A new exhibition exploring the possibilities of an autonomous submarine will open in Barrow later this month.
The town’s Signal will present the multimedia Reactor, by Felicity Hammond, from May 29.
It is a new collaboration with Hammond, following her 2017 Signal commission In Defence of Industry, which won the Lumen Award in 2018.
Autonomous submarines designed for underwater warfare are beginning to enter the global market.
Set against the backdrop of Barrow’s defence industry, Hammond imagines a fictional world in which the submarine becomes aware of its own autonomy, reflecting on whether it might follow or refuse its orders.
Following her recent UK touring exhibition which interrogated the problematic infrastructures of artificial intelligence, Reactor focuses on how this technology is being applied in a military context.
In the installation, a constructed control room becomes the stage on which the autonomous submarine’s inner dialogue unfolds.
Drawing upon archival images of command decks and the more contemporary technological spaces of system control, the installation draws attention to the power struggles between governments, profit-driven technology companies, and those that train or operate these systems.
The voice of the submarine has been developed through conversations with local people connected to the shipyard in Barrow.
The exhibition continues until Saturday August 1, open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm.
