Digitalisation and consequent physical duplication have now reached the point where they can be technically joined outside the makers’ labs where they more usually proliferate. Watching a 3D file, representing a concrete object and thinking about the infinite potential of physical duplication is an association only recently spread, allowed by the substantial diffusion of 3D printers. Alexandra Ehrlich Speiser has targeted 3D files of weapons which are largely available in the dark web. In her ‘Useless Weapons Series’ she glitches them through various strategies like inserting pacifist lyrics in the code, or slightly modifying it, provoking a different interconnection in the structure which harms files’ functionality. A few 3D printed examples, like a ‘non lethal’ Smith&Wesson and AK47, or a Grenade from WWII have been exhibited at EMAF 2017. Thus has she materialised her abstract sabotages and their ability to affect the same ethereal nature of the file, and in turn of the dangerous and threatening original.

 

Useless Weapons by Alexandra Ehrlich Speiser