The Shrink installation plays with the vision of humanity reduced to microscopic size - an absurd response to overpopulation, overconsumption, and the climate crisis.
The object resembles a futuristic spacecraft transporting an entire miniaturized civilization into space. The work’s soundscape incorporates processed satellite and radio telescope signals sourced from publicly available NASA materials
Inspired by the Dead Kennedys' song Shrink from the album Bed Time for Democracy as well as the ideas of the world's richest man, Elon Musk - who aims to conquer space and litter the universe with humanity.
a song inspired by the Dead Kennedys written with the help of my daughter:
They promised us a better world
A smaller version, neatly sold
A tiny house, a tiny car
A tiny planet seen from afar
Less to eat and less to waste
Less of everything to taste
The factories keep growing tall
While we get smaller than it all
Make the human problem disappear
There's nothing left to fear
A perfect little human race
Taking up a little less space
The oceans rise, the forests burn
But there's still profit to be earned
The rich stay big, the poor get small
There's plenty of space for us all
Smaller bodies, bigger dreams
Nothing's ever what it seems
Less for us and more to sell
Welcome to our tiny hell
A pocket-sized humanity
A masterpiece of industry
No need to change the way we live
Just take the pill that they will give
Our cities turn to anthills now
We worship machines, we don't know how
To stop the engines, stop the race
Stop turning everything to waste
We conquered space, we split the atom
We built the systems that consume us
And now our greatest victory
Is shrinking human history
The future fits inside a jar
A microscopic paradise
We never needed all those stars
Human progress, reduced in size.
And when we're small enough to hide
Inside the things we threw aside
We'll finally see what we have done
Beneath a giant plastic sun
The world is saved, the markets grow
There's nowhere left for us to go
The last machine begins to sing
And no one's left to hear a thing
The planet smiles, the humans fade
A perfect world the machines have made
No more hunger, no more crime
Just smaller people running out of time.
