In the modern age of smart phones and constant internet access, we are inundated with data, information and news. We have become addicted to the lure of endless connection, unaware of the myriad ways it influences our lives.
This is the theme of Spanish multidisciplinary artist Daniel Canogar's first solo exhibition in the region — following from his work at Spain's national pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai. Called Loose Threads, the show at Galloire gallery in Dubai's City Walk opened this week and runs until February 24.
It is an unexpectedly beautiful and ethereal examination of the constant flow of data that we consume through technology. Canogar, who splits his time between living in Madrid and Los Angeles, not only creates data-driven artworks, but uses data as a medium itself.
“There used to be these really specific news cycles,” Canogar tells The National. “You'd buy the newspaper in the morning, then at night you'd catch the evening news. But now it's incessant, it never stops. I'm very interested in trying to capture that incessant flow.”
The show includes a 2016 work called Ripple — a rectangular screen hung in portrait format on the wall. At first glance, the surface looks like a multicoloured, finely woven textile, until three adjacent horizontal lines cascade from the top at varying speeds, leaving behind a striking coloured path.
Each of these moving lines represent a new video being uploaded on to CNN’s website. When a new video is uploaded, a large thumbnail of that clip appears and makes its way down the screen, leaving behind a ripple of colour based on the hues that appear on the video.
Once the video reaches the bottom of the screen, it reappears at the top as a collapsed line trickling down again. These uploads make up the archive of videos from CNN from the past hour, and as new clips come in, the oldest ones are kicked out.
“I’m just creating this algorithm that’s creating this very patterned fabric,” says Canogar. “Somebody told me it looks like a Missoni fabric and I do like that idea that it has pleats and the folds of this fabric.”
Canogar first made the connection between fabric and technology when he saw a private collection of pre-Columbian textiles. “I was just so affected by the beauty and mystery, the complexity of some of these [pieces],” he says.
The artist found himself drawn to how different weaving techniques had different meanings. And while the textiles used symbols to represent different ideas, Canogar observed something beyond that. “The way textile craftsmen and craftswomen were referencing their own medium … that takes a very sophisticated mind, a very modern mind,” he says.
“In a way, you're thinking about the act of making a textile as part of the subject matter of the textile. And that's where I connected to my working with technology and referencing technology.”
For the next few years, Canogar researched the concept and fleshed out the connections he saw between technology and fabric.
He was fascinated to discover that the Jacquard loom, a machine that simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles that was patented in 1804, is considered the first computer. Patterns are created on the fabric using punch cards carved with holes, which are inserted into the loom.
Canogar saw these punch cards as a kind of primitive algorithm. He saw how television screens use interlaced lines, as if taken from textiles, to create images.
“I think of screens as a modern forms of textiles, the way we think about screens, the way we use screens to represent our world,” he says. “The way we're beginning to cover buildings, particularly here in Dubai, with screens … it has a membrane skin-like aspect, which is very textile.”
While visually mesmerising, Canogar’s work goes beyond aesthetics. These digital textiles thread different kinds of data together, which also inform the visual quality of the works.
All the pieces in the exhibition, bar one, are connected to the internet and use live data to create digital fabrics of information, resulting in abstract, moving graphic shapes and colours.
One work, Chyron, depicts a collection of entangled, thin ribbons of various colours floating as if in water. Each has a series of words running across it. These are actually the “tickers” seen at the bottom of screens from real-time broadcasts on CNN, Al Jazeera, the BBC, MSNBC, Fox News and more.
Tunica (2022) by Daniel Canogar. Photo: Pawan Singh / The National
The most powerful of his works is Tunica. In comparison to the others, it is a much smaller screen, set in a different, darker space in the gallery. Thin, horizontal white and golden threads are woven through with silver vertical ones. They move like a dial, synchronously expanding and shrinking in size.
The vertical lines also represent the names of people who died in Madrid during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, while the horizontal ones reflect those born in the city during the same period.
Through each work, Canogar takes us out of the minutiae of news and data, which are embedded into our lives and, through the metaphoric and symbolic use of digital textiles, makes us rethink our relationship with technology and news.
“I want to use the news to create art and to see it almost from a different perspective,” he says.
“My works allow me to process the news and to find some kind of mysterious beauty, the inner calmness, within the island storm.”
Daniel Canogar’s exhibition Loose Threads runs until February 24 at Galloire gallery in City Walk, Dubai
Badr Organisation: Seen as the most militarily capable faction in the Hashd. Iraqi Shiite exiles opposed to Saddam Hussein set up the group in Tehran in the early 1980s as the Badr Corps under the supervision of the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The militia exalts Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei but intermittently cooperated with the US military.
Saraya Al Salam (Peace Brigade): Comprised of former members of the officially defunct Mahdi Army, a militia that was commanded by Iraqi cleric Moqtada Al Sadr and fought US and Iraqi government and other forces between 2004 and 2008. As part of a political overhaul aimed as casting Mr Al Sadr as a more nationalist and less sectarian figure, the cleric formed Saraya Al Salam in 2014. The group’s relations with Iran has been volatile.
Kataeb Hezbollah: The group, which is fighting on behalf of the Bashar Al Assad government in Syria, traces its origins to attacks on US forces in Iraq in 2004 and adopts a tough stance against Washington, calling the United States “the enemy of humanity”.
Asaeb Ahl Al Haq: An offshoot of the Mahdi Army active in Syria. Asaeb Ahl Al Haq’s leader Qais al Khazali was a student of Mr Al Moqtada’s late father Mohammed Sadeq Al Sadr, a prominent Shiite cleric who was killed during Saddam Hussein’s rule.
Harakat Hezbollah Al Nujaba: Formed in 2013 to fight alongside Mr Al Assad’s loyalists in Syria before joining the Hashd. The group is seen as among the most ideological and sectarian-driven Hashd militias in Syria and is the major recruiter of foreign fighters to Syria.
Saraya Al Khorasani: The ICRG formed Saraya Al Khorasani in the mid-1990s and the group is seen as the most ideologically attached to Iran among Tehran’s satellites in Iraq.
(Source: The Wilson Centre, the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation)
Ticket prices
General admission Dh295 (under-three free)
Buy a four-person Family & Friends ticket and pay for only three tickets, so the fourth family member is free
Jebel Akhdar is a two-hour drive from Muscat airport or a six-hour drive from Dubai. It’s impossible to visit by car unless you have a 4x4. Phone ahead to the hotel to arrange a transfer.
If you’re driving, make sure your insurance covers Oman.
By air: Budget airlines Air Arabia, Flydubai and SalamAir offer direct routes to Muscat from the UAE.
Tourists from the Emirates (UAE nationals not included) must apply for an Omani visa online before arrival at evisa.rop.gov.om. The process typically takes several days.
Flash floods are probable due to the terrain and a lack of drainage. Always check the weather before venturing into any canyons or other remote areas and identify a plan of escape that includes high ground, shelter and parking where your car won’t be overtaken by sudden downpours.
Houthis: Iran-backed rebels who occupy Sanaa and run unrecognised government
Yemeni government: Exiled government in Aden led by eight-member Presidential Leadership Council
Southern Transitional Council: Faction in Yemeni government that seeks autonomy for the south
Habrish 'rebels': Tribal-backed forces feuding with STC over control of oil in government territory
Who was Alfred Nobel?
The Nobel Prize was created by wealthy Swedish chemist and entrepreneur Alfred Nobel.
In his will he dictated that the bulk of his estate should be used to fund "prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind".
Nobel is best known as the inventor of dynamite, but also wrote poetry and drama and could speak Russian, French, English and German by the age of 17. The five original prize categories reflect the interests closest to his heart.
Nobel died in 1896 but it took until 1901, following a legal battle over his will, before the first prizes were awarded.
The UN General Assembly President in quotes:
YEMEN: “The developments we have seen are promising. We really hope that the parties are going to respect the agreed ceasefire. I think that the sense of really having the political will to have a peace process is vital. There is a little bit of hope and the role that the UN has played is very important.”
PALESTINE: “There is no easy fix. We need to find the political will and comply with the resolutions that we have agreed upon.”
OMAN: “It is a very important country in our system. They have a very important role to play in terms of the balance and peace process of that particular part of the world, in that their position is neutral. That is why it is very important to have a dialogue with the Omani authorities.”
REFORM OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL: “This is complicated and it requires time. It is dependent on the effort that members want to put into the process. It is a process that has been going on for 25 years. That process is slow but the issue is huge. I really hope we will see some progress during my tenure.”
Pupils to learn coding and other vocational skills from Grade 6
Exams to test critical thinking and application of knowledge
A new National Assessment Centre, PARAKH (Performance, Assessment, Review and Analysis for Holistic Development) will form the standard for schools
Schools to implement online system to encouraging transparency and accountability
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League semi-final, first leg
Bayern Munich v Real Madrid When: April 25, 10.45pm kick-off (UAE) Where: Allianz Arena, Munich Live: BeIN Sports HD Second leg: May 1, Santiago Bernabeu, Madrid
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Men: Hamad Nawad and Khalid Al Balushi (56kg), Omar Al Fadhli and Saeed Al Mazroui (62kg), Taleb Al Kirbi and Humaid Al Kaabi (69kg), Mohammed Al Qubaisi and Saud Al Hammadi (70kg), Khalfan Belhol and Mohammad Haitham Radhi (85kg), Faisal Al Ketbi and Zayed Al Kaabi (94kg)
Women: Wadima Al Yafei and Mahra Al Hanaei (49kg), Bashayer Al Matrooshi and Hessa Al Shamsi (62kg)
Dubai Bling season three
Cast: Loujain Adada, Zeina Khoury, Farhana Bodi, Ebraheem Al Samadi, Mona Kattan, and couples Safa & Fahad Siddiqui and DJ Bliss & Danya Mohammed
Sunday, January 20
3pm: Jordan v Vietnam at Al Maktoum Stadium, Dubai
6pm: Thailand v China at Hazza bin Zayed Stadium, Al Ain
9pm: Iran v Oman at Mohamed bin Zayed Stadium, Abu Dhabi
Monday, January 21
3pm: Japan v Saudi Arabia at Sharjah Stadium
6pm: Australia v Uzbekistan at Khalifa bin Zayed Stadium, Al Ain
9pm: UAE v Kyrgyzstan at Zayed Sports City Stadium, Abu Dhabi
Tuesday, January 22
5pm: South Korea v Bahrain at Rashid Stadium, Dubai
8pm: Qatar v Iraq at Al Nahyan Stadium, Abu Dhabi
