Date: 2023
Medium: Google Chromecast dongles operating on screensaver mode on TV screens mounted to rotating truss, with LED cloud shapes.
Dimensions: 310cm x 110cm x 110cm
This motorised sculpture presents a tower of TVs that rotate on a column of metal pillar. The TVs display the screensaver mode made available on Google Chromecast devices, which are designed to facilitate home streaming. Essentially, this screensaver mode outputs a never ending stream of images from the Google Cultural Institute, a department of the tech firm which has swallowed up a vast amount of content from the largest museum collections in the world. As such,Totem broadcasts an infinite series of landscape imagery in the form of digitized paintings, photography, and satellite imagery of planet Earth. LED light clouds extruding from the metal pillar provide spatial depth to the spectacle of landscapes on the screens. Its aesthetic borrows from the stage entertainment industries, advertising and technological infrastructure, to deliver an infinite stream of Western art-historical imagery. Totem poles are found in various parts of the world to demarcate tribal territories and spiritual belief systems, and recount stories. In effect, this sculpture operates as a pseudoshamanic icon for Western civilisation in the digital age.
