SWARM

Sublimation print on textile, wire, fixtures, 2018, installation approx. 180 x 500 x 50 cm

SWARM is a poetic envisioning of the intermingling of the digital and the physical; exploring the biological, ecological, and psychological side-effects of our march toward technological utopias. The work proposes a new visual language to describe networks and technological infrastructures that does not have the sanitizing aesthetics of the simplified cloud icons and glowing node maps that typically saturate the public image of digitalisation.

The work is informed by research into the recent spread of Medusozoa (jellyfish) in oceans, including case studies recording swarms of jellyfish shutting down nuclear power plants by swimming into waste water pipes, and instances of jellyfish becoming completely self-sustaining (requiring no external food source) in contaminated waters. Darkly optimistic about unexpectedly thriving lifeforms, the work looks at the issue of digitalisation through the lens of non-human subjectivity and advocates for a far more embedded, organic, slimy conceptualisation of network technologies.