automated living

‘Automated Living’ is a virtual shop selling a collection of bizarre, pointless and overengineered lifestyle-enhancing machines. This project is a multidisciplinary response to the neo-colonialist practice of electronic waste dumping: when affluent countries in the global north dump their e-waste – old phones and laptops etc – in poorer global south countries without infrastructure to process it. Western overproduction leads to the proliferation of useful machines languishing in landfills.

Kialy is presenting her work in a virtual shop, akin aesthetically to peculiar, clunky e-commerce websites, hawking a collection of over engineered ‘machines’ with humorous applications ranging from sinister to pointless, like a date night tooth checker with an overzealous electronic toothpick that leaves any would-be lothario bloody-mouthed, or a VR peekaboo headset that fully automates the peekaboo process with disastrous results. She aims to unpick Western obsessions with convenience and novelty which so often come at a cost to humans elsewhere in the world.