Mobile show takes 11 artists across Scotland in Travelling Gallery's Alt-w Shortcuts exhibition

Exhibition: Alt-w Shortcuts, Travelling Gallery, various venues, until June 9 2012

A collection of artworks inspired by digital culture is currently touring Scotland in a custom-built mobile art space.

Alt-w Shortcuts is being shown at various locations across Scotland in the Travelling Gallery, a purpose-built art bus which gives communities across the country the chance to see international-standard artwork close to home.

Alt-w Shortcuts incorporates the work of 11 artists, with specially commissioned new pieces from Donna Leishman, Mandy McIntosh and Kirsty Stansfield.

The works include sculpture, drawing, film, animation, sound, photography, tapestry, installation and song, all with a digital element.

All the artists involved in the exhibition were selected by the Alt-w Fund, which highlights the changing role digital culture plays in society and supports the use of technology in art, either as a platform or as a medium in itself.

This approach to technology takes many forms. Yann Seznec’s work, Droplets, creates music from the rhythms of rain using sensors that react to water to control a series of glockenspiel notes.

Simon Yuill’s Stackwalker combines film and interview transcripts to explore the parallels between crofters and A8 migrant workers, and Thomson and Craighead also use film in Flat Earth, a documentary formed from snippets of real life blogs found on the Internet.

~in-the-fields’ roto gravur is an installation of rotating discs with increasingly complex patterns, while Kirsty Stansfield’s Table Phonograph uses smartphone technology to turn the textures of everyday objects into sounds, taking inspiration from Thomas Edison’s early wax cylinder record players.

One of the key pieces that was to be in the exhibition, Apache Pilot, by David McAllister, was stolen from the artist’s car before it reached the gallery.

The piece was a manga-style sculpture of an Apache pilot with its head in a cloud, representing the duality we experience between the real world and the omnipresent virtual world.

McAllister draws a parallel between flying an Apache helicopter and shooting at graphically enhanced targets and playing computer games, examining how the blurred line between real and virtual affects our attitude and accountability.

Apache Pilot was also designed as a “mercenary” piece of art: once triggered, it would sell itself to the highest bidder and the owner would be forced to sell it on if a higher bid was received.

The Travelling Gallery exhibition runs until June. Many of the stops will be schools, but some of the locations are open to the general public.

• Visit the schedule online for full tour dates.

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