Boolean operations

Three fragments of a passport installed off a wall
Medium
Copper, mild steel, corrugated cardboard, lights on C-stands
Date
2023

The engineered primitive is the product of an extensive process of distillation and refinement. These are foundational goods; sheet metal, mathematical operators, and the kind of geometry you can name. In use, their origin is abstracted away; what lies upstream is made invisible, and a new origin appears to form. It is here applied to describe an exploration of materials complicated by a concealed relation to manufacture.

This body of work aims to surface concealed affordances through an engagement with the philosophy of technology. Innate philosophical dimensions are present within technical artefacts: a consequence of both manufacture, and their tendency to shape worlds. In privileging incommensurability, we thereby question constructions uncritically afforded by the artefacts of our time.

Liam Macann is an emerging arts practitioner with a theoretical focus on the philosophy of technology. Recently graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) from UNSW, his research-intensive practice engages with a profusion of disciplines across an agile and experimental body of work.