Petrified Media

Petrified Media – What traces of our current civilisation will be left in the geological strata of the planet? What will become of the technological devices that so dominate our lives today in millennia to come? How will these objects be transformed as they travel through deep time?

Inspired by the Anthropocene, media artist Stephen Cornford speculates on the profound future of electronic waste as it settles into the Earth’s stratigraphic record. By applying geological techniques to a hypothetical “technofossil”, he is seeking to materialise an inevitable scenario in which discarded technologies are part of the planet’s geology. Colourful images taken under the microscope are combined with analyses of the elemental composition and details of the origins of the metals essential to the production of today’s technological devices. The essays by Siobhan Angus, Jan Zalasiewicz and Cornford himself approach the subject from their respective theoretical backgrounds.