Adele-thesis outline

Thesis Outline
Adèle Grégoire
1004849

Metaphysical vertigo, a doomed technological loop. Shit.

Introduction [500 words]

1. Background ( this is quite raw, feels more like a complain)

The human era... We use words chosen by expert geologists to qualify the impact of human existence on earth. The Anthropocene comes after the Holocene, they say. During the Holocene (“when the Earth remained stable and in the background, indifferent to our stories” Latour 2019, 112), the Homo sapiens came up with numerous technologies to structure and use its environment. Learning from experience to manipulate matter and beings, from stones, wood, leaves, fruits, and other species, to fire, water, earth, and metal. The meteorologist Paul Jozef Crutzen and the biologist Eugene Stoermer proposed the neologism Anthropocene to designate a new era in the history of the Earth. One which characterizes the geological disturbances happening from the moment when the Human activities have become a dominant geological constraint compared to other geological and natural forces impacting the Earth’s ecosystem until then. They drew it back to the beginning of industrialisation. In the book Homo detritus, Baptist Monseignon proposes the term Poubelleocene (garbageocene or dumpocene) to encapsulate the shifting indicators of these two eras. The proof of this transition is trivial, it relies simply on our trash…

“The unfinished Chtulucene must collect up the trash of the Anthropocene, the exterminism of the Capitalocene, and chipping and shredding and layering like a mad gardener, make a much hotter compost pile for still possible pasts, presents and futures” (Haraway 2016, 57)

Looking at humanly-transformed matter as potential abandoned pieces of trash is quite radical. Or everything is trash or nothing is, but then we have to treat it as such, discard it or honour it, but most importantly, making sure nothing is left behind.

Electronics feel increasingly clean. The dirt they are made of is treated so far and so intensely that we can’t identify it anymore, we can’t connect it back to the mud. The dirt doesn’t mix up with the dust anymore, the dust piles up, until it is full or blown away. From there, I would like to focus on e-waste Why do I feel instinctively more connected to pieces of electronics than living beings, and why do I feel guilty about it ?

I have been struggling a lot these past years with the things I love. I found myself rejecting the cultures that have shaped me, the places where I have found some sort of refuge, of acceptance, of belonging, of emotional connexion, of digital caresses, where I learned through films, tv series, videos, blogs, vlogs, tumblr, and numerous internet communities. The magicality of these places is fading away... What is left are solely unsolvable problems.

I tried and I’m still trying to not be overwhelmed by the various mediums I’ve built my practice with. I tried drawing, which seemed harmless, except that it depends with what and on what I decide to draw, the paper industry is not too kind to forests. I tried to forget about my own responsibility by doing a job in a team, learning cinematography, but I felt more like a spoiled person pretending to be an electrician... Then I tried 3D, because it seemed like the logical following, mixing both drawing and films, it is like having a film set, an infinite playground, for oneself. It is endless, it is fascinating. It requires drawing attention to so many details at once. All of these disciplines are also quite romanticised at the moment and raise the interests of others. Which participates in well deserved self loathing activity. What struck me in these occupations is that it’s not the people that are building my anxiety level, it is firstly the imposed structure of a discipline and secondly the overwhelmingly huge amount of human made objects as tools, materials and solutions that I have to learn about, and master in the shortest amount of time, to be able to use them before it is too late, before it becomes obsolete.

Where do they come from, what are they made of, what are the politics behind them ? One of the first things I heard when I entered cinema school was that all the equipment we were going to manipulate was coming straight from the army. The second thing was that the cinema industry is the second most hierarchical industry, after the army... I’d heard the same thing about the materiality of the internet and binary languages used to write softwares. Well thanks, bye... What I feel now, in a very simplistic way, is that I was born trapped in a system in which the destructive forces use our money to invent our digital tools and structures. The very structures that measure our vision of “comfort” and “security”. Then they give it to the people in order to extract their economical potential so that they can keep researching ways to affirm their power through destruction of the other, convincing the other, convincing us that we are the vector of change. If we recycle, and if we do not use plastic straws with our happy meal, we’ll be fine. We are in a transition, they say. We are going to make the world a better place. Haha !

The tools I have chosen and I’m using to build myself disgust me. I have become claustrophobic in this reality. This has led me from sadness to anger, from anxiety to panic. I find it is my responsibility as a user of a technology, to know how it is made, how it has impacted and how it influences not just myself. Here I would like to focus on the graphic card. A key element in the image producing industry and probably one of the most efficient dopamine generator today. I’ll write this piece of knowledge to add to the garbage of knowledge, as John Scanlan would name it. Then I’ll leave on my bike until I get lost in the mountains or I’ll start therapy, no worries.

I have a lot of empathy for technological human made tools. This project is a way to assemble lived and fantasized experiences in a narration. Putting in relation a physical environment and fantasized utopias to cope with this place, and the complex work needed to gain awareness of their real implications.

2. Thesis statement

What is the life of a graphic card in the world today ?
How is a graphic card born ?
What composes it ?
Where does that come from ?
Where does it travel to ?
What is it used for ?
How does it die ?
Where does their life end ?
How is it recycled ?
Is it truly the end ?
I’m going to investigate how a graphic card is made. From the extraction of its components, to the manufacture and assembly of it. I also want to imagine a possible life journey through the world for this graphic card. Going from rendering complex landscapes in a 3D developer’s pc to a Etherum cryptocurrency mine.

2.2 Thesis format

This document is the testimony/the story/the real life experience of a graphic card. Each chapter being a part of its life. The chapters will be illustrated and will influence the drawings, the sounds, the earth and the garbage-technologies I will be building in my project.

A bundle of conflicted feelings. Now, let’s listen to their story. (yes, I’m using the graphics card as a metaphor for myself, a fragile white little queer from the western world, in a dramatic way probably)

BODY OF THESIS (7000 words)

Chapter 1 [2000 words]

“I was born out of destruction”

- What are the raw materials that compose me? A history of outsourced mining complexes, refinery and supply chains.

- How this process was conceived to be invisible to the western idea of comfort.

“Central to the logic of this symbolic order of technological progress is the avoidance of signs of material aging and decay, which establishes a sanitized experience of digital devices. This avoidance suggests that technological innovation and planned obsolescence can continue ad infinitum and bear no relation to impending ecological catastrophe and exploitative labor conditions.”(Abject Digital Performance, engaging the politics of electronic waste” Daniel Ploeger. LEONARDO, vol 50, p139)

Chapter 2 [2000 words]

"Which Landscape do I choose ?"

About anxiety behind your computer and alarming disasters.

China’s industrial infrastructure and monopoly on resources. The colonization and destruction of Oceans to find manganese and secure the rare metal resources. in parallel with : The building of virtual complex worlds to escape an imposed system. The influence of visual based content on people, on creativity. The relationship between these technologies and a safe virtual space, a rare landscape made for sharing experiences, deconstructing knowledge, forming communities and inventing ourselves more freely. (Solastalgia, a homesickness you feel when your environment evolves without you. At a pace that your body can’t grasp. The changes are too brutal, too fast, too violent or too insidious for you to be able to adapt. An anxiety takes you from sadness to anger, from devastating floods to fast spreading fires.)

Chapter 3 [2000 words]

"Minor, passed down from generation to generation."

From rare metal mines, to cryptocurrency mining, to e-waste recycling. The arrival of crypto, of NFTs, another dopamine digger. How memes and youtube tutorials make crypto exist.

Conclusion [500 words]
"Metaphysical vertigo, a doomed loop. Shit."

Bibliography

The Mushroom at the End of the World - Anna L. Tsing

Octavia Buttler - "Lilith Brood"

Baptiste Monsangeon - "Homo Detritus"

Julie Micelle Klinger - "Rare Earth Frontiers

Julia Watson, Lo-Tech Design by radical Indigenism, https://www.juliawatson.com/

Daniel Ploeger

Timeline

- First I focus on making a cartography of the life and death of the graphics card. (Try to have that before the end of December to be able to get creative with it)
- In parallel I will make my compost and drawings and see how it influences the text, hopefully I will be more nuanced and relaxed by that point.
- Transcribe interviews I make in relation to my drawings, to feed the identity of the graphics card.