C(o2)loud

Interactive artwork by Henry Driver - click to enter.

‘This unrelenting rhythm of technological consumption, as it has developed over the last two or three decades, prevents any significant period of time elapsing in which the use of a given product, or assemblage of them, could become familiar enough to constitute merely the background elements of one’s life….The conditions of communication and information access on an everyday level ensure the systematic erasure of the past as part of the fantasmatic construction of the present.” (Jonathan Crary, 2013)

Smartphones allow us to be connected 24/7, to never be unreachable, and have a universe of information and expression at our fingertips. However, this endless engagement does not come for free, as with every interaction and every view, there is a physical environmental toll. Every webpage, social media post, newsfeed or stream, consumes energy, and with the world/internet mainly powered by fossil fuels, that means the depositing of carbon. This state of endless connection become an addictive cycle of pollution. That pointless five minute scroll through social media that we do countless times a day, is a means to burn the world. The greatest irony of all is how our addiction to viewing travel photographs of natural areas of beauty, actually increases the likelihood of them being destroyed through climate disaster.

Henry Driver has shown internationally in Berlin, Melbourne, Copenhagen, Toronto, Sydney, Montreal, Taipei, Seoul, and Yokohama. Nationally, Driver has shown at Tate Liverpool, Tate Britain, The Barbican & Whitechapel Gallery. Most recently, Henry was commissioned to create a permanent public sculpture for Essex County Council at Cressing Temple Barns.