Both Brandon Vickerd’s and Susy Oliveira’s sculpture reflect upon the concept of technology as an extension of the self. Technology is often understood as improving upon nature, accomplishing feats that would be impossible to do without it. As Vickerd mentions, to consider technology as nothing more than a tool is inadequate. Indeed, technology has become much more than that – perhaps a type of religion. Ernest Becker, author of The Denial of Death (1973), would argue that in a technoculture such as ours, technology has elevated to the status of the heroic. Becker writes, a mythical hero-system is one:
“in which people serve in order to earn a feeling of primary value, of cosmic specialness, of ultimate usefulness to creation, of unshakable meaning…The hope and belief is that the things that man creates in society are of lasting worth and meaning, that they outlive or outshine death and decay, that man and his products count” (5).
And if heroism is a direct result of the terror of death, as Becker argues (11), it makes sense that technology holds so much currency in our society. Technology has consistently proven itself to be more reliable and efficient than humans in innumerable ways; its ubiquity in society alone is surpassed only by our complete reliance upon it. In other words, where in the past religion offered a promise of immortality through a guarantee of a better afterlife, technology now is offering a promise of immortality through a guarantee of an extended and improved present life. What Vickerd seeks to do is to get viewers to consider our technological hero-system, and consider how immortalizing it truly is. But just as Vickerd’s Satellite confronts us with the image of a failed technology-as-hero, Oliveira’s sculpture forces us to consider the limits of our human faculties.
The Nintendo Mii is a prime example of the digitized self.
This artistic rendering of the natural through a technological gaze makes us consider the reality of the objects we behold and our relationship to nature in today’s technoculture. Vickerd continues this notion in his work Bionic Forest, a forest of Tom Thomson-inspired trees forged in stainless steel with branches that move robotically. This work in particular comments on “the Canadian tendency to invest our personal and national identity with the notion of landscape…while we participate in it largely through mediated experiences” (Vickerd).
Vickerd’s Satellite and Northern Satellite also force the viewer to suspend their disbelief. Vickerd put painstaking effort into making the satellites as perfect a mimesis as possible, and though upon first glance one might believe that a real satellite has crashed to the ground, one quickly realizes the implausibility of the installation due to their understanding of the natural world. Thus both Oliveira and Vickerd play with illusions in their representations of nature and technology, opening a dialogue that simultaneously reveals the visibility and invisibility of their influence in our lives, and uncovers the limitations of each. If we consider Becker again for a moment, we might cogitate as to the role of illusion in our lives. As Becker writes, “life is possible only with illusions” (189). He goes so far as to say that neurosis can be deduced to the man who “opts out of life because he is having trouble maintaining his illusions about it” (189). To what degree, then, must we rely on illusions to keep our sanity? Moreover, “On what level of illusion does one live?” (Becker 189). Work like Oliveira’s and Vickerd’s ask us these same questions.
Northern Satellite by Brandon Vickerd, 2009
Source: Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. New York: Free Press, 1997.
