What Will This Shape Into?
Artwork details
Polina Zhadko · 2022
Oil, acrylic, paper, pin on canvas
70 × 60 cm
About the work
This work explores programmable matter and its future implications.
Programmable matter is material capable of changing its physical properties — form, density, structure — in a programmed way, either through user input or autonomous perception.
The artist’s 2022 statement refers to research into claytronics and programmable matter, including work associated with Intel. The imagined goal: to create a computer chip the size of a tiny grain of sand. These "smart grains" would be able to alter their static electric charge on command, causing them to attract or repel one another. With one charge distribution, the particles assemble into a specific shape. Reprogram them, and the charges shift — the particles rearrange to form an entirely different object.
These grains are called catoms (short for claytronic atoms), because like atoms, they can be assembled into countless different objects simply by changing their charge. (Think of the T-1000 from Terminator.)
At the center of the painting is one face of a catom cube, covered in dozens of tiny electrodes. The background evokes the endless sands of a desert — a visual association with the scientists' ambition to miniaturize this technology to the size of a single grain of sand. The painted grains represent the future programmable matter, against which we examine the prototype already created.
The title — What Will This Shape Into? — carries a double meaning. On one level, it refers to the catoms themselves, capable of taking any form. On another, it asks about the consequences of introducing programmable matter into our world — and the new horizons it will open.
Related series
Augmented reality
The artist’s portfolio identifies this painting as part of a series viewable in augmented reality.