SPK (E-Waste)

Title: SPK (E-Waste)
Media: USB-powered speakers, tripod legs, Magic-Sculpt, foam coat, styrofoam, sand, pigment, MP3 players, SD cards, cables, sound
Year: 2014.
Exhibited:

Tuska Center for Contemporary Art, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY. November 6-28, 2014

Eyedrum Art and Music Gallery, Atlanta, GA. April 3-May 3, 2015

Boston Cyberarts Gallery, Boston, MA. November 7-December 20, 2015

Credits:

Sound Design: Shelley Burgon

Special Thanks: Dima Strakovsky, Anna Watkins Fisher, Mark Kornbluh, Michael Tick, Shelley Burgon, Lorraine Rudin, Nicole Companik, James Wade, Derek Eggers, Trevor Smith, Irina Aristarkhova, Alex Golden, Lynn Sullivan, Sarada Rauch.

Photography: Jason Mandella

Photo Art Direction: Lorraine Rudin

"E-Waste" is co-produced by the College of Arts & Sciences and the College of Fine Arts in collaboration with CELT (Center for the Enhancement of Learning & Teaching) at the University of Kentucky, and is supported in part by a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded by The Professional Staff Congress and The City University of New York.

art: SPK (E-Waste)

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Description

The works in SPK belong to E-Waste, a series of sculptures inspired by commonplace USB devices. The series centers on a science fiction scenario in which modest USB peripherals are doomed to continue working, long after the humans they were designed to serve have gone extinct. The gadgets are transformed into mutant fossils, encased in stone with lights blinking, speakers chirping, and fans spinning, eternally. Combining machine-made, handmade, and organic forms, the works in this series take on an extraterrestrial quality, highlighting the surplus of consumer media artifacts, and drawing attention to its environmental impact.

Statement

E-Waste challenges digital culture's intense escalation of productivity. The slow-moving sculptures elicit sympathy for the devices we exploit, suggesting that we ourselves are becoming increasingly device-like: ensnared in compulsory productivity, whether "working" in the traditional sense for our own gain, or generating value for distant corporations each time we search the web or click "like."

Credits:

Description

Statement

Other works in the "E-Waste" series: