Liam Macann

Boolean operations, 2023
Sheet metal, tubing, wire, and cardboard

Passport, 2023
Three fragments of a cross-cut shredded passport

The engineered primitive is the product of an extensive process of distillation and refinement. These are foundational goods; sheet metal, mathematical operators, and the kind of geometry you can name. In use, their origin is abstracted away; what lies upstream is made invisible, and a new origin appears to form. It is here applied to describe an exploration of materials complicated by a concealed relation to manufacture.

This body of work aims to surface concealed affordances through an engagement with the philosophy of technology. Innate philosophical dimensions are present within technical artefacts — a consequence of both manufacture, and their tendency to shape worlds. Macann's practice operates to unsettle an epistemological hierarchy; privileging incommensurability, and questioning the constructions uncritically afforded by the artefacts of our time.