The Stream
The debates surrounding found objects have existed for over a century, while discussions on mechanical reproduction are nearing the same milestone. If we were to identify an intersection between the two, it would likely be rooted in their shared origins—the mechanized transformation of production and manufacturing in the human world catalyzed by the Industrial Revolution. The upheavals of the machine age, encompassing materials created for the very purpose of replication and the disruption of the relationship between making and creating, continue to ripple through to the present.
In contemporary modes of social production, readymades—products created through so-called mechanical reproduction—are undoubtedly the most ubiquitous and pervasive objects embedded in human daily life, so commonplace as to escape notice often. From tangible physical materials to intangible digital programs, from mass production driven by large-scale industrial machinery to microscopic reactions controlled by precise electronic components, these objects adapt to market demands and infiltrate collective and individual systems with unparalleled flexibility and scale.
The installation emerges as a composite response to this context, constructed from mass-produced household items readily available in daily life and ubiquitous industrial components. The stable, structural elements remain unaffected by external conditions, aside from the blurred visual reflections of the materials. Meanwhile, the unstable, inserted elements move in response to specific natural forces. As such, the installation’s expressive form can be interpreted as the mechanical rendered natural, or the natural rendered mechanical, as mass-produced copies, or singular appropriated works.
Thus, the installation seeks to revisit and expand upon certain critical insights. That is, to comprehend and utilize mass-produced readymades generated through mechanical reproduction—whether involving physical manipulation of material substances or virtual operation of digital programs, while imbuing these objects with the endeavor of appropriation, including differentiation, social contextualization, and personalization, enabling which to transform and evolve adaptively, could become one of the central motifs in the systems of social production, amid such an era profoundly shaped by the intertwined waves of industrial machinery and digital technologies.
