Artificial Transformer

Artificial Utility Box
2003, High Desert Test Sites 3,
Joshua Tree, CA

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Modern culture is grounded and embedded in a complex system of interlocking grids. These grids are so pervasive they have become virtually invisible. Some grids are literal and observable, such as streets, sewer, telephone, and electrical systems: while others are conceptual and largely invisible: information systems, digital codes, and even organizations themselves. In an effort to address the passive disconnection from the grid, the “artificial” or simulations of transformers symbolically function as signs of the ubiquitous, invisible, interlocking grids in Western culture. The transformers are realistic, but they have a strange, plastic quality, making them simultaneously familiar and foreign. They are complete with artificial vocalized, white noise sounds that mimic those emitted by the vents that surround us everywhere. They are invisible yet critical to modern life.