I take objects from everyday life—recycled screens, discarded windows, outdated algorithms—and reconfigure them, pushing them beyond their intended use. A round screen from a smartwatch becomes a digital eye; a SAD lamp transforms into a table; an algorithm is rewritten to replicate Hamlet. These acts of reconstruction challenge our assumption that function is fixed—reminding us that nothing is inevitable, and that even within systems of control, there is always space for reinvention—just as a broken object can be reassembled into something entirely new, so too can our understanding of the world.
Modification is a way to reclaim agency, we can engage in it creatively in a myriad of different ways—breaking apart, reimagining, and rebuilding as an act of resistance—showing that, like function, technology isn’t fixed—it’s an active force that conditions our behaviors, shaping not only how we perceive reality but also how we relate to one another.
We live in an era where everything is at arm’s length, and never actually held—media is streamed or hosted, friends are reduced to followers, even our search for romance is mediated. In this intangible condition, it becomes difficult to wholeheartedly commit to anything, including the future. My work resists this passive detachment by forcing seemingly static technologies to exist in new, unexpected ways.
I think that history increasingly suggests that human social change is more directly driven by technology than by ideology. In fact, ideologies could just be our collective attempts to deal with technologies that are banally driving us into the future. Art has the power to transform our collective use of technology in the present, and in doing so offer an avenue forward into a radically different tomorrow that we actually desire—one built on our own terms, rather than inherited by default.
Images:
01.
Turbine (2024) Aluminium, steel, glass, wood, 3D print, generator and battery, 800 x 150 x 180 cm. Photo: Lewis Henderson
02.
Eyes (2024) Video loop 02:30 minutes, 2 x glass lenses, 2 x digital watches screens, Raspberry Pi, 6 x 6 x 5 cm x 2. Photo: Lewis Henderson
