To “mine” is to extract physical materials from the earth – or to draw data from the landscape of information. Through gamified visual metaphors, ecological references, and allusions to corporate culture, Mine draws connections between the climate concerns, precarious labor conditions, and forces of technological development that converge in the technological present. The implications of mining’s multiple meanings – from siphoning rare earth resources to collecting and monetizing digital user data – are dramatized through a human-sized “Amazon worker cage”, an AR rendering of the endangered King Island Brown Thornbill, and a large-scale board game, “Extractor”, which doubles as an exhibition catalogue. In its 2021 incarnation for Petzel Gallery, the project also included a series of “NFT Mine Offsets”, extending these lines of inquiry to explore how blockchain technologies are implicated in questions of both data and resource extraction.

Artworks