As a result of man’s labor and ingenuity the hours of our days are no longer consumed with directly providing for our basic needs. We are able to satisfy these needs by using a fraction of the personal energy that was once required. We’re freed of the effort required to produce the necessities of life, yet in exchange we surrender control over our own survival to an often unknown entity.

These technologies of convenience encourage a rift between humans and the natural cycles of life on earth. The byproducts of technology often threaten the lives of humans and other living things. Where we once used grass as fuel to power our mode of transportation we now heavily rely on gasoline, a form of energy with complex origins and unforeseen consequences of usage. As we create more artificial environments to live in we push ourselves further from the natural world that we inhabit and are sustained by.

What happens to all of the time we save using technology? Instead of actually living we can now live virtually through television and internet. Electronic devices often use the image of earth as a button that will connect you to the internet, implying that the internet is equivalent to the world. The physical ramifications of modern life are apparent as well; our bodies don’t have to work as hard, as a result we store our excess energy in the form of fat, in many cases to the point of obesity.

My work deals with these technologies by magnifying everyday objects in order to examine them more closely, and carving a narrative into them that depicts a more primitive way of dealing with our basic needs. I build these nonfunctioning objects with wood and earth, natural materials that have historically been used for functional objects. This paradox relates to our own relationship with the earth, a perfectly functioning equilibrium that humans constantly manipulate towards a nonfunctioning imbalance.