the roundness of time

Over the last few months I have been working with ceramic and textile to look at our relationship with digital technology. Does it really connect us? Or does the 2-D imagery of the flat screen separate us from physical involvement in the world, and particularly the non-human natural world?

According to several interesting thinkers - for example, Juhani Pallasmaa, A.N.Whitehead, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Baudrillard, David Abram - we need a tangible connection with a physical world, using not simply our eyes but all our senses, to fully understand both our place in the world and ourselves.

One thing that digital technology does is to change our relationship with and perception of time - it seems fractured rather than 'lived-in'. I like David Abram's description of the 'roundness of time', as a contrast to the rather fragmented and accelerated time we often experience via a flat screen.

I have been pit-firing pieces that have been marked by weather and wildlife, and subverting the forms of 'Smartphone' and 'Netbook', 'System on a Chip' and 'Rootkit' (a type of malware), into work that speaks when it is handled, but does not yield to 'Google Translate'.