Source & Return

Emily Morandini

Opening 05.07.18 6-8pm
Artist Talks 27.07.18 6-7pm

Source & Return is a series of artworks that explore and reimagine the materiality of electronic technologies. While most modern electronic devices obscure nearly all discernible connections to their source, they are always intertwined at multiple levels with the energies and materials of the environment. Using traditional crafting methods, cooking, and chemistry, this exhibition examines ways in which humans have engaged materials in their efforts to divine and manipulate electrical energy.

Far from the standardised, pre-packaged electronic components we are familiar with, the works in this exhibition employ craft as a means of identifying and re-examining otherwise heavily encoded technological objects. In doing so, these works bear an appreciation of the labour, resourcefulness and imagination inherent in the invention of such technologies, while also conscious of the accumulative environmental implications in regards to energy consumption, resource extraction, toxicity and waste. The artworks themselves consist of handcrafted, open, raw, functional, and hypo-functional electronic circuits using a minimal collection of substances such as fabric, rocks, salt, and minerals.

From finely sewn reproductions of digital schematics, to sounds of lightning emanating from home-cooked crystals, the works in Source & Return are the result of in-depth interrogation into the interiors of electronic technology.