Domingues, P., 2025.

Semiconductor Device N.2, Brooch, 2024 Monocrystalline silicone and steel 9 x 5 x 1 cm (3 9/16 x 1 15/16 x 3/8 inches) Mary B. Jackson Fund 2024.62.1 https://risdmuseum.org/art-design/collection/semiconductor-device-n2-brooch-2024621

Digital technologies straddle the human and the natural and although digital networks may seem immaterial, they are in fact physical extracts from the earth. In returning to materials that are increasingly mined to sustain digital societies, such as silica, my aspiration was that the work should highlight and call attention to our ever-larger consumption of the mineral world. I specifically concentrate on drilling, faceting, fragmenting and then reconstructing a piece of monocrystalline silicon, a silica-based and grown lab material with semiconductor properties. Since it is used worldwide in discrete components and integrated circuits in modern, digital and electronic equipment my intention was to bring the hidden reality of computers to the front line of the human bodies, exploring jewellery as medium capable of conducting new ways of acknowledging human extractive enforcements towards the non-human world of stones and minerals.