Joost Rekveld’s experimental moving image making involves an ongoing dialogue with machines and materials. Recently, he has been re-enacting historical analogue computing and electronic simulation techniques, caring for old machines and developing new devices based on principles that have long fallen out of use. This led to a perspective on the relation between humans and machines that is not predicated on control. From this angle, he is currently focusing on the crystalline materials that underpin our electronic technology, investigating the dynamic between the exceptional homogeneity needed to make reliable semiconductors, and the fact that their functioning is based on disruptions and dislocations of the crystal lattice.
Joost Rekveld is an artist and researcher who wonders what humans can learn from a dialogue with the machines they have constructed. In a form of media archeology he investigates modes of material engagement with devices and concepts from neglected corners in the history of science and technology. The outcomes of these investigations often take the shape of abstract animated films that function like alien phenomenologies.
