CRT
2022
Cathode Ray Tube (TV screen) , Critical Race Theory (Book), Audio Amplifier, 12v Solar Battery, Plywood
What’s Black, White, and Red all over?
In 1932, the first Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) television screen was developed by the German company Telefunken. Telefunken was developing broadcast technology that just 4 years later, allowed Hitler’s speech at the 1936 Berlin Olympics to become the first radio signal to leave planet earth. It is still emanating.
The earliest use of what would become one of the most ubiquitous objects of the 20th century, the television screen, was first an instrument of fascist propaganda. In the 21st century, CRT monitors have been made obsolete by LCD and LED displays. But CRT monitors remain in circulation. The screens contain heavy metals like lead, mercury, and phosphorus. The electron gun at the base of the tube is vacuum-sealed glass, which will explode shards of glass if cracked. The circuitry can retain lethal voltages for years even after being unplugged. And if the wrong amount and rate of power is driven through the tube, it can emit radiation. Like Hitler’s speech, echoing through time and space, CRT screens are a relic of history that some may dismiss as obsolete but still retain potential to cause harm in the present.
In 2022, the acronym CRT is being instrumentalized by fascist propagandists once again: “Critical Race Theory” is defined in Wikipedia as:
“a cross-disciplinary examination, by social and civil-rights scholars and activists, of how laws, social and political movements, and media shape, and are shaped by, social conceptions of race and ethnicity”
Critical Race Theory is being mobilized against by far-right conservative and evangelical groups, to remove discussions of race, gender, sexuality, and class, from American libraries, schools, campuses, and public life. As of this writing, the movement against Critical Race Theory has been successful in banning books in schools and libraries in 32 states.
The light beam in a CRT screen is controlled by two magnets, one each to move the light horizontally and vertically. By connecting the positive and negative wires of an audio signal into the CRT magnets, the light on the screen vibrates in the shape of the soundwave.
The audio signal driving the light is a sonic collage of recordings of hate speech by current-day US politicians calling for violence against dissident voices critical of the US. By transforming the text into a sonic object (audiobook) the artist creates a device to distort the signal beyond recognition. The exhortations and incitement of the fascists is scrambled using signal processors installed in the audiobook, converting human voices into frequencies that manifest onscreen as aesthetically pleasing shapes. By transmuting hate speech into light, the artist intervenes in the spread of propaganda. By the same token, the distortion of the signal emitting from the book, is also commentary on the way the source material has been misrepresented and reappropriated.
Utilizing free association of wordplay, color, form, function, and context, the colors red, black, and white, emerged as a unifying formal element, beginning with the object of the book itself. Red black & white are also the main colors utilized to denote the positive and negative flows of electricity through circuitry. They are also frequently a color schema in mass media propaganda and symbolism: notably the Nazi swastika, and racist Blackface caricatures in the USA. These three colors often appear in the context of provocative, controversial content, to either be handled with caution or confronted directly. By using the colors as a guide to create a physical structure to house the book/screen/audio, what emerges is a 3 dimensional circuit that functions as a Knowledge Structure–a physical geometry intended to guide not only the flow of electricity, but also consciousness.
