Send message to Author

Short abstract

This presentation traces silica across its material continuum, from stellar nucleosynthesis to semiconductor. Through fieldwork at major observatories and an “intermaterial method”, it surfaces material interconnections and operating assumptions embedded in technological infrastructures.

Long abstract

Silica is the residue of exploding stars, the sand beneath our feet, and the core material of the silicon chip driving AI. Its continuum from the cosmic to the computational is both metaphorical and material. What is revealed about the logic of technological acceleration when its core material is traced from supernova to silicon chip? The research project We Are Supernova pursues this question through an “intermaterial method”: using fieldwork and material investigation, from within art practice, to surface the compositional histories concealed within technology.

This method develops, in part, through creative collaboration with scientists. At Vera Rubin Observatory, Chile, surveying the southern sky in search of dark matter and cosmic transients, a drone was deployed to film its own reflection alongside the Rubin Observatory, in mirrors referencing the telescope mirror collecting light from the edge of the visible universe: technology reflecting technology in eternal self-referentiality. At SETI’s Hat Creek Observatory, listening for extraterrestrial communication, anything that doesn’t resemble human-made technology is discarded as noise – the search for other intelligences is limited to our own reflection. Here, a filmed meditation session – a human antenna, was staged in a field of radio telescopes, while scientists animated them – a collaboration where the boundary between observation and performance was obscured.

The research is conducted through an MSCA postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Art at Goldsmiths University of London, and will take the form of a live performed text alongside a video work enacting rather than reporting the intermaterial method.