VOLKSEMPFÄNGER: ARTWORKS BY dAVID K.: 2009/04

20090419

MONADNOCK IN DRY DOCK

Further experimentation with a Vorticist motif and the inselberg Shiprock:

Dazzle Shiprock: Monadnock in Dry Dock

(After Vorticist Edward Alexander Wadsworth's Dazzle Ships in Dry Dock, Liverpool 1919)

Altered photograph

10 x 8 inches

2009

Edward Wadsworth
Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool
Oil on canvas
304 x 243 centimeters
1919
National Gallery of Canada

The Volksempfänger ("people's receiver") was a radio receiver developed in 1933 to make radio technology affordable to the general public for propagandistic reasons. Despite the nature of the broadcasts the radio was intended to receive, the evil genius of the device was the efficient nature in which messages could be directly disseminated to the masses. The internet is the modern equivalent of the Volksempfänger - it costs little, it reaches millions of people, and one should be very, very critical of the rubbish emanating from it.