last updated
1st August 2010

General Election Drinking Game

6th May 2010

An endurance performance devised by Ellie Harrison to coincide with the 2010 UK general election. Four ‘players’ represented the main political parties - each attempting to drink one shot of lager for every seat in parliament their party won, live as the results came in throughout the night.

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Toytown

May 2009

The sister installation to Vending Machine, this piece features a dilapidated 1980s kid’s car ride which starts up and offers people free rides when news relating to the recession makes the headlines on the BBC News RSS feed.

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Vending Machine

April 2009

An installation for which an old vending machine is reprogrammed to release snacks only when news relating to the recession makes the headlines on the BBC News RSS feed.

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The History of Financial Crises

April 2009

An installation in which the turbulent history of capitalism over the last century is re-enacted each day by a row of popcorn making machines.

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Transactions

April 2009

Developed to accompany The History of Financial Crises installation - for the duration of exhibition, Ellie sent an SMS message to the phone installed in the gallery every time she made an economic transaction. The Coke can dances with joy every time a message is received.

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Know Your Thinkers & Theorists

2007 - 2008

Not strictly a ‘gallery project’, but more the by-product of a year-long research project for which, as part as her self-improvement programme, Ellie attempted to teach herself an overview of the chronology of Western philosophy and critical theory from 800 BC to the present. She hoped to retain this newly acquired information by designing an easy-to-read, quick reference, colour-coded wall chart for her studio wall, which is also now available to download free in PDF format.

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Angel Row Jukebox

22nd September 2007

An interactive installation commissioned for the closing party of Angel Row Gallery in Nottingham. The Jukebox contained all the UK #1 hits which corresponded with the openings of 254 exhibitions held at the gallery over its lifetime. The audience were asked to punch in the code for the exhibition they first remembered visiting.

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Self-Destruction (Building Site Ballot)

January 2007

A site-specific installation made for the launch of a gallery on the second floor of a working building site in Copenhagen. The audience’s attitude and nerve were tested by being asked to respond to the question of whether or not they think the ‘artwork’ (a small replica of the gallery), is any good. Their response helped decide whether it should be saved or destroyed.

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I’ve Been Watching You

June 2007

This screen based animated notebook was developed in response to the three-and-a-half years Ellie spent working as Undercover Artist in Residence at Broadway Cinema in Nottingham. The 38 minute animation chronicles anecdotes, facts and figures about the 207 films she watched whilst on shift, which collectively amounted to over 16 days solid viewing.

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Daily Data Display Room

10th March - 23rd April 2006

For the duration of the Day-to-Day Data exhibition at Danielle Arnaud contemporary art in London, Ellie collected information about 10 elements of her everyday routine. Each morning the results from the previous day were emailed to the gallery and used to reconfigure and adjust the 10 different objects comprising the installation. Over the course of the exhibition, the display aimed to test and visualise an experiment as to whether there was a correlation between different elements of this information.

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Daily Data Display Wall

20th July - 29th October 2005

For the duration of the Day-to-Day Data exhibition in Nottingham and Portsmouth, Ellie collected data about 20 different elements of her daily life onto Daily Data Log sheets. Each morning the Log Sheet results were emailed to the gallery and used to reconfigure the 20 different items in the installation, so that it took on a slightly different appearance each day of the exhibition.

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Sneezes 2003

September 2004

Throughout 2003, Ellie recorded the exact date and time of her every sneeze. For this solo exhibition at the Wallner Gallery in Nottingham, she transformed the gallery walls into a giant two-way timeline. Mini colour-coded prints representing each of the 318 sneezes were positioned around the walls to indicate the exact date and time at which they occurred.

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The Monthly Sculptures Determined by the Daily Quantification Records

July 2003

Throughout 2003, Ellie also collected data about 14 different elements of her everyday life onto Daily Quantification Records. Each month this data was converted into a set of averages, which was then applied to a set of scales and systems to output the specifications for a monthly sculpture. The first six months’ worth of sculptures was installed at the 2003 Goldsmiths Postgraduate Degree Show.

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Gold Card Adventures

January 2005

For her solo exhibition at Piccadilly Circus Underground Station in 2005, Ellie created a series of 20 large format posters to visualise the data collected during her Gold Card Adventures project, for which she recorded the total distance of every journey she made on London Transport in a year (9,236 kilometres). These posters were used to mark the stages of this cumulative journey by featuring a series of imitation postcards from different global destinations at progressive further distances away from London.

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Statistics Are Hot Air

1st January - 31st December 2003

This colour-coded vinyl bar chart visualises the exact quantity of gaseous emissions Ellie produced daily throughout 2003. The piece was originally created in 2003 as a studio based wall chart exploring the notion of ‘artistic output’, for which Ellie added one bar to the chart each day. In 2007 the completed chart was installed as semi-permanent installation on glass at Birmingham Moor Street Station as part the New Art Birmingham exhibition Ariston. There is also an online version of the chart.

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TicTac Typing & Peanut Typing

September 2002

This installation features two Mac computer programmes made during the LabCulture digital arts residency in 2002. The programmes mimic the common typing test, but rather than telling you your speed or accuracy, they inform you of the equivalent number of TicTacs or peanuts you are burning off whilst typing. Bowls of TicTacs and peanuts are installed alongside the two Macs for hungry participants.

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Mass = Energy = Time

October 2002

This kinetic installation uses two found weight mechanism clocks. The lead weights which are normally used to power the clocks have been removed and replaced by foods (bread and bananas) of the same mass. The clocks continue to work as normal - powered by the gravitational potential energy inherent in the foods. Originally installed at Goldsmiths College in 2002 and then at the Colony gallery space in Birmingham in 2004.

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Potential Generator

May 2001

This kinetic sculpture was designed to give gravitational potential energy to apples. Apples are placed on the escalator device at the rear of the bike and, as a result of the bike being pedalled, are transported to a height above the ground proportional to their chemical energy content. A similar, but proportionally larger, Potential Generator for doughnuts was also designed.

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Kinetic Cake vs Kinetic Carrot

December 2000

In this kinetic installation a carrot and a chocolate éclair race around two facing train tracks at speeds proportional to their chemical energy contents - the éclair being just over three times faster than the vegetable of a comparable size.

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