Mother Mayfly

Artist's Statement

Ephemera:

1. a mayfly, esp one of the genus Ephemera
2. something transitory or short-lived

Mother Mayfly is, then, that which births ephemera¹. In so doing, she articulates division. Mother Mayfly explores what occurs between physical-digital, fun-serious, human-computer, fleeting-lasting, literal-metaphoric, and local-global. She is a computer, but has a pull-cord instead of a screen (physical-digital). Her ease of use welcomes play, but her children are poems that evoke the dirty realism of life (fun-serious). Poems written by laureates and beats appear next to those written by an artificial intelligence (human-computer). Verse that has lasted since antiquity shares a mother with lines that exist only on the crinkle-ready strips of paper that fade in the sun (fleeting-lasting). A cherry board horizontally divides Mother Mayfly (literal-metaphoric). It comes from a tree grown among generations of community-based farmers, but it also holds up plastic imported from Asia, code sourced from all of Siliconia, and sits beneath a hole that connects to a power grid fuelled equally by natural gas and coal (local-global). Her domain is evanescent, but she is queen.

1. Her name neither relates to the phrase "Mother may I?" nor comments on the subordination inherent in the human-computer divide.