Panel Statement

Panel: Rogue Troopers: Designing functional and fictional disruptions

The pervasiveness of contemporary technology goes hand in hand with opacity. Users generally have little or no knowledge of how the objects and networks they depend on work, becoming black box operators. As a visual artist working with technology, I am investigating ways of reducing this ignorance. I run durational collaborative manufacturing units where technological items are broken and recycled in creative ways. The participants engage in learning, making and sharing an experimental process that disrupts the disempowered consumerist attitude towards technological items. The talk explores some of my projects, as well as recent initiatives by other artists and activists.

• Paul Granjon, Z Productions, Wales, UK. Paul Granjon is a recognized media and performance artist working with self-made machines. His research interests lie in human and machine co-evolution, robots in performance, and home manufacturing. He has won numerous awards for his work, and represented Wales at the Venice Biennale in 2005. Since 1995 he has lectured and taught at Cardiff School of Art and Design.  zprod.org