The Netherlands, 1990
www.sjoerdschunselaar.com
The Discovery of Pocket Dust.
From childhood Sjoerd Schunselaar is fascinated by audiovisual and electronic techniques, the power of nature and the human body. What began at a young age with disassembling of a game boy, resulted many years later on the Rietveld Academy in The Discovery of Pocketdust; a project in which all these elements are incorporated. This project zooms in on a microscopic world that we all unconsciously carry close to us. Dust, dirt particles of less than half a micrometer (often composed of housedust, sand, dander, hair and / or waste) we collect in everything we do, and so can tell a lot about the traces of our lives. Dealing with a thesis about our blind spot for how personal data is massively being collected on the internetnfor commercial profiling, the dust pocket machine also works as a metaphor. Schunselaar’s machine explores the pocket dust by analyzing the color, transparency, size and toughness, and converts this data into an abstract drawing. The outcome of the analysis, together with the dust of the volunteers, will be archived and exhibited so that visitors can see it with their own eyes and imagine who is behind the dust.
