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> TOTEM 

A single monolith tower sculpture cast in concrete made for Technonatural exhibition at Gossamer Fog Gallery,  London featuring work by Samuel Capps // Diane Edwards // James Irwin // Ben Skea // Robin Tarbet 

Totem was ​installed to fit the architecture of the gallery - Dimensions: 30 x 30 x  300cm 
Other works in the exhibition included, 'The World Under Your Feet' and 'Flatland Hexagon' - pictured below.  

> TEXT ACCOMPANYING THE EXHIBITOIN WRITTEN BY SAMUEL CAPPS
​
"That properly human and anti-natural power of dead human labour stored up in our machinery - an alienated power" - Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.

The recent advancement of science and technology has left humanity in a period where the unification of seemingly incompatible subjects is creating entities that are wholly unnatural hybrids. This age could be signified through the proliferation of engineered metamaterials, synthetic biology and enzymatic bio-fuel cells, the recent crystallisation of light at Princeton University and Japanese researchers creating touchable holograms. This is enhanced by the future speculations of the harnessing of Quantum Mechanics and the arrival of the time of technological singularity, where the spectre of artificial intelligence will dwarf the human mind.

Frederic Jameson's reaction to a section of Earnest Mandel's Late Capitalism (London, 1978), describes the development, production and wide spread use of power technologies in industrial ages that directly relate to cultural shifts; The machine production of steam powered motors and the start of Realism in 1848, the production of electric and combustion motors in the late 19th Century and the birth of Modernism, and to the machine production of electronics and nuclear energy in the 1940s and 50s that coincided with the start Postmodernism.

Following this format our current development of renewable power, Biofuels, Biobatteries and the harnessing of Quantum Mechanics is a sign for the dawn of Metamodernism. The possibility to amalgamate seemingly incompatible subjects to create something unseen is a poignant reflection of a cultural oscillation between Modernism and Post-Modernism. The creation of this techno-natural malaise creates two different components which both have their own issues; the Biological enhanced by the Technological such as bionics and cyborgs and the Technological enhanced by the Biological such as genetically developed computers or biologically live batteries. This Bio-engineering could be seen as the Platonic version of the true Simulacrum, 'an identical copy for which no original ever existed'. Something that has been given life but also born into slavery as part being, part machine.

The Metamodern era is the time when perception of our Postmodern spatiality will be completely turned on its head through new modes of technological interactions and the reality of projected but physical holograms. Wearable technology will create viable conditions for a paradoxical environment with physical and virtual realities merged into one hyper-reality. This is the tip of the iceberg that we see in the distance, with the majority of this new age submerged from our gaze, something that we cannot even comprehend until it is truly upon us.

> THE WORLD UNDER YOUR FEET

> THE WORLD UNDER YOUR FEET
Concrete relief cast into carpet
Dimensions:  50 x 50 x 3cm 

This work is created by pouring concrete directly onto an old piece of carpet removed from the artist's flat. As the concrete cured around the woven threads of the carpet it became embedded and when the backing of the carpet separated from the concrete it revealed this map like organic miniature landscape. There are 4 sections that. make up this work, each piece is unique.

> FLATLAND HEXAGON

> FLATLAND HEXAGON
Concrete Relief cast.
Dimensions 64 x 64 x 4cm .

More information about all the works in > FLATLAND SERIES can be found here