Desert Dreaming

Elena Chadaeva received a grant to develop a new interactive installation. Desert Dreaming is a project that explores the potential of copper and the agency of inorganic materials used to create electronic technology. This interactive installation takes the perspective of inorganic matter and tells its story through sounds, symbols and speculative writing. Copper becomes a myth teller and a nomadic beard telling stories about the land of his origin.

Elena is a Rotterdam-based transdisciplinary artist and designer. Her interest and inspiration lie in the relationship between matter and mind, which she explores by translating research into interactive installations. Elena uses the poetic potential of technology to create cryptic mystical distortions of common sensory ways of perceiving reality. She aims to challenge the negative image that technology evokes by using it to convey the vastness of abstract thought. Her work stems from poetic sensibilities, immense curiosity and the desire to connect previously unconnected concepts and aesthetics, which she does through speculative fiction and experimental forms of knowledge production and consumption.