Nimrod Astarhan

 Memristive Bridge

Named after self-organizing electric systems, and the result of research examining colonial and indigenous bridge-building techniques, Memristive Bridge envisions a computational paradigm rooted in stochastic chaos and ecological symbiosis, rejecting the extractive, deterministic logic of modern technology. Cultural techniques catalyzing the project include a collection of archive photographs documenting logging practices in the Pacific North West by Darius and Tabitha Kinsey. The images depict how the landscape turns into infrastructure, as freshly cut logs are used haphazardly to build a bridge for a train to pass and transfer other logs -- the ouroborial colonial extractivist logic crisply symbolized. Other cultural techniques taken as inspiration include Memristors, a theoretical electrical component that acts as a resistance whose value can be changed and retained based on the electrical charge it has previously experienced. A resistor with a memory.

By employing copper—a sustainable, cyclical material responsive to solar energy—the project creates a slow, non-linear system where environmental fluctuations (sunlight, conductivity shifts) generate adaptive, ever-unresolving "blueprints." These outputs resist the immediacy of digital interfaces, instead demanding patience and contemplation of digital technology’s embedded biases, as well as its entanglement with colonial-capitalist infrastructures. The work challenges AI’s illusory novelty and green tech’s hidden harms, proposing instead a rewilded computational ethos: one that embraces noise, decay, and human-nonhuman collaboration as core principles.

Shown in Don’t Make Photographs, Think Them curated by Jan Tichy. Link: https://chicagocluster.org/dont-make-photographs-think-them/