“O-bit”
Layla
26 Nov → 18 Dec 2010

O-bit is a video installation that incorporates archival footage of television personalities who have made regular appearances on television over decades. This work chronicles the subject’s on-screen presence and the changes that happen over time, while reflecting upon the sense of universality of place, time and experience engendered by television. O-bit is concerned with individual and collective consciousness of the passage of time and of mortality in the context of television culture. This project was presented at West Space as a multi-monitor installation. The installation was conceived as a kind of television graveyard in observance of the death of analogue television in which mortality is present in every element of the work.

Layla graduated from RMIT School of Art (Media Arts) in 2007, she is a video artist whose work explores themes of transformation and mortality within contemporary media culture. Her work O-bit was exhibited at Hatched 2010 at PICA, where it received second prize in the Dr Harold Schenberg Art Prize and was a finalist in the John Fries Memorial Prize and the RBS Emerging Artist Award 2010.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.