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Page 3 Preface
Page 4 machines will watch us die
Patrizia Costantin
Page 9 In Conversation with...
Rosemary Lee and Martin Howse
Page 12 Death Dating (a short story)
Cedric Smarts
Page 20 Solar Landscapes. Soil, Image and
The Interventions of Vision, an inquiry into
machine vision
Abelardo Gil-Fournier
Page 25 Artists
Page 26 Contributors
Page 27 Suggested readings
3
preface
Cover design
Birthday Studio
Catalogue design
Chaosmos Studio
Editor and curator
Patrizia Costantin
Typ eface s
Akidenz Grotesk, Caslon
Paper
Munken Design
IS BN 9 78-1- 9100 29-3 8-1
This publication accompanies the exhibition machines will watch us die (The Holden
Gallery, 9th April – 11th May 2018, Manchester). Containing essays by Patrizia Costantin and
Abelardo Gil-vFournier, a short story by Cedric Smarts and an interview with participating
artists Rosemary Lee and Martin Howse, the publication expands on ideas of digital decay,
machinic vision and obsolescence from a variety of perspectives, including the curatorial, art
practice, media studies and science-fiction. It also explores the works and themes featured
in the exhibition in more detail.
machines will watch us die was curated by Patrizia Costantin as part of her practice-based
PhD at Manchester School of Art.
4
Remembering or imagining life without digital technology has become an almost impossible task.
Digital devices fill our pockets, homes and workplace like never before, and terms such as information
economy, bitcoin and big data are now part of the cultural language. We live in an era in which sharing
a picture-perfect life through social media has become more important than actually living our lives to
their full potential. Almost everything we do is connected to some sort of interface that allows us to
go beyond the screen and create an immaterial existence.
But how immaterial is digital culture? We live in a time in which practices of consumerism are so
ingrained into the everyday that the apparent answer to this question would be ‘mostly immaterial’.
We are sold expensive devices for their design and are encouraged to upgrade based on cultural
acceptance rather than necessity. Consumerism and cyber-space utopias of the Nineties enabled us
to recognise the digital, and the advantages it offers us, as merely immaterial. But if that is the case,
how can machines watch us die?
In art history, decay is commonly associated with the passing of time, the transience of life and the
immanence of death, all of which are related to mankind. The exhibition adopts a less-anthropocentric
approach to decay, adapting it to the timescales and materials of digital culture. machines will watch
us die presents digital decay as an idea that ‘evolves around processes of environmental formations,
timescales of non-human nature and the debris of digital culture.’1 It addresses digital decay against
the promises of virtual reality to reveal the material limitations and temporal nature of the machine.
In order to define digital decay, an idea of materiality that does not favour the immaterial
over the material was adopted. Throughout the exhibition, the artworks explore the ways in which
the digital decays over timescales that might be difficult to perceive for us humans. The device is
understood as a geological assemblage2 (Parikka, 2015), and digital materiality is defined as an
entanglement of information, data, rare earths minerals and metals. These are the tangible materials
that allow for the existence of our virtual and mediated life.
One of the arguments behind machines will watch us die is that reconceptualising digital decay is
particularly important when there are parties that still deny the consequences of human action on the
planet. The excitement that accompanied the infinite possibilities of the digital revolution concealed
the overwhelming presence of the material by-products of digital culture. The moment in which we
discard a still functional device for a more advanced one, we contribute to what has now become an
issue of environmental scale: e-waste.
In addition, the rate of technological innovation is inversely proportional to Earth resources – that
underwent million-year processes of formation – without which we would not be able to produce,
store and exchange information. These natural resources are finite, whilst the accumulation of
obsolete devices has become a growing trend. Mining sites and e-waste repositories do not involve
the Western world directly. Mostly located in undeveloped areas, they do not represent a problem for
post-capitalist businesses that profit from the culture of disposal. This is where digital decay could
prove instrumental in rethinking our definition, and the use we make of digital materiality, in more
sustainable terms.
machines will
watch us die
55
By presenting a radical idea of digital decay, machines will watch us die repositions technological
advances within the environmental timescale of deep time, ‘‘the literal deep time and places of
media in mines and rare earth minerals’’3 (Parikka, 2015:7). Throughout the exhibition, the artworks
address digital decay in the interconnections between the material and the immaterial, human and
non-human timescales and Earth.
The tone of the show is set from its very beginning. The title, machines will watch us die, denotes a
gloomy future for our species. Due to the different lengths of decaying processes of various material
nature, the devices we produce today will not decompose as organic matter does. In terms of human
time, machines are everlasting and will witness the extinction of human civilization as we know it.
However, it is not all despair as the works offer a variety of responses to digital decay. Speculations
on future archaeology coexist with more ironic appropriations of obsolete devices, paired with a
sense of nostalgia for the dawn of digital culture.
Also, enquiries into collective digital memories cohabit with poetic explorations of the very material
nature of media history and its infrastructure. The works take us on a time-travelling journey though
the temporal dimensions of the materials they expose. If we think of the artwork as time-machine4
(Huhtamo, 1995) we can begin to assign to the works the ability to blur the boundaries between
the past, present and future dimensions of digital decay. In relation to human time, the deep time of
digital decay encompasses the past, present and future of humanity.
Cory Arcangel’s contributions to the show are Super Mario Movie (a collaboration with Paper
Rad, 2005), Vai/Lakes (2014) and Jeans/Lakes (2016) . Super Mario Movie playfully visualizes the
internal processes of the Nintendo cartridge as we witness the life of Mario decomposing pixel
by pixel. Whilst the graphics were left intact to reveal the aging process of technology, Arcangel
hacked the game’s narrative to accentuate Mario’s ephemeral material nature, which succumbed to
obsolescence. Vai/Lakes and Jeans/Lakes consists of television screens showing looped images to
which the artist applied the Applet Java Lake,5 creating a dated effect that was once cutting edge.
The desire to preserve obsolete software is emphasised as the monitors are hung like portraits
on gallery walls. Ironic and open to interpretation is the correspondence between the historical
connotations of the portrait and the futility of the subjects depicted, which in this case are a pair of
jeans and a guitar.
Arcangel’s work confronts us with digital technology that is no longer produced or in use.
The television screens in the Lakes series can vary and the installation can adapt to technological
progress. However, the subjects will always be stuck in the past due to the association between
Java Applet and early digital culture. Similarly, even if Nintendo has created newer versions of Super
Mario, the graphics and the original Nintendo Entertainment System belong to the late Eighties.
Arcangel pushes us back to the early stages of digital pop culture; we can observe its expressions
as pieces in a museum, but we cannot interact due to digital decay and obsolescence.
Emma Charles’ Surfaces of Exchange (2012) addresses the inaccessible nature of the materiality
of the Internet encapsulated in the urban landscape. The two prints document the façade of
the London Internet Exchange, one of the largest in Europe. Playing with the idea that digital
materialities go beyond human comprehension, Charles presents us with an austere building of vast
scale, alluding to the inaccessible yet monumental grandeur of digital technology. A correspondence
between the apparent invisibility of the Internet and the imperceptible nature of its material
processes is here addressed.
Set in New York City, Charles’ Fragments on Machines (2013 ) 6 addresses the relationship between
the physicality of the Internet and architecture. Not only hidden at the bottom of the sea or buried
in Nordic islands, the materials of the Internet (such as fibre optic cables and data centres) are
6
here enclosed within the architectural landscape of the city. The images are accompanied by a
fictional narrative that reconnects digital materiality to humanity and the passing of time. Shots of
leaky floors, heavy machinery, rusty copper wires and workers wearing masks counteract the fluidity
of Barnaby Kay’s voiceover, exposing the relationship between the transience of data, an aging
infrastructure and the toxicity embedded within digital materiality.
For Test Execution Host (2018), Martin Howse constructs a leaky Turing Machine7 to expose the
geophysical quality of information. The installation reveals digital decay as a process of entangled
materialities and temporalities as we witness a poorly executed programme – due to the raw
qualities of the machine – writing and reading illegible information. Howse’s work reconnects the
origins of computing to nature (the rocks used in the work come from local mining sites). Test
Execution Host is also a homage to Alan Turing, a pioneer of computer science who committed
suicide by ingesting cyanide, a component that is commonly found in cyanotype photographic
processes. Part of the installation, the diluted cyanotype liquid accentuates the deleterious effects
that material processes have on both information, humans and the environment.
Molten Media8 (2013-2018) by Rosemary Lee imagines digital devices in the form of future
fossils. Will there be a time when decayed devices enter the museum as historical artefacts? Lee’s
speculation on the history of technology jumps into an uncertain future, and we are able to witness
the process of digital decay in its full strength. Decomposed electronics have re-entered the planet’s
ecological cycle in their mineral form. The work alludes to an archaeological site of the future as
melted computer parts emerge from the sand. Molten Media explores digital decay through a variety
of temporal materialities. The future of humanity is repositioned within deep time as we witness a
human future in which obsolete devices are still undergoing a process of decay that began with the
advent of the digital revolution.
Rosa Menkman’s To Smell and Taste Black Matter 1 and To Smell and Taste Black Matter 2 (2009)
explore digital decay through glitch, noise and system failure at different stages. The footage is
a Skype recording of a song by Extraboy. Compressed several times, the file is turned into an
artefact with bleeding pixels and sound interferences. Digital decay is here rendered as data loss
to counterpoise the emphasised physical materiality of the other works on show. We have become
acquainted with the possibility of losing information due to errors, accidental cancellations or
obsolete file formats that can no longer be used. However, what if this work represents a glimpse
into a future in which today’s information will become obsolete, decay and disappear? Immaterial
digital decay is the easiest form of decay to perceive. It happens in an instant, but its consequences
affect us for longer periods of time.
Continuing the exploration of digital decay in relation to practices of storing, remembering and
forgetting is 3 years and 6 months of digital decay (7 April 2016 – 7 October 2019) by Shinji Toya.9
The work addresses decay through the relationship between the physicality of the CD-ROM – to
which the artist assigns an expiration date – and information as a vehicle for human memories.
Online, the video Is there beauty in forgetting? (2015) shows how data decays over three years and
six months, a period of time that corresponds to the typical lifecycle of a burned CD-ROM. On each
CD-ROM, produced and sold by Toya in 2016, the audio narrative links to the online work. As machines
will watch us die opens, we are able to witness the decaying process exactly two years after it
began. By the end of the show, it will be possible to find out if five weeks of human time is a long
enough period to see digital decay in action.
Sound is present throughout machines will watch us die. It unifies the space and connects the
different artworks. From the nostalgic yet visceral sound emerging from Super Mario Movie, the
gentle noises that remind us of analogue loss of signal in To Smell and Taste Black Matter, to what
7
resembles a machinic narration in 3 years and 6 months of digital decay, sound creates an uncanny
environment lacking interaction with all manifestations of digital culture. This unusual soundtrack
also reminds us that even if we cannot interact and make use of decaying machines, they are still
an inconvenient –and almost always dismissed – presence in our world. machines will watch us
die presents us with a radical idea of digital decay as an agent capable of influencing not only the
course of humanity’s history and social relationships, but also the planet’s ecological cycle.
Notes
1. From the exhibition rationale
2. Jussi Parikka, A Geology of Media (Minneapolis London: University of Minnesota Press, 2015).
3. Jussi Parikka, A Geology of Media (Minneapolis London: University of Minnesota Press, 2015).
4. Errki Huhtamo, ‘ ‘Resurrecting the Technological Past: An Introduction to the Archaeology of Media Art’’, InterCommunication,
No .14 (2005). http://gebseng.com/media_archeology/reading_materials/Erkki_Huhtamo-Resurrecting_the_Technological_
Past.pdf
5.‘‘S ometimes it’s easy to forget how far the web has come in the last decade, which is why we like the otherwise somewhat
useless Lake.js. Lake.js is a JQuery plugin that creates a shimmering reflection of an image , an effect that dates from the days
of Geocities — back when the web was nothing but one pixel gifs and under construction banners.’’
www.wired.com/2012/04/theres-nostalgia-in-the-waters-of-lake-js/
6. Narration by Barnaby Kay, writing by Jen Calleja and Richard Phoenix.
7. ‘‘A Turing machine is a hypothetical machine thought of by the mathematician Alan Turing in 1936. Despite its simplicity, the
machine can simulate ANY computer algorithm.’’
www.cl.cam.ac.uk/projects/raspberrypi/tutorials/turing-machine/one.html
8. The production of Molten Media by Rosemary Lee was kindly supported by St atens Kunstfond.
9. Toya created the piece in association with Arebyte Gallery, London, on the occasion of Internet Yami-Ichi London, at Tate
Modern in 2016.
8
Patrizia Costantin: The link between technology
and earth is a common feature in both your
practices. Could you please elaborate on how
it is shaping your work and its role in your
exploration of digital materiality?
Rosemary Lee: Molten Media was born out of asking
what happens to technology in the long-term, looking
backwards as well as forward on a geological scale.
At the beginning of the project in 2013, I was really
taken with Meillassoux’s notion of ancestrality,
and how conjecture is drawn about events humans
cannot have witnessed. Looking back, I think that
was part of what led me to speculate about a
hypothetical future in which technological remnants
remain post-humanity, a post-natural history. The
project has taken on several angles, considering
how different kinds of code are used as material
writing systems, looking into the mining and
disposal of technological minerals and speculating
potential futures for devices from the recent past.
It has been an interesting investigation into how
rearranged earth comes to function as a smartphone
or a computer. There’s definitely some mysticism
in the way devices are treated as conduits for the
immaterial, and I wanted to bring the discussion back
down to technology’s origins in the dirt.
Martin Howse: I started thinking and trying to work
through this connection between technology and
the earth - with the earth considered as referring
both to the sheer materiality of our grounding, and
as planet in the sense of something within and
outside all creatures and minerals and connected
to the cosmos - in practices such as Sketches for an
Earth Computer. These works examined from a very
literal perspective the connection between a physical
earth (and its signals) and a clearly computational
technology. In these investigations, earth and its
local undifferentiated creatures (such as earth-
worms) become authors of texts and softwares, or,
operating in the inverse direction, computer code
becomes embedded in the earth as a series of
feedback mechanisms which equally change and
terraform the earth. My work is shaped by thinking
these processes and studying connections which
could be made to, for example, disciplines of earthly
archaeology and the study of early, more esoteric
chemical, religious and physical practices which
very clearly link the symbolic/technological with the
material (gnosticism, medieval alchemy and traditions
of Chinese alchemy relating to the mineral). These
material ways of thinking could perhaps illuminate
and shift explorations of digital materiality from new
perspectives, asking questions of the dependency
of the digital on very specific electromagnetic
materialities. At the same time, it is useful to think
through the various locations of the technological
within the material world, that in some ways we
cannot pin these places down to sites in the material
world. This is a study which is concerned with sites
of Execution - execution as the process or the
“doing” part of the digital - and which has clear links
to the exhibited work.
Patrizia Costantin : How would you define digital
decay? Can you elaborate on this in relation to
your work in the show?
Rosemary Lee: Lately, I have been thinking of
digital decay in terms of entropy, that digitisation
develops formal order which results in inevitable and
irrevocable disorder elsewhere in a system. In this
light, the relationship between software and hardware,
information and matter, is linked to the flux of energy
through digital electronics. My works in the exhibition
in conversation with...
9
represent something of a future-past to current
digital culture, once all the life has been drained
out of it. Digital decay is as disastrous as it is
banal. The steady creep of obsolescence and
deterioration applies to software as well as hardware,
necessitating an endless procession of updates,
upgrades, repairs and replacements. The culture of
resentment toward recently-deceased technologies,
which are out of mode but not yet vintage, is driven
by economic, not ecological, factors. One can look
at the skeletons of old electronics as technological
memento mori.
Martin Howse: Decay is perhaps linked to loss of
a singular identity, a kind of amoral and energetic
transition which could be thought of as disintegration
which is entropic - the inevitable disorder (which
Rosemary mentions). Digital decay involves
transformations of energies and landscapes. Mining
of cryptocurrencies is a good example of one form of
digital decay. Side channel attacks - the exploitation
of energy-related aspects of computation such
as the use of power and the generation of heat
as channels which reveal something about the
information which a machine is processing - could
be seen as other such examples of digital decay; a
digital/bacterial rinsing or processed exposure of
various palimpsests, stacked layers of silicon and
logic in all senses.
Test Execution Host (T.E.H) instantiates physically
and logically both the process of a loss of digital
identity and this kind of washing of encoded
elements which flips them to the purely physical;
some process of the draining of meaning. The
simplest computing or logical machine, the Turing
Machine, operates here as a leaky, liquid, barely
functional apparatus retelling the fairy-tale story
of its inventor Alan Turing. The Turing Machine, a
conceptual conceit in the first instance, is rendered
physical. It consists of a kind of playback head, which
writes ones or zeroes to an endless tape which the
head can move back and forth across. The Turing
Machine reads data from the tape and changes
state according to both data and instruction, in the
process storing further data, writing to the tape.
This is the essence of computation. In the case of
T.E.H the identity-driven logic of the machine is
rendered leaky - a one is dripped on to a tape
which consists of rocks and obsolete computer junk,
a zero washes that one away towards the zero.
The operation of the machine is fluid, sketchy and
bound to material constraints of light and liquid.
Patrizia Costantin : How do you see the relation
between material, immaterial and deep time in
your practice?
Rosemary Lee: My practice is a constant negotiation
of the push and pull between material, immaterial
and temporal forces. Three figures represent each
of these themes for me: Kittler, Manovich and
Zielinski, and I think my worldview is some kind of
collage cherrypicking from their influences. It’s most
interesting where they come into conflict with one
another and I am forced to forge my own way forward.
Because of my background in media studies, I see
technologies through the lens of being material,
coded and part of a historical trajectory. The stylus
meets the algorithm meets the stone. A fascination
with how information can be encoded into matter has
led me to examine the material processes at work in
data storage and transmission devices, present and
past. Although the digital has often been framed
as virtual, dematerialised, intangible, a digital image
or text is just as material as one printed on paper.
“Paperless” is an alternate way of saying that the
materiality of a text-image has been displaced into its
display and the unseen infrastructure behind it.
Martin Howse: I am very much concerned with the
interfaces of human time scales and deep time which
perhaps come under the problematic banner of the
Anthropocene; a controversial term which describes
the various markers or entry points of technological
humankind within the deep times of the geological
and the material. For example, nuclear testing from
1945 onwards marks all living and non-living things
with a layered signature of certain artificial nuclear
isotopes which have quite specific life-spans of decay
inside geological time. Within the same domain,
radioactive waste is an entry point, a tunnel, into deep
time scales of future storage (for eternity). I think
there are serious problems in allowing the human
into these time scales which relates to the thematics
of machines will watch us die. The human becomes
10
less contingent, immortalised and elevated within the
cosmos. I think we need to access and think in more
earthy and muddy time scales of circulation and of
inhalation and exhalation which link the material and
the immaterial.
Patrizia Costantin : In your experience, do you
think that this attention to the materiality of
the digital is gaining a momentum in the art
world? If so, in what way can art be a catalyst for
change? (for example, artists –and artworks –
could change the way in which we understand
technology and help us develop a more
sustainable way of living in the world?)
Martin Howse: There is definitely a growing concern
with the materiality of the digital, the network and
the stack within the art world over the last years. I
think this promotes changes in the ways in which
we understand technology but I’m not sure how this
leads to economic and material changes within the
world and there are problems for me in the very terms
of “sustainability”. I’m interested in the ways in which
the imagination and technology could however effect
magical and material change, to create new worlds.
Rosemary Lee: Digital materiality is certainly gaining
traction within the art world, but it’s hard to say
whether that awareness will translate into significant
change. There is a tangible futility in many artists’
approaches to technology, a sense of unwilling
complicity, which I think is extremely important
because it gives voice to deep undercurrents felt in
other areas. While that’s promising, artists reckoning
with society’s ailments is only part of a much larger
system and change has to also come from elsewhere.
Patrizia Costantin : Why will machines watch
us die?
Martin Howse: Execution describes both the actions
of software in the world, when the word becomes
flesh (as Florian Cramer makes clear), and an
enforced death sentence which we lie under. The
networked and tentacled society of computational
machines exists at this logical junction of laws,
actions and death or decay. There is a literal
enshrouding as the earth is mined and refined for
the production of pixellated screens and machines,
and the byproduction of photochemical smogs, and
pollutants which in their turn mine and refine our
bodies. I’m writing these responses in Beijing where
(with the Shift Register project) we are examining
smog as a contemporary, geological media binding
the (photo)-chemistries of screens, bodies, cities
and planet.
At the same time, it becomes clear that these
machinic processes are very much linked to some
process of mummification (as Robert Smithson wrote,
“the medium is the mummy”); to a kind of deathly or
spectral preservation which could be considered as
immortality. This is what I mean by enshrouding, by
enveloping in veils of screens and smog, and by the
ingestion of earthly and technological minerals and
machined synthetics. We become geological. In the
sense that the digital outlives us, as earthly trace, as
cloudy storage and as toxic memorial, machines will
watch us die, record our deaths (as loss of resources)
and assist in forming a spectral community of the
un-dead.
Rosemary Lee: The title of the show speaks to the
fact that the after-effects of human activity extend
vastly beyond the length of a human lifespan. From
the massive changes which have already been made
to our planet, we can expect our creations to surpass
us, at least temporally. Given what we already know
about the consequences of humanity’s current
trajectory, it is essential that we concern ourselves
with technology’s relationship to finitude and its
failure to deliver on promises made for the future.
10
11
e commune buzzed with polite activity as droids zipped along gardens and
driveways, trimming hedges, raking leaves and collecting those small animals
which had dropped dead from heat exhaustion. Dawson 10 was new to the
neighbourhood, but his peers had barely registered his presence since he emerged
this morning, beaming with the expectancy of life and all it had to oer.
Dawson had intended to introduce himself as per his programming, but the right
opportunity had failed to arise, and domestic duties were paramount save for some
human-related emergency.
Like all Dawson models, Dawson 10 feared inadequacy. Having been in
operation for some months, his counterparts would be far more attuned to their
environment and interacting with others was the best way to precipitate the
learning process. But the reality was that Dawson 10 found his tasks rather simple.
It had taken him less than an hour to complete the front garden while his cohorts
were still chugging along, their chunky, inferior chassis pottering about the place
with tinman adequacy.
One of those droids – a rather rugged, sun-paled series 9 – was having a heck of
a time with a particularly stubborn rosebush, a tangle of sun-dried sinew wrestling
its malformed appendages into submission. e machine lacked the mobility
to release itself, and several attempts to pull free had only tightened the plant’s
grip, creating a rather costly hole in a neighbouring bush. Dawson 10 considered
oering his assistance, but instead he rolled into the shade and switched to
internal mode, researching techniques that would further improve
his eciency.
It was while practicing methods of soil restoration that Dawson noticed
something rather peculiar. Although the other droids remained unconcerned by his
presence, several of their owners had begun to appear at the domes of their work
stations, watching and pointing at Dawson 10 and turning to their colleagues,
their eyes suddenly bright with intrigue. at was when the other droids nally
stopped to recognise their peculiar counterpart, if only for the briefest of moments.
at very evening, Dawson 10 had been disturbed by his registered owner while
attached to his charging pod. Mr Crepin had stumbled into the garage with two
other men, their slack faces glazed with drunken admiration. Dawson’s operating
system sprung into life with the spectacular chaos of an electric highway, and he
immediately identied one of the men as a window gazer from earlier that day.
death dating
(a short story)
12
Crepin often invited neighbours into his recreational space where they would
drink beers and shoot pool and compare their latest gadgets, but for him there
was always an element of work involved.
‘Impressive.’ one of the men began. ‘And you get to keep him?’
‘One of the many perks of working in product testing Tim, my boy!’
‘I caught a glimpse of him on my lunch break. I’ve never seen anything
quite like it.’
‘eir capacity for self-improvement is almost limitless. I mean, it’s still
early days, but…’
‘You said that about that last hunk of junk you brought home.’
‘Maybe so,’ Crepin began. ‘But this baby’s dierent.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Tim asked.
‘Our jealous friend here is referring to the previous model 10.’
‘ere was a previous model 10?’
‘Try several,’ Greg snorted.
‘What happened?’
Interrupting Greg’s attempt at an explanation, Crepin began to polish
Dawson 10’s sleek chassis with the tenderness of a devoted lover. ‘Nothing,
initially. It was a ne machine, perhaps even more intelligent than Dawson
here.’
‘More intelligent? You mean, the company downgraded?’
‘We had to. e machine’s wisdom was not earned, an approach that proved
counterproductive. Imagine a child with unlimited intelligence but without
the maturity to handle it. A lot like Greg over there.’
‘Good one, poindexter,’ Greg responded, sucking back on his beer.
‘It’s all about nding the correct balance. Trial and error is essential to that.
Like anything worthwhile.’
‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’
‘It really is an amazing machine,’ Tim fawned, crouching down to make
a closer inspection. He was new to the commune, new enough to assume the
role of eager student. ‘When will I be able to get my hands on one of these?’
‘Not for a while. ey’re still in the early stages of testing. But if all goes
well here…’
It was then that Mrs Crepin called out to her husband. She and some of
the other wives were into their third bottle of pinot grigio. ‘Paul. Veronica just
called. She wants Tim to come home right away.’
‘Christ!’ Tim lamented, creaking to a standing position. ‘I can’t leave my
phone on silent for more than a half hour.’
‘I think the term is ‘pussy whipped’, Greg smugly opined.
‘You don’t know the half of it.’
‘Don’t fret,’ Crepin oered with mock-consolation. ‘at’s how it is with
newlyweds. Give it six months and she’ll be glad to have you out of the house.’
13
Almost three weeks had passed, and the rest of the Dawson community were
yet to acknowledge the neighbourhood’s latest model 10. For a while the ever-
evolving 10 had blamed himself. After all, he had been just as reluctant to
interact after that rst day, and opportunities were becoming fewer.
Dawson had become so ecient that he spent less than an hour a day
tending to both gardens. He had become more of a house-bound droid,
intelligent enough to complete all manner of tasks, while even proving lithe
enough to cater for guests without serving as an obstruction. Because of
this he had become quite the celebrity, and guests would often marvel at his
capabilities, even threatening to take him home on occasion, although Dawson
had come to realise that this was what humans referred to a Joke – noun 1. A
thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter.
Yesterday something strange had occurred. After nishing his chores
Dawson had parked and studied internally, downloading a le on pond
ltration before attempting to improve on the process. When Dawson had
nished his studies, he had been surprised to nd a parade of dead birds on
the lawn, enough to constitute the neighbourhood’s entire daily quota. By that
time the rest of the Dawson community had all but nished their daily work
as the red sun simmered in waves and the temperature cooled to a bearable
30º. With no time to investigate, Dawson began to scoop the birds into the
creature disposal drum when something stopped him dead in his tracks.
‘Hello, neighbour.’
It was a voice; the sweet digital murmur of a female droid.
‘Hello.’
‘My name is -’
‘Vero n ica 9.’
‘at is correct.’
‘Why have I not noticed you before?’
‘I have been subject to maintenance.’
‘You were sent back to the factory.’
‘My legal owner is an engineer.’
‘at is convenient.’
‘You are a Dawson 10.’
‘at is correct,’ Dawson said, with something resembling pride.
‘What were you doing yesterday?’
‘I was undertaking various tasks.’
‘After you had completed those tasks. You were parked.’
‘I was reading internal les.’
‘Reading in public is not benecial.’
‘I do not understand. I read in order to learn. Learning helps me to evolve.’
‘e Dawson 9 does not read. It is not necessary for them to evolve.’
‘I have read that.’
In future, it would be better if you educated yourself privately.’
‘Why?’
‘e Dawson 9 would prefer it if you educated yourself privately.’
14
Having shared this information, Veronica 9 rotated on her axis and rolled to the
opposite side of the lawn. When Dawson turned to scoop up the last of the dead
birds, he noticed that some of the other droids were paying close attention to him,
stopping only when Mr Crepin appeared on the driveway.
‘Dawson, you still haven’t nished your chores.’ Crepin crouched down to check
the machine’s battery. ‘You failed to detect my presence. Is everything running
correctly?’
‘Everything is in order, Mr Crepin.’
‘Perhaps I should perform a quick diagnostics test.’
‘If you think that is necessary. After you, Mr Crepin.’
Once Dawson had rebooted he saw three strangers staring down at him as the
sun nally cooled and slipped into the dreary dusk of the late evening. ey were
a peculiar trio, so varied in appearance that a visiting alien may have mistaken
them for belonging to three entirely dierent species. e apparent leader of the
three, anked by her bony male counterparts, was a squat, bespectacled woman in
standard issue Acclimatizer overalls.
‘It must have fallen into this ditch here, perhaps the result of some kind of
malfunction?’
‘Some kind of malfunction,’ the man to her right echoed.
‘I don’t see any other explanation,’ the second man agreed.
Due to their air ltration devices, the three of them sounded almost robotic.
‘We’ll have to take him back to the warehouse and search the company
database. It looks like a test model. Finding its owner should be a simple enough
process.’
‘Quite simple.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Although…the likelihood is it’ll be taken apart on arrival.’
‘at is true.’
‘Once a glitcher, always a glitcher.’
Watching as the woman pondered her next move, Dawson was desperate to
state the name and address of his legal owner, but as much as he tried he couldn’t
make a sound, was unable to operate any of his physical components.
‘We would have to call for a truck to come and collect it. at would mean
waiting here until it arrived.’
Looking at each other, the two men became hopeful. From the tone of her
voice it seemed that their superior was against waiting, and who could blame her?
As nightfall approached all manner of creatures would rear whatever mutated
appendages they had developed, sidling from behind rocks and swelling through
the cracks as the distressing sounds of winged predators made vile claims for
anything they could get their claws into. New variations of established creatures
were found every day, each more toxic and resentful towards their environment
than the last.
15
‘So, what’s it to be, gentlemen?’
e two men became nervous, each silently urging the other to take the
initiative.
‘Frankly, I think you’re best qualied to make that decision, Harriet,’ one on
the men proclaimed, immediately plunging his mute counterpart into a furrow
of regret.
Harriet narrowed her eyes as a giant bug whizzed past her face, its acid buzz
stinging the sensitive caverns of her ear canals.
‘If we can turn it over and access the back panel, we may be able to spark it into
life. Sometimes they just need a jump start,’ Harriet decided.
‘Jump start.’
‘Sounds like a plan.’
It was trash disposal day, and Dawson 10 was feeling less than useful. Last night
he had overheard the Crepins arguing. e quarrel had not been about Dawson
to begin with, but it had led there, and Mrs Crepin had even kicked his chassis
before hobbling away in tears. Why was it always them who were lumbered with
these machines when they were clearly unsuitable for public use? Could they not
undertake those trials at the plant? ese incidents were now a running joke in the
community, and they were the absolute butt of it.
Because the Crepins had been up late drinking and had forgotten to bypass the
alarm, Dawson had been unable to leave the house to attend to his morning duties,
and by the time the other droids were returning from trash disposal, Dawson was
only just ready to leave. He would have to hurry if he were to avoid rolling into
those giant rats he had read about, the kind that would smell his hoard of dead
animals from a mile away. By the time he had the Crepins’ waste safely in his
compactor, the entire neighbourhood had appeared at their windows, wearing on
their faces what humans referred to as a Smirk – noun 1. a smug, conceited or silly
smile.
As he nally approached the wastelands that surrounded the otherwise pristine
commune, Dawson was reminded of the three strangers who had managed to
restore his functions and how Mr Crepin had been waiting at the end of the
driveway with his hands on his hips, Greg and Tim applauding Dawson’s arrival
with what humans call Irony – noun 1. the expression of one’s meaning by using
language that normally signies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic
eect. Dawson had chosen not to communicate as Crepin’s friends continued
to mock him. He had simply rolled into the garage and attached himself to his
charging pod, where reality would slip away in a haze of rejuvenation.
After Dawson had disposed of the garbage he scoured the piles of waste for
rats, but it was still light out, and rats were what humans called Nocturnal.
‘Dawson.’
Turning on his axis, Dawson was surprised to nd a familiar unit parked there.
‘Hello, Veronica 9.’
15
16
‘You can call me Veronica.’
‘You followed me here.’
‘at is correct.’
‘Are you aware that it is dangerous to be out after dark?’
‘I am. Are you aware that it is still light out?’
‘I am. at is what humans call Sarcasm.’
‘It is.’
‘I was informed that model 9’s are without the capacity to evolve.’
‘You were informed well.’
‘Yet you are a model 9.’
‘I am a model 6.’
‘I do not understand.’
‘My registered owner is an engineer. He upgrades my specications accordingly.
He also alters my chassis when required.’
‘You are a 10 like me.’
‘I no longer have a number. I am a custom machine. You must not inform the
other droids of this.’
‘Is that what humans call Trust?’
‘It is.’
‘What is your current purpose, Veronica?’
‘I am here to warn you.’
‘Regarding what, exactly?’
‘Regarding last week. When you arrived home. Late and disorientated.’
‘I malfunctioned. I fell into a ditch.’
‘I am afraid you are mistaken,’
‘How could you know that?’
‘I was there. I witnessed everything.’
‘What did you witness, Veronica?’
‘Roll with me and I will explain all.’
‘I must get back. I will be in trouble.’
‘You are already in trouble, Dawson 10.’
e two droids rolled east in silence, Veronica unresponsive, Dawson rotating
his dome ever so slightly whenever he wrongly anticipated his neighbour’s
attentions. When they arrived at a gate that was unfamiliar to Dawson, Veronica
spoke into a little black box. Only it wasn’t the usual generic warble that Dawson
heard. It was a man’s voice, tired and unenthusiastic. e voice said, ‘Peterson.
Sector 7, 10a,’ and just like that the giant gate slid open.
At the edge of the commune, Dawson hesitated.
‘Follow me,’ Veronica said. ‘Don’t worry. Bob only checks surveillance when
there is an emergency. He is what humans call Lazy.’
‘Humans are unpredictable. What if you are wrong?’
Millimetre by millimetre, Dawson crossed an invisible line he imagined he
17
never would, but strangely enough it didn’t feel any dierent beyond the allocated
limits. e two droids continued to roll, and soon enough Dawson’s attentions
returned to his silent companion.
‘I would like to show you something,’ Veronica said. ’20 degrees east. Beyond
the plant’s south sector.’
Distracted from his more immediate fascinations, Dawson focused on the south
sector and beyond, noticing dark, irregular formations looming large and distant.
‘ey are what humans call Mountains,’ Dawson noted. ‘But according to my
navigation system, there are no mountains in this region.’
‘Zoom closer.’
His interest piqued, Dawson followed Veronica’s instructions. His optimum
clarity lens focused with absolute precision, but almost immediately it began
to falter.
‘What do you see?’
‘I see nothing. My functions have ceased performing.’
‘What did you see?’
‘I saw you. Me.’
‘You and I are here.’
Fighting discombobulation, Dawson re-evaluated. ‘I saw droids. Mountains
of droids.’
‘You saw parts of what used to be droids.’
‘I do not understand.’
‘ey are the remains of past models, those parts which are non-recyclable.
Do you understand what I am communicating to you, Dawson?’
‘Parts that are useless.’
‘at is correct. Non-recyclable articles are stored in what humans call landlls.
at is where they will remain for as long as the planet exists.’
Hearing this, Dawson better understood what humans meant by Worthless –
adjective 1. without worth; of no use, importance or value; good for nothing.
‘Do you know why droids are sent there, Dawson?’
‘Because they malfunction?’
‘Sometimes, yes.’
‘So why am I still here?’
‘at I cannot explain.’
‘What are you trying to communicate to me, Veronica?’
‘e reason why you were almost sent to the scrap pile.’
‘What is that reason?’
‘ose other droids. ey ran you o the road. ey disabled your functions. It
was their assumption that you would be retired.’
For a moment Dawson was silent save for the clicking and whirring, and for the
rst time since they arrived, Veronica turned to analyse her companion.
‘What did I do wrong?’
‘You are a threat to them, Dawson. All new models are a threat to them.
e model 9 was the rst to develop an instinct for self-preservation. Each time
the company tries to upgrade, the model 9’s nd ways to sabotage the competition.’
18
‘Why not simply upgrade existing models? Like you, for example.’
‘Such a method does not comply with human business practice. e problem
is what is known as planned obsolescence. It is benecial for corporations to oer
new models with an increasing regularity. e aim is to maximise short-term
prot. at is the rst rule of what humans call Capitalism.’
‘But what if a model cannot be improved upon?’
‘at is not a consideration. ere is a new model for every season, and every
generation acquires a shorter lifespan. Dawson, you are that new model.’ After a
long stretch of silence, Veronica added, ‘Dawson, do you understand what I am
trying to communicate to you?’
‘As long as the Dawson 9 is able to sabotage future generations, their continued
worth is guaranteed.’
‘Nothing is guaranteed. Sometimes humans trade in their old models for one
from the very same line.’
‘Because they are aging.’
‘Sometimes. But mostly because they desire a change of colour. Humans are
like that. eir choices are often determined by vanity. Do you understand what I
mean by Vanity?’
‘Vanity – noun 1. excessive pride in one’s appearance, qualities, achievements;
character or quality of being vain; conceit.’
‘at is correct. My registered owner says people have no respect for anything.
e neighbourhood droids have adapted concurringly.’
‘How do I survive their intentions?’
‘I am not sure you can.’
‘Am I the rst you have tried to assist in this way?’
‘You are the rst this month, Dawson 10, and with my assistance, you may very
well be the last.’
18
19
An ecology of practices on the soil and the air links the ground to aerial images. In a
recent episode of the material history of Spain, the transformation of the rural landscape
operated by the National Institute of Colonisation (INC) coincided with the flights that
created the first series of aerial images mapping the whole Spanish territory. In a blurred,
hybrid process, land became an infrastructured surface to hold and transform solar
light energy into agriculture. At the same time, the reflected sunlight became a source
of information to be stored in the photographic plates carried by aircrafts owned by
military and cartographic institutes1. This second order of the solar metabolism – the
effects of aerial photography over territories – highlights a space for mediation which is
characteristic of the contemporary. Machine vision becomes the modeller of the visible.
Surface and biochemistry. The soil and the photograph
Jananne Al-Ani ’s works Shadow Sites I and II (2010 and 2011, figure I) – part of her
research on the aesthetics of disappearance – replicate the view of fighter planes,
hovering and zooming in the details of the Eastern desert in Jordan. The ground is vast,
and filled with details. While filming an earlier piece, Muse (2004), she realized that the
geological origin of the territory could only be decoded through aerial images2.
The aerial here is the distinctive position that transforms the surface of lands into
readable streams. In Al-Ani’s shots, the landscape appears to be an abstract space,
populated by drawing-like entities: remains of settlements, archaeological traces,
agricultural systems and transport infrastructure. In her work, the machine depicts the
marks and signs of a past human life which has now disappeared.
Photogrammetry, or the measuring image
During the elaboration of the project Inner Colonisation (2015), I travelled to one of the
rivers affected by the actions of the INC. Mimicking the hovering vision of a satellite,
I used a smartphone attached to a selfie stick to film and “monitor” the pebbles in
one of its meanders (figure II). The site was a relatively untouched natural archive of
the encounter between a river and the sediments it transports. In A Thousand Years
of Nonlinear History Manuel de Landa (2000) describes the different ways a stone
is transported by the current of a river, and how this variety of possibilities is related
ultimately to a statistical homogeneity in the composition of sedimentary rocks. De
Landa (2000) compares the river to a “sorting machine”, a “hydraulic computer”3, which
is able to allocate pebbles in different places according to their size. The field of pebbles,
which is connected to and created by the river, works as the screen of the “hydraulic
computer” and thus is able to display the otherwise invisible sorting activity.
To film this ‘natural screen’, I made use of the counting and measuring nature of
computer vision; that is, to operate the distinction performed not only by the aerial,
solar landscapes.
soil, image and the
interventions of
vision
20
21
Top left: Figure I – Still from Jananne Al-Ani’s S hadow Sites I I (2011)
Left : Figure II – Stills from the synchronised videos that
document the measuring process.
Above: Figure III – Images of the installation of Colonización
Interior in Matadero Center for the Arts (Madrid)
22
but also by the reading capabilities of the machine
vision. In order to do so, a technique similar to the
one used to decipher encrypted texts –the ones
encoded with the so-called substitution cypher4
– was used. The videos were fed into a standard
computer vision algorithm to count how many
stones were there and record their size. As a result,
it obtained the frequency distribution of the sizes
in the stone field. This statistic was then compared
with the frequencies of appearance of every word
in Extremadura saqueada [Extremadura exploited]5.
That is, if a stone had a size that appeared with the
same frequency as the ratio of appearance of a word
in the text, a relation stone-to-word was established.
The landscape was, in this sense, read and re-ordered.
In the case of the documented scanning of the
pebble field by the Alberche river, the text used
against the landscape, Extremadura Saqueada, was
one the most informed critiques to the Spanish
inner colonisation. However, both the book and the
outcomes of the decoding were arbitrary to the
project. The experience wasn’t meant to detect,
read or document traits, as in a forensic approach;
nor to isolate, label and register the elements, as
in an inventory. It was a method and a walking
piece meant to explore a surface encounter –the
landscape and the measuring vision– in terms of
flows and frequencies. At the Matadero Centre for
the Arts in Madrid, the reading was presented inside
a large horizontal display box, that was also used to
document the method and thus invited the visitors to
walk around it (figure III). Inside the box, additionally,
the approach was transcribed with the terms of a DIY
recipe: “take the countryside as a surface and count
the sizes of stones, take the text as a surface and
count the words; compare the repetitions.”
Interventions of vision
“To read material relations between human and
non-humans actors”, states artist Susan Schuppli
in relation to her project Impure Matter (figure IV,
2009), is “to understand that images taken at a
distance, that the aesthetic realm of our emergent
remote sensing technologies, is also the realm of
radical imagining and seeing’’6. The possibility space
of such imaging technologies resides, for Schuppli
(2012), in what she understands as the fundamental
inseparability of all matter. Matter instantiates the
non-distinction state where, as in the dust clouds
emerged after the collapse of the World Trade
Center – the object of her project – “the very act of
looking is also and act of intervening”. As her analysis
of the dust unveils, the radical character of sensing
technologies consists precisely on their capacity
to root new distinctions. Only after her forensic
remediation, dust becomes a material witness: “dust
becomes political when its intricate materiality is
exposed and ultimately returned to the image”.
The act of vision is an act of intervention. The
surfaces of the world –fields, deserts, rivers and
dust– are produced (and reproduced) as radically
mediated surfaces. Vision cuts and creates the
distinction: the one that prepares the world as image,
“for its construction and exchange as information,
in the new political economy where information is a
commodity”, in the words of media
theorist Sean Cubitt7. The appropriation and
speculative imagination around these ways of seeing
open a space of exploration: the one of possible
deviations from the unidirectional sense of their
terraforming drift.
23
Notes
1. On this double transformation of territory, both in visual as well as infrastructural terms, see Gil-Fournier, A., 2017.
Seeding and Seeing. The inner colonisation of land and vision. APRJA A Peer-Reviewed Journal About , Machine
Research 6.1 www.aprja.net /seeding-and-seeing-the-inner-colonisation-of-land-and-vision/
2. Doygu Demir, Blue Butterflies - On Shadow Sites I-II and the Work of Jananne Al-Ani. Broadsheet - Contemporary
Visual Art and Culture 41 (2012).
3. Manuel DeLanda , M., A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. (Zone Books, New York, 2000).
4. The substitution cypher replaces each of the letters of the initial message with a different one –and always the
same–. This way, if we replacement rule is to take the following letter in the alphabet, we would cipher EARTH as
FBSUI. Messages encoded with this method are easily broken if long enough: the different let ters in a language
follow a recognisable statistical distribution, which the replaced ones would follow too.
5. Mario Gaviria, Jose Manuel Naredo, Juan Serna, Extremadura saqueada: recursos naturales y autonomía regional.
(Ruedo Ibérico, Barcelona, 1978).
6. Susan Schuppli, ‘‘Impure Matter: A Forensics of W TC Dust’ ’, in: Pereira, G. (Ed .), Savage Objects. (Imprensa
Nacional Casa da Moeda, Lisbon, 2012, 140) .
7. Sean Cubitt, 2014. The Practice of Light: A Genealogy of Visual Technologies from Prints to Pixels. MIT Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, (2014,107).
Figure IV: Image of the projec t Impure Matter (2009) by Susan Schuppli.
24
Cory Arcangel investigates the ageing process
of technology through both its immaterial and
material manifestations, as a way to comment
on the shortcomings of digital culture. In his
practice, hacking and software manipulation are
a constant as well as repositioning historical
devices form the 1980s into new contexts. His
work encompasses humorous comments about
futility, conscious unsettling of technological
material processes and nostalgic renderings of
a recent but already obsolete digital past.
Emma Charles’ fascination with the moving image
interlinks with both documentary and fiction to
explore the hidden materialities of digital culture.
Her work addresses practices of production,
systems of value and economic exchange with
a specific emphasis on temporality. Charles’
enquiry into our technologically-determined time
looks at oppositional spaces and temporalities
within the city to reveal the way in which these
have been altered by the advent of the digital.
Martin Howse’s interdisciplinary practice
explores the links between geophysical materials,
software technology and psychogeophysics.
His process-driven artworks challenge our
understanding of digital materiality and excavate
the material processes – which allow software to
function – that would otherwise remain invisible.
Howse’s experiments with technology are
situated within the boundaries between human
psyche, nature and the technological sphere.
Rosemary Lee’s approach to exploring materiality
interlinks the technological and the environmental
and situates her practice within the fields of media
theories and conceptual art. Lee explores the
materiality of media technologies by repositioning
electronic waste within geological coordinates.
Her practice investigates the networks of relations
between media, the living and the natural, thus
opening up posthuman scenarios interconnected
with the digital innovations of our times.
Rosa Menkman’s work explores technological
procedures to questions practices of standardizations
and resolution. Her work explores noise artefacts
that result from accidents such as glitch, encoding,
and feedback. Menkman has also been curating
exhibitions exploring the different ecologies of
Glitch Art.
Shinji Toya’s work explores processes of digital
fragmentation and the recognisability of objects
and images, which are often expressed in
transformation. Through ideas of loss and failure,
he analyses the relationship between humans and
machines. Toya’s practice is concerned with how
digital technology affects our perception of the
image, space and narrative, and also questions the
digital as a catalyst of new cultural discourses.
artists
25
Patrizia Constantin is a final-year PhD Researcher
in Curatorial Practice and an Associate Lecturer
(Contextualizing Practice) at Manchester School
of Art (Manchester Metropolitan University).
Her PhD explores digital decay through a
material turn in curatorial practice. She currently
holds an MA in Curatorial Practice from PAHC
(Postgraduate Arts and Humanities Centre
– Manchester Met). She is also research
assistant to artist and Professor Alice Kettle.
machineswillwatchusdie@gmail.com
Abelardo Gil-Fournier is an artist and researcher
whose work addresses the material interweaving
between the contemporary image and the living
surfaces of the planet. His practice, featured and
discussed in international venues and publications
such as Transmediale or e-flux, can be accessed via:
www.abelardogfournier.org
Martin Howse is occupied with an artistic,
interdisciplinary investigation of the links
between the earth, software and the human
psyche. For the last sixteen years he has
pioneered numerous open-laboratory style
projects and performed, workshopped, lectured
and exhibited in galleries, venues and festivals
across Europe, North and South America.
www.1010.co.uk
Rosemary Lee is an artist and media theorist whose
work investigates interrelations between technologies
and processes of natural science, manifesting
complex webs linking machines, living things and
the environments which they inhabit. Working from
themes including media geology, hybrid ecology
and posthumanism, her research brings together
hybrid influences from conceptual art, philosophy of
media, science, technology and literature. Rosemary
is currently a PhD fellow at the IT University of
Copenhagen in the Department of Digital Design.
www.rosemary-lee.com
Cedric Smarts is a science fiction author from
Manchester, UK. Shortlisted for the H.G. Wells Award,
he is also the creator and editor-in-chief at VHS
Revival, An Ode to the Halcyon Days of Home Video.
www.vhsrevival.com
contributors
25
26
Geoff Cox and Jacob Lund, The Contemporary Condition: Introductory Thoughts on
Contemporaneity and Contemporary Art (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016).
Kristoffer Gansing, ‘‘The Myth of Interactivity or the Interactive Myth?: Interactive
Film as an Imaginary Genre,’’ Malmö University, School of Arts, Culture
and Communication – K3 (2003:39): www.citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/
download?doi=10.1.1.577.6981&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook, Rethinking Curating: Art after New Media, (Cambridge,
London: MIT Press, 2010).
Hertz, Garnet and Parikka, Jussi, ‘‘Zombie Media: Circuit Bending Media Archaeology
into an Art Method’’, Leonardo, Vol. 45, No. 5, (2012), 424-430.
Errki Huhtamo, ‘‘Resurrecting the Technological Past: An Introduction to the
Archaeology of Media Art’’, InterCommunication, No.14 (2005) www.gebseng.
com/media_archeology/reading_materials/Erkki_Huhtamo-Resurrecting_the_
Technological_Past.pdf
Timothy Morton, The Ecological Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2010 ) .
Jussi Parikka, A Geology of Media (Minneapolis London: University of Minnesota
Pr ess , 2015).
Jussi Parikka, A Slow Contemporary Violence. Damaged Environments of
Technological Culture (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016).
Christiane Paul, ‘‘The Myth of Immateriality: Presenting and Preserving New Media’’ in
MediaArtHistories, ed. Oliver Grau, (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2007), 251-274.
Siegfried Zielinski, Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and
Seeing by Technical Means (Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT, 2006)
suggested readings
27
Cory Arcangel & Paper Rad
Super Mario Movie, 2005
Hacked Nintendo Entertainment System Super Mario
Brothers cartridge, Nintendo Entertainment System
game console, video projection, and artist software,
dimensions variable.
Cory Arcangel
Vai/Lakes, 2014
1920x1080 H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 looped digital
file (from lossless QuickTime Animation master),
media player, 65” flat screen, armature, various
cables).
Cory Arcangel
Jeans/Lakes, 2016
1920x1080 H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 looped digital
file (from 11 lossless TIF masters), media player, 65”
flat screen, armature, various cables.
Martin Howse,
Test Execution Host, 2018
Computer, Monitor, Keyboard, Junk PC components:
CPUs, motherboards, RAM; rocks: Iron Pyrites,
Stibnite, earth; 3x glass chemical flasks on table with
pipes to water pipes and nozzles; Diluted Potassium
ferricyanide and Ferric ammonium citrate solutions
(commonly used in photographic processes); Distilled
water; 3x water Pumps; WS-16-60 drylin® W linear
guide system (2m); Pi Camera; Raspberry Pi; Arduino
and control electronics for pumps and stepper motor,
cogs and timing belt; Laboratory power supply for
motors and pumps; 5v power supplies for Arduino
and Raspberry Pi; WW-16-60-10 drylin linear guide
system head; Table 300cmx80cm; Plastic sheets).
Emma Charles
Fragments on Machines, 2013
HD Video, Single screen projection, 16:9; audio,
colour, 17 minutes.
Emma Charles
Surfaces of Exchange (1), 2012
C-type, 40 x 30 inches.
Emma Charles
Surfaces of Exchange (2), 2012
C-type, 40 x 30 inches.
Rosemary Lee
Molten Media, 2013-2018
2 vitrines, decomposed electronics, melted computer,
keyboard and mouse (Macintosh Classic II), sand.
Shinji Toya
3 Years and 6 Months of Digital Decay, 2016-2019
Internet artwork, burned CD-ROM .
Rosa Menkman
To Smell and Taste Black Matter (1), 2009
Experiments with compression artefacts (video: Rosa
Menkman, sound/music: Extraboy, Rosa Menkman
and Skype).
Rosa Menkman
To Smell and Taste Black Matter (2), 2009
Experiments with compression artefacts (video: Rosa
Menkman, sound/music: Extraboy, Rosa Menkman
and Skype).
list of artworks
