They have been working together with video, sound and the internet since 1993.[1] Much of their work to date explores how technology changes the way we perceive the world around us.[2] They use live data to make artworks, including "template cinema online artworks"[3] and gallery installations,[4] where networked movies are created in real time from online material such as remote-user security web cams, audio feeds and chat room text transcripts.
Recently (as of 2008) they have made outdoor semi-permanent works, Decorative Newsfeeds[5] and BEACON,[6] where the emphasis is on live virtual information. In BEACON, data is projected onto gallery walls, interacting with viewers' physical space. In 2008 they made an animated documentary, Flat Earth,[7] where the voices of bloggers found online are combined with public domainsatellite imagery.
Created by Thomson & Craighead, Here is a 2013 artwork formed by a standard 2.64m tall UK road sign pointing north from a riverside path in east London and displaying the 24,859 mile distance around the circumference of the earth back to the sign's position.[10][11] Maggie Gray in art magazine Apollo said: "Such pieces command attention and, once they have it, direct that attention outwards to their surroundings, or back on to the viewer."[12] In 2014, it was one of nine works chosen from over 70 submissions for The Line,[13] an art project distributed along a three-mile route following some of London's waterways between Stratford and North Greenwich.[14] The route opened in 2015.[15][16]
Exhibitions include 'Maps DNA and Spam' at Dundee Contemporary Arts; Never Odd nor even at Carroll / Fletcher Gallery London; Tate Britain;[19] San Francisco Museum of Modern Art SFMOMA;[20] Laboral Art Centre in Gijon, Spain;[21] Zentrum Kunst Media ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; The New Museum, New York; Mejanlabs, Stockholm; Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase, New York.[22]