Easter Eggs – Gray Dots
On Infancy* and estrangement caused by the technological object. An Argument for Realism and Emulation(s)
2021. Site specific installation, ensemble of glazed and fired ceramic objects, frottages with graphite, coal and Chinese ink on Japanese paper, metal construction.** Dimensions variable
Installation and detail views of Easter Eggs – Gray Dots (2021) by Dimitrina Sevova, from the pop-up exhibition in a circle around the corner, curated by Katherina Sedy in an industrial space in Dübendorf, 2021. Site specific installation, ensemble of glazed and fired ceramic objects, frottages with graphite, coal and Chinese ink on Japanese paper, metal construction. Dimensions variable. Photos courtesy of the artist
Easter Eggs – Gray Dots
A dysfunctional pseudo hardware architecture of metal bars set up in the exhibition space. Its (un)operating environment performs base and structure. It asks how the structure becomes a technological milieu that captures the body in apparatuses that correlate to themselves and correlate minds.
The game participates in the real production of the techno-geographical landscape. The rules rigorously draw an ornament, whose supporting elements the bodies and minds become. In a global network of anxiety produced by play, the installation queries: “How is it possible for play to be both divorced from reality and yet so rife with real-life consequences?”
When it comes to the boundary between the magic circle of the synthetic play of worlds and reality, what breaks the immersion? Do the gamers encounter odd events? Could the strategy be that obsolescent objects become key? Emulate! Undocumented features, like a badge that suddenly starts opening a forbidden door, odd events that influence the exact behavior of the system? It has to be tediously deduced. Can real physics and the material world be used to puzzle out the game? Might it be secret responses to an undocumented set of commands? Trick!
A scream of cosmic pessimism and dark new waves: Wubba lubba dub dub.
* Infancy is a term appropriated from the French biologist and philosopher Gilbert Simondon, with which he associates craft. The work is about the relation between craft and technology, with an allusion to infancy in everyday life, kids growing up with computer games.
** The frottages, done between 2017 and 2020, were done during my studies directly from the surface of the building of the school. The ceramic objects are from 2020 and 2021.