The twentieth century spawned the industrialization of the American West. With its suburban developments, water diversion projects, oil and natural gas rigs, power plants, atomic laboratories, military testing grounds, and sophisticated roadways, the western states have become a landscape of mechanization. This machine is at once necessary and destructive, sophisticated and aging, natural and artificial; it is the life blood and the nemesis, the crux of modern civilization. As contemporary society grows increasingly dependent on mechanized environments, their collapse is also eminent. 

 

Dust in the Machine was a group exhibition that presented a spectrum of interpretations of the industrialized West, as well as its promises and failures. CCA presented Dust in the Machine in conjunction with the 18th International Symposium on Electronic Art, a symposium and series of events exploring the intersections of art, technology and nature.

 

Artists: Chris Ballantyne, Lisa K. Blatt, Adriane Colburn, Bethany Delahunt, Jamey Stillings, Lucy Raven, Jesse Vogler, and Shirley Wegner.