Prima Materia
2017
The paradigm of scientific and technical progress leads us to an ideal in which our relation with technology is completely transparent, without any kind of friction, as if it wasn’t even there in the first place. However, there are no neutral or transparent technologies, they all have their own and defining imperfection marks in which we appreciate their inherent politics.
Technology by itself has the power to define new social contracts that we assume blindly without being aware of the politic and social consequences it carries. This is a phenomena that we can spot since the industrial revolution and that has been accelerating since then due to the ever growing complexity of new technologies whose inner mechanisms we can no longer fully understand.
The work shows a computer generated marble-like stone texture, an usually noble material in art. However, when watching closely we can see that the texture changes subtly. These changes are determined by the quotation of the components of coltan, columbite and tantalite, key in the manufacture of electronic components and whose extraction and trade is a source of global conflicts.
2017
The paradigm of scientific and technical progress leads us to an ideal in which our relation with technology is completely transparent, without any kind of friction, as if it wasn’t even there in the first place. However, there are no neutral or transparent technologies, they all have their own and defining imperfection marks in which we appreciate their inherent politics.
Technology by itself has the power to define new social contracts that we assume blindly without being aware of the politic and social consequences it carries. This is a phenomena that we can spot since the industrial revolution and that has been accelerating since then due to the ever growing complexity of new technologies whose inner mechanisms we can no longer fully understand.
The work shows a computer generated marble-like stone texture, an usually noble material in art. However, when watching closely we can see that the texture changes subtly. These changes are determined by the quotation of the components of coltan, columbite and tantalite, key in the manufacture of electronic components and whose extraction and trade is a source of global conflicts.
