The Obscure Objects of Desire and the Rise of the Technological Chimera

The Obscure Objects of Desire and the Rise of the Technological Chimera

‘The Obscure Objects of Desire and the Rise of the Technological Chimera’ is a site-specific project by Montreal based artist John Naccarato, which looks at how media technologies are remediated. How such technologies manifesting as objects emit a presence which is not singularly transparent but is in a sense haunted. Such technologies have their own evolutionary transcended processes which when, integrated with human presence configures a new reality imbued with ‘technological chimeras’.

Part of this rise of the Technological Chimera has to do with how machine and human have begun to fold onto each other. In turn, this has created what I refer to as a ‘second skin’. It is through this new skin that we have begun to access memory and identity. A possible end game to all this may be less dramatic than we had originally thought. For it is not the machine, which will rise up to embrace and simulate the complex nuances which defines humanity, but the exact reverse. We will in turn succumb to the machine’s own limitations, adapting to its own vision and language of what it means to be human.

The project is made up of six Hybrid Sculptural Objects, conceived initially for a series entitled ‘The Limits of Control’ (2009). 

The first Hybrid Sculptural Object created was entitled ‘Untitled (aka Leonard)‘ followed by three other Objects entitled, ‘Untitled (aka Marta)‘, ‘Holy Cow Television’, and ‘Presence’. Two more Objects were later added, ‘record RECORD’ and ‘The Chimera’ to complete the site specific installation and exhibition project ‘The Obscure Objects of Desire and the Rise of the Technological Chimera’  at AXENEO7 in the fall of 2010.