aerican ade achines (canción g) – FESCH.TV

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

Humans love to think about the future. We speculate and dream and wonder, often in an abstract phenomenological fashion as if the future manifests itself as an event, rather than the slow cumulative process of gradual changes.

The future is anything but an event, rather it’s more apt to compare it to the inescapable shift of summer to fall, inconspicuous from day to day until the new season is an established and relentless reality. It’s those shifts I’m concerned about in my work as those shifts are very much alive in the present, while also being historically rooted in the future.

From Vannevar Bush to Berners-Lee, the aspirations we build into the „machine“ today impact nearly all possible tomorrows.

In our visioning and forecasting of days to come, a feedback loop is at play courtesy of (re)presentation. If we believe the future includes people talking into their wrists or space flight or self-driving cars and artificial intelligence, we act in accordance with those visions. Quite often realizing our speculative aspirations. If pop cultural depictions of race, sexual orientation, nationality, body-type, et cetera, are diverse we normalize a range of potentials, challenging what has been the white, male, heteronormative default. And, similarly, if we challenge the financially motivated, micro-targeting, attention-capturing, and manipulative yet sophisticated techniques which accompany our digital lives, particularly as they relate to internet browsing and social media, we can change course and channel a better, brighter, slower, more balanced and intentional future.

The american made machines series reveals a hidden and alternative potentiality inside of our relationship to modern technology, while simultaneously encouraging a reflection of the personal, ethical, and social dimensions to this dynamic. The work is as much a (re)presentation of the form and function of the always-on digital infrastructure of our 21st century lives as it is a chance to revisit individual intentionality and possible futures within this relationship. While the imagery itself is literally composed of HTML and CSS objects, through their algorithmically generative transformation these visualizations function as abstract color fields or Rorschach tests. This seductive (re)presentation of the www asks you to look inward as much as it does into the digital world. What is your relationship to the internet, to screens, and technology at large? You can surely survive without modern technology, but can you thrive – how does it determine y/our lives? What do you see here, beyond vaguely recognizable inboxes, search recommendations, product grids, and comment boxes? And, on a larger scales, are we ready to do the difficult work of training ourselves out of problematic internet behaviours and into a deeper appreciation of one’s own role within these systems?

Grounded in an artistic and academic tradition that probes the borders between human and technological ecosystems, american made machines takes inspiration from the abstract paintings of Mark Rothko, whose works (re)present – and deny – modern technology, as well as the contemporary practice of James Turrell, whose art immerses the viewer in a contemplative space. The work is conceptually framed by Immanuel Kant’s exploration of the sublime while also channeling the optimism inside of a Frankfurt forward philosophy. The american made machines series is part of an ongoing exploration into our media ecology, part of a greater desire to push back the horizons – the boundaries – of the possible.

The series unfolded as a series of canciónes, or songs, viewable at www.chriscarruth.com