Project log :: Production Grant 2026 with V2 + Marginal

2026-03-12

today i stumbled across this artist Becky Howland who is working on a very similar idea, just 2026 minus 40 years! i am so excited! her work is amazing. such a nice refence :)))

https://medium.com/moma/power-house-becky-howland-at-moma-ps1-then-and-now-584b55f37117

https://www.contemporaryartlibrary.org/project/becky-howland-at-247365-new-york-14615

 

2026-03-02

this week i finally managed to adjust and develop the machine to a point where i could smell a bit of ozone in my studio. i was very excited! a capacitor and a few minutes later i could see and hear the first sparks:

up this day the progress was a bit ... slower than i expected, because i kept running into issues where the two spinning discs are too far away, then the pick ups are falling apart, i accidentally broke the acrylic prototype base, a lack of money to replace parts immediately, and a bunch of other occurances that did slow me down a lot. nevertheless, i am very happy about this state, though i need to adjust the time schedule i set for myself.

2026-02-21

the alu hinges work muchmuchmuch better. still wonky, but that's to be expected from a thin structure like this with relatively large leverage. that being said, i do think i should make the arms shorter. i will also try to design new 3D-printed standoffs for the joints that have rubber washers embedded, so that it doesn't change away from the set angle, when the leverage gets too heavy.

i'm excited to assemble everything and make a real first prototype, once the influence machine discs arrive. 

 

2026-02-17

feedback round with andrei and sabina

andrei says: maybe try to not get sucked in conceptually too much into complex networks, the connection to networks is already there with the visual reference to the transmission line towers

instead of referencing the body explicitly, andrei recommends to just leave it at the humanoid stick figure, and instead talk about making electricity visible and tangible in the gallery space

interesting moment would be when some discharges in one places would actually cause or accelerate the discharge in another place

sabina knows there is one or two books about why the high voltage transmission line towers look somewhat like human-ish shape ...

2026-02-16

screws arrived! i can finally assemble the first prototype.

... wip ...

2026-02-15

i finally found some resonating and actually interesting theoretical perspectives that talk about infrastructures <—> bodies

Maria Kaika et. al.: Infrastructured bodies: Between violence and fugitivity
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03091325241232156  

Andueza, Davies, Loftus, Schling: The body as infrastructure
https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/281249/1/281249.pdf 

Ross Exo Adams: Becoming-Infrastructural
https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/positions/149606/becoming-infrastructural  


-> what is the social dimension of (electric) infrastructure? another interesting take could also be: infrastructure as a social phenomenon. 

2026-02-11

i couldn’t be more happy with how the connectors from 4mm sheet alu metal have turned out:

2026-02-10

PCB design for the influence machine head

2026-01-25

better design for the hinges/joints — from 4mm aluminium for more rigidity

2026-01-21

my big batch of profiles finally arrived!

the sculpture prototype has no arms yet … too wobbly with the PLA, but immediately has a kind of body-ish presence. (my colleague says "he" is intimating. i think that is a good thing.)

2025-12-20

i am designing some 3D-printable hinges/joints for the 45x45 wooden profiles that i bought. they will take more time to arrive. but i am very happy about the material choice.

let’s see if PLA is sturdy enough.

2025-12-20

getting a bit more clarity

i think this project will have a very long tail in terms of how many iterations or additions i want to develop from this. because my initial proposal is so broad, i can easily make a small series.

i feel that it makes sense to me, in the first instance to focus on the infrastructure of electricity with the high voltage transmission towers. i feel like they are vaguely resembling our human shape, but not everyone i told about it has agreed with me. so i guess my brain might be having a anthropomorphic bias. hmm! nevertheless, i find this surprisingly profound ... how this super massive, high tech engineered infrastructure has this rather archaic appearance. i think one interesting resulting observation of this is how the Stromnetz (electric grid / network) is primarily social in character. this is true for sure, whether or not one agrees on the resemblance of humanoid shape (or a golem of some sorts) and the transmission towers.

2025-12-15

init()

this is a initial map of interest of the production grant. it's much more vague than i had felt when i applied to the production grant. it's a bit scary to realize the thing that you applied with, will need to change (or narrow down) quite drastically in order to be able to be realized / materialized. hm! i'm curious where this is going.

link to the miro board: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVGcTqLmw=/

 

some feedback that i got:

"made me think a bit of these old telegraphs that work with electric shocks:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/dqnYXUzdMVEBn1HW9

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Sw3UQUcWGBnYaLVd9 "

Infrastructure of a Metaphor (working title)

This is a project under development by Lotta Stöver in collaboration with V2 - Lab for the Unstable Media (NL) and Marginal (RO).

 

Work / concept description in development:

This work inspects infrastructures as systems that are non-reducable to objects of technopolitical rationality, and instead presents and creates an insight to a different infrastructural layer, where instead of a circulatory regime of energy and matter, we can imagine a circulation of irrational and poetic expressions. Infrastructure becomes in this sense more of a mesostructure, or perhaps some sort of intrastructure, or at times maybe a metastructure. This attempt to reread and recreate infrastructures opens up networks of electric grids to become sites where electricity beyond a means to an end can be imagined and materialized: Electricity not as not pure exergy, but as something that is both driving, influencing, enabling, limiting and responding to the desires, dreams, and nightmares of our everyday life; maybe an infrastructure that is both hard and soft at the same time. At the core of this work lies an aversion to see infrastructures as a progress indicator of so-called civilized societies, largely being branded as a prefigured future that comes be realized in the present. Instead, this work attempts to approximate in particular electric infrastructures in their historicity as collective reflections and extensions of deeply embedded archaic human needs and desires.

This work is also staged as an experiment about how a media art installation in itself can become an infra/intra/meta-structure that facilitates experiences of both political and poetic, material and symbolic gestures such as thought, reflection, fun, fear, rejection, joy and pain: This material metaphor is the attempt to engineer a configuration of matter that makes those rather cosmological notions of energies tangible.

( It's a just a first draft, not broad enough, not proof-read and re-written yet, still too one-dimensional ... but maybe gives a very narrow rough insight into where it can conceptually go )

 

to do

[ ] ... apply to exhibition open calls

[ ] 2025-04-19: intermediary documentation

[ ] 2025-04-17: test setup in larger space: try different configurations

[ ] 2025-04-17: make six high voltage stick figure machines

[ ] 2025-03-07: write outlook

[ ] 2025-02-25: write a more concrete work in progress description / prototype concept

[ ] 2025-03-01: assemble and finalize first prototype

[ ] 2025-02-27: design motor driver PCB + EMI shield

[ ] 2025-02-27: design mounts for: motor + discs + pick up + capacitor

[x] check with new hinges

[x] design head PCB

[x] design adapter for 100mm "hand" stainless steel ball

[x] design new hinge from 4mm bent alu

[x] first prototype (note: didn't finish, because already without arms not stable enough...)

 

 

References so far

Update

This OG text seems actually much more interesting
https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155522 

 

Maria Kaika et. al.: Infrastructured bodies: Between violence and fugitivity
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03091325241232156  

>>> Andueza, Davies, Loftus, Schling: The body as infrastructure
https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/281249/1/281249.pdf 

Ross Exo Adams: Becoming-Infrastructural
https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/positions/149606/becoming-infrastructural