The birth of ‘gunpowder warfare’ can be traced back to the 15th century and the invention of the matchlock gun, the first mechanical firing device. Now drone swarms attack across borders with impunity. In 1685, Giovanni Borelli, the Italian physicist, foresaw a world where machines driven by pulleys could ape the actions of animals. Elon Musk now talks of robots intelligent enough to do the shopping and take the place of surgeons.
Technological development is both immediate and anchored in history, both Everything, Everywhere All at Once and Slow Horses. The fast/slow contrast is embedded in the artwork, Calculating Empires, a 24-meter-long mural, on display at the Design Museum in Barcelona. It visualizes the journey from the printing press to deep fakes, from quipu, an ancient Peruvian calculator made of knotted ropes, to ‘planetary scale’ data systems.
