In the work Atmospheric Trouble (2020), conceived specifically for this exhibition project, Yein Lee examines the materiality of digital space. Thematically embedded between the Anthropocene,the climate crisis, and the belief in technological progress, she constructs an installation that draws from wetware computing (neural and organic networks) and electronic waste to provide a new context for the cloud. Inspired by Sarah Kember, professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, Lee links technology with discourses in biology. Norbert Wiener’s seminal work Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948) demonstrates exemplarily that computer sciences and biology were conceptualised parallel, based on the metaphor of information: Life and information were viewed on equal footing. 

This abandonment of physical materiality also manifests in the cloud: The massive and resource-intensive infrastructure of cloud server farms is housed in remote, inaccessible places, triggering the imagination of incorporeal, placeless, and ephemeral data. Yein Lee’s work counters the prevailing representation of the cloud as an abstract symbol. She underlines how matter is part of a network of relationships, affects, and information and reveals the contemporary entanglements of organic and technological components. The imaginary and utopian aspect of this dysfunctional machine-organism is very evident in her drawings and acrylic glitches Atmoshparic Problem (2020), as well.

Text by Katharina Brandl, Claire Hoffmann