Twyla Exner

Signal Drift reimagines a large satellite dish as a living system, with ethernet cables extending outward like roots, waterways, or neural pathways. Throughout the structure are small islands, sprouting with mushrooms, flowers, and hybrid forms, hand-woven from land line telephone wires.The artwork is composed using fibre- based techniques including various forms of weaving, stitching, bundling, and crochet. These slow, manual processes stand in contrast to the high-speed, mass-produced nature of the electronic materials they reclaim.

This work is an investigation into the transformation of technological waste into objects of care and contemplation. Through the labour of the hand, discarded cables and obsolete infrastructure are imbued with new life, reconfigured into whimsical yet uneasy hybrids that straddle the boundary between nature and machine.The recognizable mushrooms and flowers, interspersed with abstracted, mutated forms, represent both ecological growth and digital mutation. They disperse like spores of possibility: playful yet unsettling, raising questions about what evolves from the remains of our technological excess.

By applying traditionally feminized craft techniques to the hard, synthetic remnants of digital culture, Signal Drift challenges value hierarchies between the handmade and the industrial, the domestic and the technological, the obsolete and the vital. These crafted forms invite slowness and attention in an age of speed and disposability. They ask us to consider not just what we build and discard, but how we relate to the materials, systems, and labour that sustain our digital and communication infrastructures.

This project was supported by an Explore and Create Grant from Canada Council for the Arts.

Special thanks to Adrian Romeo for her assistance with this project.