I’m Not Crazy!
In redefining man’s relationship to labour, the industrial revolution sparked a series of paradigm shifts in human’s relationship with ourselves and the world. For the Futurists, the human-centric world gave way to the speed and metal of the machine. Post-WWII pop culture gave us the semi-autonomous machine, the robot, while the introduction of the computer into the average household in the 1980’s gave the robot super-human powers. By the turn of the millennium, pop-culture’s interpretation of the internet had disembodied this idealized humanoid: we no longer dream of speed or strength, of being part machine. Rather we dream of total emergence: we enter the machine – not to become part of it – but to live surrounded by it. In effect, the machine can exist without us; but our existence depends on it. Meanwhile, the outside world – what would previously have been referred to as ‘reality’ – lies in environmental ruins.
I’m Not Crazy! was a project meant to address this total emergence in the digital. Drawing on the folk-hero man vs machine motif, I spent 6 weeks writing hexadecimal data on a mural as a challenge to the computer and to question the digital as a means of communication. The completed mural remained in place for one day before being painted white.
Chris Dunnett 
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