A Project by Joana Moll

Inanimate Species

Artist and researcher Joana Moll is nominated in the category Dissecting Technocapitalism, mentored by Evgeny Morozov, with a project that examines the correlation between microprocessors and animal extinction.

In 1971, a group of engineers designed the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004. This event marked a crucial moment in recent history, as for the first time it was possible to transfer intelligence to an inanimate object. Interestingly, while humanity began perfecting and increasing the power of this new artificial intelligence, the planet’s wildlife began to go extinct at an exorbitant rate: since 1970 humanity has wiped out 50 percent of the planet’s species.

Artist and researcher Joana Moll’s project is based on the hypothesis that humanity nourishes more its relationship with machines than with its life-giving ecosystems, and that the acceleration of extinction processes is correlated with the geometric explosion of technocapitalism. She will create an encyclopedic catalogue that will connect the production of commercial microprocessors to species extinct from 1971 to 2020.

In our present context, where climate change is already an everyday reality, to analyze and reveal these correlations becomes extremely necessary to imagine alternative techno-paradigms, which may coherently respond to our environmental and human conditions.

Joana Moll. Video by Moois