Marina Zurkow: Parting Worlds

The Earth Eaters is an animated, software-based “fairy tale” that depicts the process and impact of the extraction of raw materials from the earth. The algorithms driving the animation produce an endless cycle of floating islands, animal inhabitants, and miners who hack away at the land, while golden human statues occasionally appear to signal a position of power. Monumental war machines—drones, tanks, and jets—emerge from the earth, both wounding it and necessitating the infliction of more harm to tap natural resources. Their surfaces reference the unrefined raw materials that have been extracted, including iron, gold, diamonds, and lithium. Marina Zurkow trained artificial intelligence models to produce the animated weapons, as well as islands based on woodcuts and mineable places described in De Re Metallica (1556) by Georgius Agricola, who is considered the first mineralogist and founder of geology. She also used these models to generate iterations of the menageries from Historiae Animalium (mid-1500s) by Conrad Gessner, who many credit as the first modern zoologist.