Here for the tea

My thesis investigates the ecological and societal consequences of resource extraction and technological development through cobalt, a material that circulates between ceramic traditions, industrial infrastructures, and contemporary computational systems. Presented as a constellation of ceramic and digital works, the project follows cobalt as it moves across histories of craft, labour, energy, and computation. Once valued for the deep blue it contributed to ceramics and glass, cobalt is now a critical mineral deeply entangled in the climate crisis (Kara 2023). The transformation from pigment to infrastructure reveals how aesthetic production, technological development, and extractive economies are historically built upon systems of labour, resource extraction, and environmental transformation. Mining folklore offers a useful companion for understanding this movement. Stories of Kobolds described subterranean beings that led miners toward valuable deposits while simultaneously creating confusion, misdirection, and collapse (Davidson and Duffin 2021). Throughout this research, cobalt operates in a similar manner, guiding the work across material, historical, and technological terrains. Following its pathways uncovers not a single story of technological progress but a constellation of relations sustained through extraction, circulation, and care. Through vessels, sculptures, QR codes, archives, databases, videos, and acts of repair, the project treats art as a practice of listening: attending to materials in motion and making perceptible the forms of labour and maintenance that hold contemporary systems together. The system thanks you for remaining within.