杏吧原创

In a new exhibition, former MIT artist in residence Matthew Day Jackson celebrates the not always beautiful world that technology has made

How did you land your residency at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology?
I鈥檓 trying to understand where I am in the world. Artists explore, and through art express our findings. I think the way I talk about technology 鈥� with spiritual and philosophical levels 鈥� is something MIT hadn鈥檛 really seen before.

What does your work show about technology?
Technology is a part of our bodies. At a certain point our bodies weren鈥檛 able to adapt as quickly as our tools, so the tools we created became an extension of ourselves. Technology is just another aspect of our evolution.

What did you take away from MIT?
I realised it鈥檚 OK to be an artist. I had to do a talk with Jerome Friedman, who won a Nobel prize for physics in 1990 for discovering quarks. I thought, what do I really have to add to the conversation? But the talk was about creativity. He spoke about the way physicists discuss the beauty of theory. I realised that within my practice of art, I鈥檓 searching for the same thing as the scientists 鈥� the reason why we are here. The search is what brings us all together.

鈥淚n my practice of art I鈥檓 searching for the same thing as the scientists 鈥� the reason why we鈥檙e here鈥�

What can we expect from your new exhibition?
The exhibition is about the material world we live in and how we express our humanity. It鈥檚 called Everything Leads to Another. The sum of history until this very moment influences who you and I are, and in much of my work, I鈥檓 interested in moments in history when beauty and terror were inseparable.

The main work in the show is Axis Mundi, a B-29 bomber like the one used to bomb Hiroshima. Through the windows of a B-29 a brand new light was seen, the birth of a new world鈥� but new worlds aren鈥檛 necessarily beautiful. I鈥檝e turned it into a Victorian-style gentleman鈥檚 library, in reference to a natural history museum.

The support system for Axis Mundi is also based on a Dymaxion map, a model of the world by Buckminster Fuller that shows the links between all land masses. I think it could be used to create a worldwide system for electricity distribution that doesn鈥檛 stop at national borders.

How does Axis Mundi reflect your attitude toward our nuclear legacy?
The legacy of nuclear weapons is a military industrial complex we feed money into without question. There is no part of that legacy as important as talking about the weapons we created and will never get rid of. The way nuclear power plants are designed unfortunately means that spent fuel can be weaponised. But why waste our time with nuclear energy? The sun is beaming down more power than we could possibly use.

You鈥檝e also done work related to our forays into space.
I made a moonscape, Reflections of the Sky. I was inspired by Monet鈥檚 Water Lilies paintings because they pushed boundaries in the way landscape was depicted. In the paintings, by looking down at the Earth, capturing reflections of the sky, you鈥檙e also looking up.

When we landed on the moon, at the same time as we were celebrating humanity鈥檚 ability to push forward, by planting the American flag in the ground, suddenly it became a reflection of the cold war happening on Earth. We might be looking up but really we were just looking down at your feet. We explore but really what we鈥檙e doing is carrying our atmosphere with us.

Do you think most technology has had a negative impact on humanity?
Technology can be used either way. One of the best things about the technological age is the way we learn now: it鈥檚 so multifaceted. And even with all the death and destruction in my work, I still feel that what I express 鈥� and the artist I鈥檝e become 鈥� is a celebration of this technological age.