Bryn Brunnstrom

Artist Statement

My work is a commentary on the relationship between people and technology. Specifically, I explore how technology has paradoxically become both more, and less, important to our lives. Many of us experience our worlds mediated through a digital device, but those physical technological objects have become less personal, and more disposable than ever before. The predominant cause of both these developments, in my view, stems from the accelerated production and improvement of our technology. Regardless of how important these devices might be to our daily lives, they are inevitably doomed to become outmoded and obsolete within a matter of years. I express this tension through miniature dystopian landscapes that depict an accelerated decay. A rapid reclamation of the tool by nature, inspired by images of abandoned cityscapes such as the Fukushima Exclusion Zone. Through this, I imagine that the natural process of falling into a state of ruin or disrepair has accelerated to match artificial waste. This imagery represents ideas of both sustainability and the post-Anthropocene era, and communicates a vision of a world experiences through technology: a landscape where the modern is ancient, and the ergonomic gargantuan. A world inhabited by beings to whom technology is integral to their experience, nature itself assimilated into the progress engine, and humans instrumental to the tools we have created.