The Dutch duo Studio Drift's multi-part exhibition at Shed, New York, the fragile future, deconstructing the materials of daily life

Last modified on Wednesday, November 3, 2021 at 09.41 EDT

What happens if you reverse engineer the raw materials of everyday items such as iPhones, Starbucks cups, or bicycles? Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta of the Dutch art group Studio Drift tried to find the answer by peeling off the elements and drawing them to scale in cubes and prisms.

Their exhibition called Materialism in the New York event space The Shed asked the audience to put aside the cultural constructive concepts of various chemical substances and look at these objects with a new sense of surprise.

Materialism is presented in another show, the fragile future is also obsessed with the material world, and a certain kind of elegance is found in the huge concrete block.

Fragile Future's five minivan-sized concrete blocks ("drifters") seem to float in the air, spinning and performing a feat of dance, starting with free form before tracking specific shapes around the audience. Its music was composed by Anohni, an artist who has long focused on human ecological issues.

Nauta describes the work in materialism as "the deconstruction of everyday objects that we find interesting." Studio Drift reminds us to remember that elements such as nickel in the iPhone are destructive to the mining environment-and trace amounts of cobalt and tungsten, which are all related to conflict mining-Studio Drift hopes that we are aware of the connection between consumer products and society to create them . In a sense that does not have the historical significance of the world, the mobile phone itself has undergone great changes.

Comparing the components of the iPhone 4S with those in the now obsolete Nokia 3210, Nauta found that a huge transformation has taken place in just 20 years. The main component of Nokia is the circuit of the actual phone, while the biggest component of the iPhone is specially developed glass.

iPhone 4S is made of specially developed glass and steel, polycarbonate, graphite, copper, nickel, and a range of other materials.

Nokia 3210 includes polycarbonate/acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, nylon and aluminum. Its main component is the circuit of the actual phone.

"In the beginning, functionality was more important," Nauta said of the early mobile phones. "The screen is small. The connection is more important, but it is now a visual connection. There are many details: cobalt, mercury, and nickel from some mines. We will study this in more depth in the next project and add an enhancement layer. You You can really dive into the object and find more information about the material."

Apple claims to have phased out mercury in its products in 2009, but in Materialism’s collapse of Nokia (a company that tried to make a tablet called Mercury), a sponge-like Kelly green prism was mostly transparent or Jump out in grayscale.

In this case, it looks weird and almost radioactive.

The most creepy part of the show may be the Internet, a single dark gray block. Nauta said it is silicon. He used the ancient principle of E = MC2 to calculate the weight of all electrons running on the Internet on a certain date in 2020. total? About 60 kg, an increase from 25 grams not long ago.

Many of these prisms are representations of the material, not the material itself. This is due to toxicity, not the fussy nature of certain materials at room temperature or their cost.

The Internet in 2020 is represented by a large block that represents the weight of all electrons passing through it, and a much smaller block shows what it looked like in 2000.

Nauta said the ratio shown is more important. Take the Big Mac menu as an example.

"We keep it identifiable," he said. "We could have reached the molecular level, but with this, we think you can still point out French fries, sugar, salt, saturated fat, kimchi, straw. This is interesting because people can actually recognize it and make all the pieces Correct. So we have a logic in our minds to see this hamburger and understand the size of the pieces that should be used for kimchi, which I think is very interesting."

Nauta said the Big Mac menu includes water, bread, French fries, cola, fat, meat, and other ingredients that "people do recognize."

Just like the human body itself, most of the Starbucks glass is water. Nauta said that when he spent $5 on a cup of tea, he thought someone had screwed him up, but when he drank coffee with milk, he thought it was all worth it. ("But the amount of water you buy is the same!" he said.)

Starbucks cups are mainly water, but there are also paper, coffee, wood, and polystyrene.

Once deconstructed, this raises various questions about the arbitrariness of human economics, from the quirks of human taste to the global coffee industry seems to be consumed more by fair labor practices than tea. The more we deal with a project, the harder it is for our brains to deal with it.

Geopolitics appeared in many forms, namely M16 and AK-47. AK-47 is one of the most famous export products of the Soviet Union, and it has become the totem of American right-wing freedom of thought-this is a microcosm of the Cold War narrative.

Nauta said that this humble Kalashnikov rifle is a tool worth $500, and its bullets are made of steel. In contrast, M16 is actually a luxury.

Nauta said that AK-47 is composed of birch, steel, paint and other materials, while the bullet contains steel, smokeless powder, lead, etc.-compared with M16's advanced polymer and nickel bullets.

"AK is made of wood, but in the United States, it is this advanced polymer developed specifically for the M16 that makes these weapons worth tens of thousands of dollars, and the bullets are made of nickel," he said. "These different war machines-why do they work in a certain way?"

Then there is the bicycle, which, like the tulip, is a symbol of Holland. Unlike a smartphone, it is something that most people can disassemble and repair in the garage. However, even analog technology, when it comes down to its essence, can re-evoke a sense of wonder.

Unlike smartphones, bicycles are made of rubber, polyurethane foam, steel, aluminum, and other materials. It is something that people can disassemble by themselves.

"When it rains here, or when the temperature here is -15C, everyone is still riding a bicycle," Nauta said. "Everyone knows how to fix a tire or put a chain back on a bicycle. In Amsterdam, you go through three years a year, and it becomes this kind of machinery, which is just a part of your life. Nevertheless, all these things you collect Can't handle it. We live in a very strange world."

The fragile future is in the shed until December 19