Chemical Changes

 

2023 video work

4 minutes 24 seconds

"The act of firing clay in a kiln is the first act that we know of that purposely effected a chemical change. When we produce a handmade set of mugs, we feel we are enhancing our lives with something more natural than plastic. Incredibly, though handmade mugs are made using a very ancient process, fired clay was in fact the first synthetic produced"

- Suzanne Staubach

Excerpt from Clay: The History and Evolution of Humankind’s Relationship with Earth’s Most Primal Element

"Artificially" Intelligent

Five and a half thousand years ago accountants housed by the brick walls of Mesopotamia’s ziggurats pressed their reeds into soft wet clay. While the markings noted events that we may now argue to be mundane (the storage of food in the city's central granary), the same mundane assessment cannot be applied to the act of the notation itself. Through both laziness and ease of use the accountants had abstracted their symbols of what goods had entered and left their stores. At a certain point a transition was made, from pictographic imagery to what is today considered the first written language; Cuneiform. Transferring language from vibrations emitted from dancing tongues and echoes of our consciousness into something material changed everything. For once the words we say no longer exist in the temporal realms of our daily theatre and instead become fixed, permanent and extraneous to ourselves new realms of thinking could become uncovered. From pouring out your broken heart into your diary or trying to work out what you need to buy and add to your shopping list, the ability to externalise and preserve ideas outside of our fleshly bodies can help us with our own thoughts greatly.




Writing is a tool, an extension of the mind which allows us to carve new pathways of exploration. Plato famously said of our relationship to writing “It will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks”. And while I lament the eternal grumpy boomer attitude of warning the younglings about the upcoming new fangled technology, Plato was right to point out that writing fundamentally changes how the human mind works. By changing our psyche, writing changed the world. Whether it was Nasir al-Din al-Tusi whose skywards plots of the planets paths laid the groundwork for trigonometry or René Descartes whose Meditations of Philosophies made us question our own reality; it was as much their thoughts as there written words that left a mark on this world.


In the information age the amusing thing is language has never been both so simple and yet so complex. All our digital data (or at least till quantum computing is firmly established) is stored in either a 0 or a 1. It is only through complex combinations that such simple binary terms can elicit a dynamic outcome. In these knitted webs of code we can find everything from poetry, to games, to porn. Right now, in news articles and in senate hearings there is a word hot on everyone's lips; AI. The newest and most intricate form of language is emerging as face detectors and image manipulators. I imagine our relationship with AI in the same way consumers held their relationship with radiation during the late 1930’s. It's something novel, something to paint on fun glowing clock dials or slap on stickers to sell new products. It’s something that at the time only a few people could comprehend its full destructive and liberating potential. I cannot definitively say whether AI will become the Hero or the Villain, whether it will be the radioactive elements they use for chemotherapy or whether it will be at the core of the next fusion bomb, I can simply guess it will probably be a little bit of both.

Fine China Fleets

 

Slicked and sheened by high fire vitrification 

A Porcelain glow rightfully deserves strong admiration

It still holds a high value to this day

For if there's a dollar to be made someone will be forced to pay

We see it today in the Ming dynasty Vases topping out Christie’s price lists 

For sale; A collected set of priceless forms previously given to your Royal Highness

Originally eyed and spied by European Travelers, 

Porcelain became a coveted material that overcame global trade barriers

As global markets grew, everywhere felt its touch

The precious material being traded within the fleets of the British and the Dutch 

But as a greed grew and trade routes found their path

Gunboat diplomacy spread and empires unleashed their wrath 

That pure white clay has inspired more than just earthen-based artisans 

But also merchants and mercenaries to travel out and conquer foreign lands

1.Way.Ticket

 One Way Ticket

(In flux)

ThreeWeekOldReRelease

17minute sculpt~

Terracotta-

20 Second recording-

Archipelago

 

~5 years on 

Stoneware Glazed ceramics form the shell of my island. A half decade long isolated, starved segment of untilled soil. For five years this Tenmoku sheened planter has been forced to fend for itself. No outside intervention after the initial planting has seen plants- thrive and depart , Weeds- settle and conquer. No Seasol, No Powerfeed, nothing but rotting leaves and the nitrogen in the rainwater to replenish this isolated Archipelago. Homes to flora and fauna for my footscray based garden we can only imagine what landscapes will form in another 5 years from now.