holes in the sieve, 2023
computer program, projector, mixed media
holes in the sieve is a digital media installation based on an ongoing project investigating the processes of knowledge production in the professional sciences, which I define as the research programmes developed during and since the European Enlightenment Period. This facet of the project specifically addresses the social sciences through the fields of anthropology and archaeology. The installation allows the viewer to examine digital reconstructions of “the Piltdown Man” fossils, a paleoanthropological “fraud” that was “discovered” in 1912 and presented as the possible remains of the “missing link” between ape and humans. Purported to have been found in the Pleistocene gravel beds near the hamlets of Piltdown in East Sussex, England, the fragments were accepted as authentic fossils by paleontologists from the Natural History Museum in London and the American Museum of Natural History. The fragments were eventually proven to have come from a Medieval Age human skull and an orangutan mandible.
Instructions:
left click and hold to grab object on screen
move mouse to move grabbed object
