Interactions with remote regions across the globe are increasingly mediated by technologies. NO_POLE considers the elusive realities emerging in their wake, and enters the expanding realms of non-human senses to find new ways of seeing, sensing and smelling complex ecologies.

The ongoing design and research project is sited in the Arctic Ocean—one of the least understood and least accessible regions in the world, a continuously shifting landscape of water and ice. In the absence of humans, remote sensors are the main passageway to the far north, tasked with transmitting fragments of the landscape back to solid ground. But no matter how much data is collected, these artificial doubles remain incomplete.

The project explores the relationship between reality and its model, as the Arctic’s digital replicas are shaped by sovereign agendas and capitalist enterprises, in the midst of rising geopolitical tensions and rapid global warming. What is included and what is left out? And what alternate versions of the Arctic exist in the gaps and areas of low resolution, in the depths of the algorithmic wilderness?

Using environmental data extracted from the Arctic, synthetic senses and computer simulation, I construct surreal alter-egos of the landscape. I wonder what new materialities and visual languages might emerge, and how they might unsettle some of the destructive narratives that drive our interactions with strange planetary ecologies.

“RUG IN THE SHAPE OF THE SHADOW OF A POLAR BEAR” (Semi-transparent urethane sheet).

“MAGNETIC MOUNTAIN (LANDSCAPE OF FALSE INFORMATION)” (Computer-generated form. Currently in progress: cast ceramic sculpture, 15”x5”x5”).

“DATA CREATURES” (Left: Installation View. Computer-generated forms, screens, tripods, cables. Right: Detail of liquid photopolymer resin 3D print).

“SATELLITE GAPS” (Installation View. CNC’d Foamular, finished in Black 3.0 paint which absorbs 99% of visible light, on plywood plinths).

“NORTH POLE (LOOP)” (Animation).

“HUMAN VOLUMES (SHADOW ANALYSIS)” (Render of cast plaster sculptures).

“SECTION THROUGH NO_POLE” (Animation stills).

“REMOTE SENSING, POLAR BEARS, & GEOPOLITICS” (Public Talk at A/D/O, Brooklyn, March 10th 2020).

Generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as part of the “Imaginative Mobilities” Sawyer Seminar.
Further developed over the course of a residency at A/D/O in Brooklyn, as part of the “At the Border” program.

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Photo Credit: Audrey Laurans / Centre Pompidou.

Exhibited at the Centre Pompidou (2020) and Kunstmuseen Krefeld (2019).

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