Seth Steinman merges the internet with ancient technologies

When Willem Deisinger, an arts researcher and essay writer, argued that the effectiveness of technology lies within the multitudes of textiles they allow humans to interact with (as opposed to something like the iPhone, which centralises email, music, texting, gaming, etc to one single device), he was tapping into our culture’s exhaustion with the clinical and whitewashed aesthetic of most modern tech. This is why more and more people are embracing the clunky analogue with all of its strange defects and clumsy designs, the limitations of it, the personality. Walkmans, CD players, flip phones, wired headphones – they allow us to explore material feeling, physical sensations that the cloud and bluetooth cannot fulfil. But where does this regression end? Sculptor and painter Seth Steinman may have an idea: at the beginning of all technology, stones and wood.

“My body of work explores a narrative that is not exclusive to a singular person, but references a broad range of collective experiences that all have a unified commonality of being driven by user experience,” says Seth, who projects images of the Windows XP start-up screen, Club Penguin, MS Paint and iconic screensavers on hunks of cracked stone – as well as recreations of multiple Safari tabs open with multi-layered wooden sculptures. Through connecting technology as we know it now to ancient technology, a narrative of civilisation’s triumph is created, a universal experience. “My processes range anywhere from woodworking, painting, to printing systems, as well as clay and sculpture,” says Seth. “The work is about construction, surface and physicality and in turn it’s not bound to any one specific means of creation.” In the process of recognising several technologies interacting with each other, despite being diametrically opposed, the viewer’s preconceptions about tactility, physicality and haptics with our evolving world are challenged as Seth transports them to the dawn of time – which maybe we have more in common with than we’d like to believe.