THE UNIVERSAL MACHINE
FJORDMELK JORDTÅKE (2022), at Kunsthuset Kabuso, Øystese (NO), with Skifte.Land, emerges from a series of online and on-site workshops during 2020 and 2021 titled "Entangled Landscapes." and the exhibition HANDS AND FEET IN CODE THROUGH SOIL SOAKED at Spriten kunsthall 2021. In this exhibition the seven participating artists deploy different approaches to our involvements with landscape, revealing layer upon layer of entanglements and interactions across the contours of stone, plants, humans, industry and digital extraction. Participating artist: Neal Cahoon, mirko nikolić, SKIFTE.LAND, Stine Gonsholt and Åse Løvgren.
In the video Klara Von Neumann, one of the earliest computer programmers tells the history of the development of computers. She describes how computers were made to control or predict large chaotic systems such as the weather, explosions from nuclear bombs, events of nature and human lives, from the time of the first programmable computers like ENIAC, that was so large that one could live inside it, until today, when we live inside and with digital infrastructure, our lives are entangled with the machine’s life.
The title THE UNIVERSAL MACHINE is taken from Alan Turing’s early description (1936) of the programmable computer. The video employs imagery from computers’ own “sensing”, like facial recognition software, photogrammetry and digitally generated imagery.
ONE AND THREE PAPERS #1-5 (2019) by Stine Gonsholt and Åse Løvgren