Katie Hallam
Based in Edinburgh, I am a artist working primarily in digital photography and print but have recently moved into working with sculptural works combining geology and digital materials. Having taught Art in Secondary Education for the past six years, I took last year to study an MA in Contemporary Art Practice at Edinburgh College of Art to develop my portfolio and pursue a career creating and exhibiting work. Instagram: @the_beautiful_error
Technology can create visual problems. It is hard to see, it is difficult to understand the scale of or imagine as a physical infrastructure. It is also problematic to fully understand the environmental issues it can create beyond our personal devices. Technology is hidden in code, buried in tubes, stored in data centers and the ‘cloud’. As a visual artist and photographer, I am exploring ways of how to bring the digital into physical spaces through sculptural objects and site-specific landscapes, visualising how the technological sublime will disguise itself or fossilise within the Earth’s strata millions of years in the future.
My practice began creating work with new media technologies through the construction and deconstruction of digital imagery, coding and unintentional errors that occur in our technological experiences. I question the shape and form of digital culture and how this could be represented when it’s forced to slow down making us pause. I create work that goes against a logical order, that interprets the moments a ‘pure’ digital system can stretch, navigate and reveal its nonsense within a physical space even away from switched off devices. My research has developed through ongoing explorations connecting digital culture, ecology, geological deep time and the future use and sustainability of technology.
Currently, I am exploring the concept of fossilised technology. Going beyond cause and effect, the material language I consider traces the digital and its geological constraints. I explore the idea of the legacy our digital culture will leave on the earth through combinations of experimentation creating hybrid manifestations through sculpture and digital materiality. Like alchemy, specific works connect new media technology with archaic power. These ‘digital-mineral hybrids’ are hypnotic works that sit against a background of open, natural and urban landscapes as I tease the question of a glitch in nature. My online archive is a way of visualising imperfection in digital culture and exploring technologically inspired sculpture.
