The word connectivity might be one which we associate with the computer age but enter connectivity into a search engine and online dictionaries will tell you the first use of it is recorded in 1893. Four decades earlier, south-west Scotland was at the heart of a connectivity revolution when roadside underground telegraphic cables were laid from Dumfries to the west coast.

In the late 1860s, one Captain James Anderson, a native of Dumfries, was feted for his involvement in one of the most groundbreaking telecommunications feats of its day: the laying of the Atlantic cable, which enabled trade, finance and governments to communicate like never before.

It was a technological revolution as profound as the one that brought the world the internet. And it was contemporary connectivity which carried me to the hamlet of Cample, near Thornhill, in Dumfriesshire. Emails back and forth told me its existence would be of interest to Herald readers, while my iPhone’s GPS guided me on the 90-minute drive from Glasgow to Cample, where Cample Line sits cheek by jowl with a dilapidated 19th-century mill and adjacent railways.

During my visit there, Glasgow artist Karen Cunningham was installing two new works in the beautiful gallery – and the theme of connectivity continued. The first artwork hangs from an exposed wooden ceiling truss like a ghostly, shimmering remnant of the blankets that were once made at Cample Mill.

Interwoven into a complex web of seemingly disparate material, it is possible to pick out insulated electrical wires, computer networking cables, jute and rope. The heart of the work is a long piece of sparkly woven fibreglass which Cunningham is still slowly unpicking.

Behind this, a flash of colour leaps from the floor, all sharp blues, reds, yellows and the odd mica-like glitter. For this work, Cunningham, a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art’s renowned MFA programme, has temporarily “interrupted” various materials from the recycling process. Milk bottle tops, reground for new uses or reprocessed for injection moulding, have become part of an artwork. They will be returned for recycling after the exhibition, she tells me. Glass reconstituted from discarded TVs and monitor screens mingle with ocean shells and coral, which are part of a giant natural recycling process.

There is a clear connection between Cunningham’s new work and Cample Mill’s past life. “I am interested in the ways in which technology meets anthropology as a way to interpret the world,” she explains. “For example, this fibreglass fabric arrived perfect and I have been deconstructing it. The making and remaking of it is visible.”

Cunningham’s work is perfect for this space, which opened last year. It appears to be asking: how do we use the stuff of our lives to connect and communicate?

Cample Line is a charitable arts organisation, headed by Tina Fiske, who was a lecturer in contemporary art at the University of Glasgow. Housed in a former millworkers’ cottage, it boasts a spacious screening room meets performance space and kitchen on the ground floor and a rectangular gallery with glorious raking light flowing from windows on either side of the room.

Fiske and her partner, acclaimed landscape artist Andy Goldsworthy, are the driving forces behind Cample Line. Goldsworthy bought Cample Mill several years ago and work began on transforming the building in 2015. Now open with a rolling programme of exhibitions, film screenings and performances, the ethos of Cample Line has emerged from Fiske’s interest in the collection of a doctor who tended patients in Thornhill in the mid-19th century. Dr Thomas Boyle Grierson, who counted Charles Darwin among his contacts, was an avid collector of a bewildering array of objects from around his home and abroad. He started a museum in the ground floor of his house before receiving a grant of land from the Duke of Buccleuch to build a museum which opened in 1872 and ran until 1965.

As Fiske explains: “Inspired by Grierson, the idea of near and far is the context for Cample Line and the programme is all about finding a pretext to make that happen.”

Life is all about connectivity. And all good art should be.

Karen Cunningham: Deploying Culture, Cample Line, Cample Mill, Thornhill, DG3 5HD, 01848 331000, campleline.org.uk, until 5 May, open Thur-Sat, 10am-3pm, free

CRITIC'S CHOICE

Sabe Lewlellyn: How Curious! How real! The Pipe Factory, 42 Bain Street, Glasgow

G40 2LA. http://www.thepipefactory.co.uk. Open Sat & Sun 12pm-5m and Mon-Fri by appointment until 1 April. Free

I thought I was being fanciful when I thought I detected the faint trace of tobacco in the top floor of The Pipe Factory, in which Sabe Lewellyn's first solo exhibition is currently taking place. The distinctive brick building, next to the entrance to the Barras market on Bain Street, Glasgow, was once a clay pipe factory, dating back to 1877. Today, it plays host art exhibitions, workshops and residencies.

It's only when I am leaving his exhibition that Lewellyn, like Karen Cunningham, a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art's MFA programme, tells me he has created an "aroma piece" for the space. It is emitting faint traces of dried tobacco out into the ether of the exhibition.

It's a delightful and delicate touch which sets the seal on a delightful and delicately nuanced installation.

Walking into the space the exhibition occupies on the top floor of The Pipe Factory, the first thing your eye falls on is a neon sign, positioned almost altar-like at the far end of the space. Have you looked outside? It's beautiful! it declares. And do you know something, with the harsh mid-March light falling as stripes shadows from either side of atelier-style windows, it is! Underneath the neon, there's a shelf containing envelopes full wildflower seeds which visitors are encouraged to take home and plant to help encourage birds, bees and butterflies to set up home nearby.

Bells are a recurring theme in Lewellyn's work. He has positioned ten bells of varying sizes around this space. These include; a cowbell, a bell from a First World War artillery gun and one stamped with the initials GWR (Great Western Railways). Inside each, there's a battery, which together with the innate movement of the building, sees the bell vibrate constantly.

The sounds a bell makes as it vibrates is known as decay. In this post-industrial setting, with its scuffed wooden floor and exposed beams, the stark simplicity of Lewellyn's neon sign and the elegant curved beauty of the vibrating bells make for perfectly balanced visual harmony.

DON'T MISS

Platform Festival 2018, venues throughout Perth from today until 31 March http://www.culturepk.org.uk/

Following on from a successful inaugural year in 2017, Perth-based Platform Contemporary Arts Festival starts today and include a creative cornucopia of exhibitions, design, photography, artists talks, gigs, special installations, drama and film.

Festival highlights include new artworks from some of the area’s finest artists: sculpture work from Susie Johnston, new drawings and gunpowder work from Frank To, the premier of Helen McCrorie’s new film, based on the Comrie floods of 2012, and a week-long residency on local bus routes with Jim Mackintosh.

Venues include the historic A K Bell Library, local venues around Perth and Kinross, and the Perth Museum and Art Gallery, which is due to be refurbished from 2018 – 2021 as part of an ambitious city cultural development.