Abstract
In this project I use poetry to investigate humans’ relationship with ancient building blocks of technology and current innovations. An Actor Network Theory lens was adopted to research relational agency in a post-human technological context. The collection’s visual treatment, namely rudimentary animated doodles and sparse sound effects, alludes to a shadow art show. The curtains open with “Prologue” which invokes the first tools our ancestors invented in Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge. Following twenty five poems, the final curtain bow, “Epilogue”, casts shadows of a cyborg baby’s rotating mobile toy onto a cave wall. This extended metaphor works to circle back, re-invoking Prologue’s poem “Sibudu Cave”, about baby slings sewn with bone needles in KwaZulu-Natal, 61 000 years ago. Poems of time-worn technology include “Lebombo bone” – a baboon fibula dated 38 000 years ago, carved in binary code, used to calculate moon cycles; from Angola, “Lusona” spotlights Sona storytelling algorithms drawn in sand. Though there is a substantial emphasis on Africa, other continents also feature, including ancient Greece’s “Tower of Winds”. Ground-breaking examples from the Fourth Industrial Revolution are robotic surgery in Cape Town’s Tygerberg Hospital; shoes that charge a phone, invented by a Kenyan marathon runner; and a drone in mountainous Rwanda dropping medical supplies, saving the life of an infant dying of malaria. An e-book skin contains the concept, linked to a 50-minute playlist, thus challenging what a book (as technology) constitutes in the current e-poch.
Presenters
Mari PeteEducational Technologist, Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, Durban University of Technology, Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
2026 Special Focus—Modeling Life Systems: Art, Algorithms, Ecologies
KEYWORDS
Multimedia, Poetry Performance; Technology; Ancient and Modern; Africa
