A Media Performance
for Metropolitan Towers
and Skyscrapers

Dramatizing an early account of urbanization with reconfigured fragments of a sci-fi movie score and a chorus of Text-To-Speech ‘actors’, The Blush Response is an app-based work created by artist Jem Noble (CA/UK). The app delivers a personal 25-minute soundtrack to augment the contemporary urban vista in 70 international locations.

The User selects a tower or skyscraper from the list of available locations. GPS coordinates must match those of the selected tower. Headphones must be attached to the device. Only one play per location is possible. If these conditions are met by sunset, the performance begins, as night falls on the metropolis and its pulsing circuitry.

iOS / App Store

https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/the-blush-response/id1171456061/

Android / Google Play

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bz.theblushresponse&hl=en_CA&gl=US

Artist Bio

Jem Noble (CA/UK, b.1974) is a mixed-media artist who investigates the mutual composition of environment and experience through entangled poetics of force, form, fabrication, feeling, and feedback.  Recurring themes in Noble’s work include the cosmological implications of material culture, the interdependence of individual and collective agency, and the entanglement of language, technology and culture as an evolutionary continuum.

Noble’s work, sometimes in partnership with other artists and art institutions, has been included in Platforms: We Are Here, Live (City of Vancouver Public Art Program), Artforum International (March 2021 issue, with Te Tuhi), the NGV Triennial, Te Tuhi Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (curated by Bruce E. Phillips), PSI/Fluid States (with David Cross), SCAPE Biennial of Public Art (with Maddie Leach), Iteration: Again (with Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson), dOCUMENTA 13 (with GRADCAM & EARN), Manifesta 7 (with Piråtbyrån), and ICA London.

Noble completed a BA in philosophy at Prifysgol Abertawe and a practice-based PhD in visual art at Deakin University.