TECHNOLOGY ISN’T INTERESTING ANYMORE
Or rather, technology on its own isn't interesting anymore.
A few years ago, simply scanning a sculpture or using digital fabrication felt novel. Today, those tools are everywhere. They're becoming as commonplace as silicone moulds, CNC routers, or bronze casting. I'm sure each of those technologies once carried the same excitement, but eventually they became just another part of making.
I think digital sculpting technology is reaching that point.
These thoughts really crystallised after visiting the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2026. Specifically, the United States Pavilion, where Alma Allen presented Call Me the Breeze, curated by Jeffrey Uslip. Allen's monumental bronzes and stone sculptures embody the scale and material I aspire to in my own practice. Yet I found myself unexpectedly distracted by what I perceived as the visual softness often associated with digital production. Whether that impression accurately reflects Allen's process or not (I haven't yet researched it in detail), it made me realise something about my own relationship with technology. I wasn't looking for evidence of the machine; I was looking for evidence of the hand.
It made me realise that it is no longer enough to simply say a work was made using AI, scanning, or digital sculpting. Those are tools, not ideas. Technology has to be embedded within the concept.
Otherwise, it risks becoming little more than a demonstration of process. Increasingly, I find myself looking past the technology itself and asking what it is actually revealing.
For me, technology has never been the subject of the work. It is another material.
Some ideas have only come into existence because I was able to move between clay and digital space. The distortions created through scanning reveal forms I would never have imagined by hand alone. In that sense, technology expands my thinking rather than replacing it.
My digital works inform my sculptures, and my sculptures inform my digital works. The relationship mirrors the way our physical and digital identities continuously shape one another. Removing technology from my practice would be like removing a part of my own lived experience. I wouldn't simply lose a tool; I would lose a way of discovering.
If I had to describe my own practice, it's probably 70% physical and 30% digital, although that balance is constantly shifting. It reflects the way many of us now live, moving between physical and digital realities every day. Remove either one and something is lost.
But the body remains central.
The physical act of sculpting matters to me because my body becomes part of the work. Making sculpture can leave me exhausted or in pain, yet it often alleviates other forms of pain at the same time.
I know every twist, joint, and surface intimately because I have physically negotiated them. I know where forms intersect because I've been in constant dialogue with them. That relationship can't be downloaded or automated. It comes from time, repetition, and touch.
Technology doesn't remove that.
It assists it.
If I were commissioned to make a five-metre sculpture, digital tools would help solve problems of scale, planning, and production. They reduce unnecessary labour, but they don't remove the essential work.
Eventually, I still have to stand in front of the sculpture. I still have to resolve the surfaces, the joins, the weight, and the presence. My body still has to enter into dialogue with the object.
I think we sometimes forget that technology is an assistant.
Not the artist.