Kate Tran vs. Technology

This video shows the process of how to destroy technology that has been obsolete. It is a shame to see all this technology go to waste  but I can assure you I had fun making this video :D

A Night In New York

This is a video that I made in response to the hierarchy. Its an abstract form of how the city would look like if it was made out of technology. I chose New York as it is one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world.

Hierarchy of Technological Needs

Looking at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs earlier, I felt that today, technology has a much more important role in people's lives. I wanted to reflect this importance and at the same time recreate the levels of the pyramid in my own way.

Research for the pyramid

I gave students a list of objects such as computer, television, ipod, phone, video games, transport, camera, etc. and asked them to write down in order what they think is the most important to them. The phone was on top of the list for 11 people out of 22. Interestingly, three people even put the ipod down as their most important object.

I was surprised that transport was considered to some people as less important than things such as video games. Only two people considered it as the most important object. This shows that people are now attached to technology and they would prefer to stay home rather than go out.

The graphs shown above are based on the results I gathered. I wanted to use them to create my own new version of the 'Hierarchy of Needs' pyramid based on technological needs.

Requiem for Detroit?

Roger Graef is film maker who decided to document the other side of USA, the almost deserted Detroit. The documentary describes how Detroit rose to the fourth largest city in United States and how it went down, both by population and economy. Who knew that the automobile industry, which made the city famous, would be the same reason for it to fall down. This shows how powerful the impact of technology can be on a society.

image credit: guardian.co.uk

Anthropomorphic

 

When researching, I came across the term Anthropomorphism, which is giving human characteristics to things that you wouldn't normally associate with these characteristics, for example a talking rabbit or a farting alarm clock. Looking at technology I feel that it too has been given a role similar to a person. You can give your ipods a 'personality', by choosing its colour, case, name etc. It's not enough that technology greatly affects our lives, people are now designing robots to replace us. The pictures above are a result of me trying to combine a human image with a mechanical one. I think we rely so much on technology that it has become a part of us.

How to destroy old technology

I went to Andy's workshop again and used his POWER TOOLS to destroy some of the things I bought - LPs, cassettes and video tapes. These are examples of how things looked after destruction. I also filmed the objects being destroyed and plan to make a slow motion video.

Andy's Workshop

I discovered that my boyfriend's dad has the biggest collection of garbage and old technology that I've ever seen in one place. There were so many things to look at. The first things that attracted my attention were the walls of trays full of 'components' such as wires, screws, nuts, bolts (and many many other things that I've never seen in my life). His hobby is creating valve amplifiers, something he says is 'pointless, big, messy and very inefficient.. but sounds just a bit better than something one tenth of its size'. Even his little paper box of scraps (pictured above) was interesting. It was nice to look at old technology and I saw a few POWER TOOLS that I think would be very useful in creating my video of destroying things.

Screenprinting cogs

Here I am experimenting with screenprint. I have never done it before but the outcomes look really good. I'll be using this method more often.

Letterpress

Letterpress of a quote found in the book Faster by James Gleick

Evolution

Inspired by a quote from Ant Farm, 'Who can deny we are a nation addicted to television and the constant flow of media', I produced this mono-print of a well known image that nicely takes the piss out of society.

Here is my first experimentation trying to turn the image into a zoetrope.

Media Burn

Ant Farm - Media Burn

Looking again at my moving image idea based on the destruction of technology, I came across this controversial work by Ant Farm. The images of a cadillac crashing through burning TV sets are amazing and very powerful. I don't think I'll be able to create anything as dramatic, but it gives me more inspiration to explore destroying things

image credit tate.org.uk

Zoetrope

Eadward Muybridge is one of the first artists who experimented with stop motion. His work opened the door to the world of moving image. This inspired me to create my own animation, related to my project. I am not sure if I'll be presenting it as a zoetrope like Muybridge did but I will definitely experiment with the idea.

Faster

The book, after all, is now frozen in time. The Web site isn't.

In his book Faster, James Gleick explores how important saving time has become in people's lives. He takes a humorous and silly look at the ways people shave seconds off daily chores to save time for something else that they are not even sure of. Technology and its never ending development allowed people to live their lives even faster, but what does it achieve? The book really shows you how ridiculous things can be even mentioning pressing a button repeatedly to close the doors of the lift.

I like the cover design, especially the shortening of words which perfectly suits the book's content.

Hierarchy of needs

Maslow - Hierarchy of needs

To find out how important electricity and technology is, I looked at Maslow's pyramid where he divides our needs into order of importance. Today, I would say that electricity definitely has become a physiological need. It is interesting to see that technology might also be considered by many to be a physiological need and maybe even for safety, security and self esteem. Technology plays a very large role in people's lives nowadays. But does it satisfy our needs? Or create new ones?

Destruction

Lernert & Sander - Revenge

I am a fan of Lernert and Sander's work, especially their slow-motion videos of destruction. Another video they produced shows 3 ways of melting a chocolate bunny, which i found hilarious. It led me to think about producing my own video in their style, documenting many (silly) ways of destroying old technology.

Decode

Jason Bruges - Mirror, mirror

Another exhibition that I went to earlier this year was Decode in the V&A. It was a refreshing adventure, it was fun and creative. The interactive elements really made it an exciting experience. However, these pieces wouldn't be complete and interesting if people weren't participating. The works exhibited show dependence on both people and technology. Art nowadays is affected by technology, to try out new and original things. The show was a real contrast to what I have looked at in my project so far, but I do feel like I can take inspiration from it and maybe try and make some of my work interactive.

Vietnam

Graveyard behind a village in Hue

I went to Vietnam for easter holidays, I thought it was an oppotunity to find out how people live without electricity, since it is economically a poor country, there are lot of communities that cant keep up with modern time. I happened to be sick for about 2 weeks right after I got there, so I had little time to travel around. As I grew up in Czech Republic, this was all new to me. I was thrilled by the view of the rice fields, the relaxing environment and hospitality of local people. Children were finding other ways of entertainment, such as catching little animals. The impression stayed in my head and I started to wonder what would happen if the technology was introduced to them.. Would they be similar to our society now or will they keep their way of living? My original plan was to document this with my black and white film camera but the lighting wasn't good enough at night, therefore I used a digital one. I just regret not being able to discover more of this.

The Tree of Life

Cristovao Canhavato - Tree of Life

Another exhibition that I went to recently was about African art in the British Museum. Cristovao Canhavato and his crew took my breath away with their work. From far away it looked like a tree but when I came closer it was made out of guns. What a surprise...? The piece reflects the society in Mozambique - people still secretly owned weapons since the war in 1976 and the artists could only get them for exchange of bicycles, sewing machines, etc. Another piece is called the Throne of Weapons, which I think represents the country's forceful government. Both of these works revolve around the recycling of old, disused technology - guns in this case. I would also like to look at recycling objects to create my own pieces of work, perhaps something that represents our dependency on technology.

image credit britishmuseum.org

The box of darkness

Miroslaw Balka - How it is

The Blackout and the letterpress reminded me of a recent exhibition in the Tate Modern, Miroslaw Balka's massive box of darkness. At the time I wasn't particularly impressed by the work. However relating to my project, it shows the most extreme idea of a world without electricity - darkness and emptiness.

image credit newscientist.com

Inspiration

Experimentation with letterpress

The inspiration for this project came from a power cut in my building. I started to wonder what I could do without internet, without tv... Practically everything became useless. I began to wonder how dependent society is on electricity so I started my project by asking 'What would the world be like without electricity?' 'What happens to the technology that we use daily ?'