of electronic devices around the globe.