Necromancer,
Installation view at House of Chappaz, Barcelona, 2022.
Excerpt from Necromancer, 2022.
4K digital animation, color, sound, 30fps.
Loop.
Our technology champions speed and mobility as proof that it's immaterial—that it exists only as code. But what stories do we need to tell to expose the true, heavy, material cost of these machines, which rely on the labor and extraction of resources from both human bodies and the planet itself? If magic were a finite natural resource, what would that immediately tell us about our seemingly "lightweight" digital devices, given how violently we exploit the Earth's minerals to power them?
In Necromancer, Andrew Roberts reexamines the work of high fantasy writer Larry Niven, who informed his writing with ecological thinking, and traces the vast network of games —from video games and board games to role-playing and collectible cards— that adopted Niven’s concepts. Roberts constructs a playground of connections that links conspiracy thinking with subculture history, aiming to manufacture a media geology from media history.
Central to this investigation is Mana, the popular video game mechanic for casting spells in World of Warcraft. The exhibition reveals that Mana’s appearance in the Western imagination is rooted in a colonial process. The word first entered Western academia after explorations to the Pacific Islands in the 19th century. While Melanesian natives understood the word as a natural force similar to lightning, Eurocentric academics misinterpreted it as evidence of a "proto-religion."
Mana reemerged in California during the 1960s, specifically within American academia, counterculture movements, and the foundations of the emerging computer industry. In response to the devastating 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, Niven published his short story, "Not Long Before the End", which established a world where magic was a violently consumed resource. His 1978 follow-up, "The Magic Goes Away", formalized this concept, naming the non-renewable natural resource as Mana. Game developers quickly integrated this mechanic, inadvertently injecting an environmentalist critique into interactive fantasy franchises.
Andrew Roberts articulates this layered history through a cryptic network of sculptural objects, digital animations, and poems. If Niven channeled his concern about the oil crisis into fantasy, Roberts asks how we must continue this dialogue today. Faced with the exploitation of human bodies and the relentless mining of rare minerals that feed the tech industry, how can we use environmental fantasies to accurately name the digital as a fundamentally material process?
Vanitas (R), 2022.
4K digital animation, color, sound, 30fps.
Loop.
Vanitas (G), 2022.
4K digital animation, color, sound, 30fps.
Loop.
Vanitas (B), 2022.
4K digital animation, color, sound, 30fps.
Loop.
Necromancer, Installation view at House of Chappaz, Barcelona, 2022.
Excalibur Resources Ltd. (The sun was warm and bright, and here they sat on the biggest corpse in the world), 2022. Digital prints on aluminium cutouts. 120 × 210 cm
—
47 1⁄4 × 82 1⁄2 in.
Alien Metals Ltd., 2022. Digital prints on aluminium cutouts.
43 × 66 cm
—
17 × 26 in.
Silver Viper Minerals, 2022. Digital prints on aluminium cutouts. 440 × 90 cm
—
15 3⁄4 × 35 1⁄2 in.
Harvest Gold Corporation, 2022. Digital prints on aluminium cutouts,
40 × 100 cm
—
15 3⁄4 × 39 1⁄4 in.
Commander Resources Ltd. (red), 2022. Digital print on aluminium cutout and stainless steel bolts.
45 × 35 cm —
17 ¾
× 13 3⁄4 in.
Commander Resources Ltd. (purple), 2022. Digital print on aluminium cutout and stainless steel bolts.
45 × 35 cm — 17 ¾ × 13 3⁄4 in.
Commander Resources Ltd. (blue), 2022. Digital print on aluminium cutout and stainless steel bolts.
45 × 35 cm — 17 ¾ × 13 3⁄4 in.
Commander Resources Ltd. (green), 2022. Digital print on aluminium cutout and stainless steel bolts.
45 × 35 cm — 17 ¾ × 13 3⁄4 in.
Commander Resources Ltd. (yellow), 2022. Digital print on aluminium cutout and stainless steel bolts.
45 × 35 cm — 17 ¾ × 13 3⁄4 in.
Commander Resources Ltd.
(blue, purple, red, yellow and green), Installation view at House of Chappaz, Valencia, 2022.
Necromancer, Installation view at House of Chappaz, Barcelona, 2022.
Necromancer, Installation view at House of Chappaz, Valencia, 2022.