KCHUNG Radio

revolve

ann haeyoung

mining is a violence that happens here

From the artist:

"Mining is a Violence That Happens Here" reflects on the materiality of technology, and the alienation we experience from the production of our devices. Focusing on the extraction of ultra-pure quartz, a mineral mined almost exclusively in Spruce Pine, NC, the film meditates on narratives of technological progress and the impacts of resource extraction.

Devin Kenny

sharp rotation

Romi Morrison

The Future Conditional 00 (To Create Love with Dry Eyes)

From the artist:

The Future Conditional is an interactive sound sculpture that explores Black diasporic practices of encoding, weaving, oral histories, and divination. This project speculates on the form of the database server, an ubiquitous feature of digital infrastructures that is often hidden from view. Combining West African narrow loom weaving traditions, binary divination practices, proximity sensors, and sound design this server requires viewers to build a relationship to it to have access to its information.

An oral database plays from the sculpture crafted from conducted interviews and field recordings taken on historic sites of Black maroon settlements. Interviews were held with prominent Black feminist scholars and artists on the topic of Black futures. Using a machine learning model the sculpture senses for the proximity and duration of time that the viewer spends with the work. As the viewer spends more time, different components of the oral database become audible.

This work invites the viewer into a relationship with the database form, not as an inert piece of hardware but as a contingent relationship that requires your presence and time.

Alice Yuan Zhang

Returns to Dust, Dust Rises Again (复扬尘也)

From the artist:

Several clay sculptures hold the shape of computational parts. They rest amidst a bed of bentonite sand, a material derived from volcanic ash that has been used by humans for a myriad of purposes—from flushing toxins from the skin to lining landfills, from lubricating drilling equipment to holding moisture in crop soil. In closer view, these sculptures reveal organic imperfections quite opposite of the exact replicability of devices and data which set forth the digital revolution. Through the ancient medium and the practice of hand-building, the artist explores a sensuous re-mediation of the standardized yet obscured materiality of computation as we know it today.

Forming the backdrop is a wall drawing which depicts a stratified view of the Earth. Mountain and mine are stacked atop one another, holding between them layers of extractable and exhausted matter as well as human and plant beings, all interrelated through the production and consumption of computational technology. The drawing’s fabulist style is inspired by early Chinese surveys of natural phenomena, such as the Classic of Mountain and Seas and Brush Talks from Dream Brook, that are as mythical as they are analytical.

The artwork’s title draws from a Taoist allegory called《沧海桑田》Cang Hai Sang Thien. In the tale, Ma Ku, the deity of immortality, remarks that she has seen the East Sea turn into mulberry fields three times and wonders if it will change again. While technological progress is commonly measured along a linear trajectory, Zhang’s work focuses on its earthly context through the lens of cyclical time. Taken together, the artwork emphasizes the historical relationship of computation and control, while tending toward spiritual resolve between the ebbs and flows of ecological possibility.

Ahree Lee

Motherboard – LOGIN

Danielle Dean

HIT, Empire no 1

From the artist:

Typho Tea’s, 1938 -39, Collectible cards depicting the industries of the British Empire. The watercolor is a combination of landscapes depicted in these cards, from tin mining in Nigeria, Copra in Fiji and bananas in Jamaica. Printed on the Plexi is a HIT, Human Intelligence Tasks on Amazon Mechanical Turk. A work prompt, often used to gather data from humans to train AI technology.

Landscape image reference

Typho Series no. 12 of 25, Nigeria Tin
Typho Series no. 21 of 25, Copra in Fiji
Typho Series no. 23 of 25, bananas in Jamaica

Tyler Yin (Tiny Tech Zines)

Query Selector

Rachel Simanjuntak (Tiny Tech Zines)

The last few years

Tristan Espinoza (Tiny Tech Zines)

The Oracular World

Jules Kris (Tiny Tech Zines)

Nth Layer of Emotional Sediment

LA Cryptoparty

Culver Deaddrop

Xin Xin

04092003 (Unrevolution)

From the artist:

04092003 (Unrevolution) captures the iconic moment when the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in Firdos Square, Iraq, 22 days after the invasion by the Bush and Blair administrations. By layering two shots of the same event – one close-up and the other wide-angled – Xin questions the reliability of photography and its portrayal of revolution.

In a city of 5.6 million residents, only 200 people attended the event. Upon closer inspection, Most of the crowd consisted of US soldiers and Western journalists waiting around to capture breaking news. The close-up image, which became an overnight media sensation, contrasts with the wide-shot image, which degraded over time due to the lack of Internet circulation and preservation, bringing forth the loss of historical truth over time.

By faithfully tracing the low-resolution, wide-angled photo, the artist grapples with missing information and the normalization of imperial agendas. Using thermochromic ink that disappears and reappears upon touch, Xin challenges our understanding of history by pointing at the gap between photography and embodied knowledge.

American Artist

Veillance Caliper (Annotated)