THE GREAT DISENGAGEMENT
David Lovejoy & Ted Meyer (US)
Chrono-archaeologists David Lovejoy and Ted Meyer have long been interested in the transitional period when computers and robots (or combots, robot-computer hybrids) took charge of the world’s work, financial systems, and culture.
The two have compiled an extensive written and visual history of the time that will become known as the Great Disengagement, the period after combots took over all human tasks, leaving humanity to drown in free time with nothing to do but dream of those boring manual tasks robots were originally designed to perform.
The artists, through extensive research, lay out the rise of the robot authority with historic artifacts of the period — objects that highlight the actions of humans who tried to alert humanity to the dangers of a robot workforce, and those that went along, happily living in virtual reality.
With printed materials and relics of the period, the artists bring to life the changing post-cloud, conductivity computing world, where sentient computers came to see humans as annoyances due to their careless habit of infecting computer mainframes with defective thumb drives and errant downloads of porn and cat videos that consumed valuable bandwidth.
PROFILE
Los Angeles artist David Lovejoy has worked as an artist and designer since the 1980s. His early career in graphic design supported an extensive arts education at several schools and studios, focusing on ceramics and design. He has curated at the Spring Arts Gallery in LA since 2009.
Known primarily for his assemblage and installation work, he repurposes existing artifacts and fragments, arranging them to form new compositions. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums in California, Hawaii and Oregon and is in collections across the U.S. and Europe.
Ted Meyer is a nationally recognised artist, curator and patient advocate who helps patients, students and medical professionals see the positive in the worst life can offer. He is an artist-in-residence at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of California (USC), Visiting Scholar at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, and a TED main-stage speaker.