Rob Blake

Rob Blake is an artist, writer and film-maker from Leeds, UK, based in Berlin for too long. With a practice that includes sculpture, video, writing and sound, his work questions meaning and motive, encouraging a deeper engagement with the rich complexities and constant contradictions of contemporary life. The work is often serious in theme, but it can also be pretty funny. He tries to make work that is conceptually layered, delivering complex ideas without dogma. His practice is often presented in gallery shows and online, or can take the more abstract and practical form of social interventions and experiences, particularly within the humanitarian sector.

The notification tones of our devices, or those of others, trigger various auto-emotional reactions, from excitement and joy to dread. On some level, this work seeks to disconnect these pavlovian responses, through shifting the context and rhythm of these sounds into something almost alive, buzzing with an unexpected musicality. The notification tone also seems to have invaded and carved something else out of our daily lives, replacing the background noises of the world with a prescient lack of sound, loudly existing only as anticipation of the notification: the empty absence of a message or update - only calmed by an inevitable chime.