Dave Penny
Devices for Progress is
a series of photographic images of what appear to be makeshift
machines, situated within a workshop or design laboratory environment.
The photographs offer the viewer ideas of actual potential objects that
are visually anything but cutting edge; instead, they are clumsy and
awkward. Their mechanical form indexes the body that has produced them.
This
project was inspired by a number of visits made to science and
engineering museums in order to investigate the design of handheld
consumer electronic devices. I found that the objects on display and in
archives, in most cases, looked exactly like the final product that was
presented to market. I had expected to see unfinished hotchpotches of
machines, exposed working components and a cacophony of tangled cables.
This was disappointing and I decided to create my own inventions to
(re)create some of the imagery that existed in my imagination.
This/that (below): Each object has been selected for its association with domesticity; all are used for cooking, cleaning or eating and are simple, overlooked and everyday items. This genus of object can be found throughout the history of the representation of things, often in still life painting. These contemporary domestic objects are re-imagined through the photograph and their intended function is obscurred. The work is informed through an understanding of our relationship with technological devices and the ideals that such modern objects represent.
