Artwork: The Museum of Ethics and Interplanetary Technologies – A Dowsing Poster

Artists: Suzanne Treister and Patricia Domínguez

Response by: Prof Marguerite Barry – ADAPT Centre

We live in an age of anxiety over the scale and speed of technological change, the existential risks it presents and the rampant privatisation of its progress and control. A sense of helplessness in shaping our technofutures seems compounded by an uncomfortable relationship with time – our own mortality prevents us from truly testing the apocalyptic predictions of a future that seems always just beyond reach. But what if we could break free of our earthly boundaries and sense our way towards a different relationship to technologies of the future? How might we activate alternative visions of a time which could deliver transformational possibilities of experience? 

Using a magic circle, a divination rod and the power of consciousness, this work invites us to ‘dowse’ for alternative technological futures, whether seconds or aeons away. By dangling the USB stick on a string, we position a pendulum over a chart of possibilities, pose a question and enter a portal to a ‘radiesthetic’ system that can lead us to alternative technological imaginaries. By offering cosmic temporal forms to think with (‘galactic years’ and ‘yotta seconds’), we must consider ethical subjects beyond ourselves and reckon with the impact of design after our time and beyond our world. But it is the human and social temporal structures that give us agency – it only takes a ‘jiffy’ or a ‘moment’ to become realigned with the possibilities of a better future.

You may say divination is nothing more than superstition, the random chance of motion, astrology or manifesting to the universe. But is it any better to remain subject to the mercy of the ‘corporate cosmos’? Through dowsing, we connect with an energy trail that begins in the consciousness and moves outwards, towards what we want. This work invites us to shed our cynicism and paralysis over our relationship with technology and to capture the power of sensing and naming what we want, for more ethical and liveable sociotechnical worlds.

Link to view more information on the artwork: https://2024.betafestival.ie/exhibitions/unsettling-the-algorithm/The%20Museum%20of%20Ethics%20and%20Interplanetary%20Technologies%20-%20A%20Dowsing%20Poster