Stephen Cornford

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 Spectral Index   
 

 

 

 

  

 

 

2023
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Spectral Index

Petrified Media

2022
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Dark Current Collages
Horizon of Fulfillment

2021
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To Photograph A Rock
Pixel Mining

2019
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RGB [Retinally Governed Behaviours]

2018
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Saturation Trails - Acid
- Laser
- X-Ray
Destruction of an Image Sensor

2016
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Constant Linear Velocity
Augenmusik
Methodology for a Synaesthetic Screen

2015
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Migration
Digital Audio Film

2013
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Solipsism Cinema
Archipelago

2012
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Recorded (on) Delivery
Five Introverted Machines

2011
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Binatone Galaxy

2010
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In Search of a Concrete Music

2009
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Works for Turntable

2008
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Three Piece
Air Guitar
Extended Piano

2007
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Trespassing The Olympic Site
For Violin, Viola & Tape



 

 

 

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Digitisation has shifted the materials on which our media technologies rely. The minerals and metals required for digital imaging are the same as those now required for energy transition away from fossil fuels. These converging pressures are triggering a new resource race, with nation states and political blocks scrambling to ensure secure supplies of these suddenly ‘critical’ raw materials. This race is both driven by and reliant upon visual cultures, producing a recursive circularity in which images are used to produce minerals which are used to produce images.

A ‘spectral index’ is a mathematical image function in which different wavelengths of the visible and infrared spectrum are combined to produce false colour images that analyse different terrestrial conditions. In the prospecting projects currently underway in search of critical minerals, these indexes are a vital tool in locating and identifying novel deposits. This single-screen video work considers how these spectral indexes frame our relationship with landscapes perpetually surveilled by orbital satellites and aerial drones. To gaze at the earth through these instrumental lenses both presumes ownership and assumes the future functionality of the planetary surface below.

Commissioned by Avantwhatever .
Made following a 12 month collaboration with GREENPEG .