Made for the solo exhibition No One Has Taught Us More Than John at Magician Space, Calibrating gathers six suspended CRT monitors into a downward-facing system of small programs about standards. The screens run different logics: a snake game consuming media-theory citations, Tetris blocks named after image formats, a radio drifting between frequencies, a clock moving through obsolete timekeeping systems, and a computer that never finishes booting. The controller offers the visitor a familiar promise of agency, but the installation keeps that agency partial and mostly symbolic.
Process notes
I hung six CRT monitors face-down and gave each a small program about standards, so the whole thing runs on miscalibration: you can pick up the controller and make the familiar game gestures, while the system keeps translating image, time, radio, citation and start-up into separate calibration rituals that never quite resolve.
Each screen runs its own logic. CRT-1 is a snake whose body is built from media-theory citations; CRT-2 turns 2048 into a merge system where Light, Trace, Frame, Copy, Signal, Code, Render, Model, Standard, Apparatus and System become labels of technical evolution; CRT-3 stacks image-format blocks like Tetris; CRT-4 is an FM receiver drifting through film fragments where someone keeps calling John; CRT-5 is a decimal clock and a short history of abandoned timekeeping; CRT-6 is a BIOS self-check that stalls on messages like Checking image standard. Together they turn the corridor into a waiting room where different standards keep testing one another.
CRT Tetris
One of the six CRT programs is embedded here as a playable fragment: image-format blocks fall, merge, and collapse into a small calibration ritual.
CRT-1 Snake
Original Magician Space CRT program: a snake body grows from media-theory citation letters.
CRT-2 2048
Original Magician Space CRT program: 2048 becomes a merge system for technical evolution labels.
CRT-4 Radio
Original Magician Space CRT program: an FM receiver drifts between film fragments in which someone calls John.
CRT-5 Decimal Clock
Original Magician Space CRT program: a decimal clock tests obsolete systems of keeping time.
CRT-6 BIOS
Original Magician Space CRT program: a boot sequence stalls around image-standard verification.
Exhibitions
- 2026, No One Has Taught Us More Than John, Magician Space, Beijing, China (CN) — Solo exhibition documentation, Magician Space.
Links / references
- Magician Space official page: No One Has Taught Us More Than John Magician Space official exhibition page with installation views and Calibrating captions.
- Magician Space exhibition PDF Public exhibition PDF for the Magician Space solo exhibition.