Stephen Cornford

blog
works
discs
texts
info

BIOGRAPHY

Stephen Cornford is a media artist who works within consumer electronics and scientific practices, critiquing the ideologies they embody and the constitutive role they have come to play in our lives. His current research is concerned with the toxic metallurgies of digital media, the belief systems embedded in scientific image cultures and relationships between planetary and photographic space.

Much of his recent work has been made in collaboration with scientific researchers. He has worked alongside commercial geophysicists prospecting for technology metals in Europe and with volcanologists studying magma crystallisation with X-rays. His practice often appropriates laboratory processes or imaging instruments,  using geological furnaces to transform electronic waste or optoelectronics facilities to damage camera sensors.

In 2018 he completed a PhD affiliated to the Archaeologies of Media & Technology research group at Winchester School of Art, where he is now Senior Lecturer and programme lead for MA Fine Art. Stephen has had solo exhibitions in Tokyo, Berlin, Brighton, Bergen, Ljubljana & London and his work has been included in group exhibtions at the ZKM Center for Art & Media, Karlsruhe; ICC, Tokyo; Haus der Electronische Kunst, Basel; Sigma Foundation, Venice; Finnish Museum of Photography and Coventry Biennial.