This artwork focuses on drawing parallels of excavations of Earth's resources by heavy machinery and the large scale excavations of human data today. Often intangible, data excavations have the potential to go unnoticed. We don't necessarily realize the extractive nature of AI and data. On the flip side of this extraction is the other scope determined by intentionality, it’s the seduction of possible progress that machines like excavators can bring about- data too allows us to build on insights and create gigantic pillars of progress. At what costs is the underlying question. The work brings forth this parallel through a kinetic light art choreographed performance where the artist installs glowing light channels to the arms of life size industrial excavators and gets operators to do a movement of the machines to write the words 'data' and 'soil' in a continuous loop. The artist documented a video of this performance during his residency at Diriyah Art Futures. The work was conceptualized during the residency and produced with the residency grant.
