Ether Rocks

Part of a series of speculative geology, the detritus is crystallized with borax, an evaporite mined from the ancient lake bed deserts of Nevada and California. I deconstructed old i-phones, bluetooth speakers, routers, pulling apart metal, wires, glass, to reveal the thingness of these objects once connected to the internet and tossed away once they had “died”. This urge to understand through direct touch, to see inside, to smell the odor of digital-innards led me to tear, chip, split, smash and then, to crystallize. As I experimented with materials, I invited imagination to enter the work: discarded electronics become crystallized into speculative geologic forms, perhaps artifacts of a future of continuous extraction and production of the physical objects of our digital world. Research into the origin of Borax, this crystallizing material, led me to the deserts of southern California and Nevada, where ancient sea beds have been mined for this salt since gold rush times to extract gold from the Sierra Nevadas without the poisonous effects of mercury. In addition to its myriad household and industrial uses today, borate compounds are used to strengthen cellphone, computer and television LCD screens, solar panels and are embedded within the fiber optic cables that carry our images underground. It is this depth of time and history lodged within the materials themselves, and the geography in the things that captures my imagination. These qualities call me to inquire more deeply into the matter that surrounds us, and the extraction of earth that continues into the digital age.

The title of the series corresponds to a set of 100 clip art rocks sold as NFTs. The value of each of these sculptures is contingent on the constantly shifting value of these clip art rocks sold on the Ethereum blockchain.
https://etherrock.com/