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Liz Glynn — Moore's Law
Liz Glynn

Moore's Law

2017

Moore's Law presents six stacks of stainless steel forklift pallets arranged in a strict exponential sequence: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 units high. The progression mirrors the foundational principle of computing articulated by Gordon Moore in 1965, which predicted that processing power would double at regular intervals, compounding infinitely until physical limits intervene. Liz Glynn renders this abstract theorem in blunt industrial material, translating the invisible logic of technological acceleration into something occupying actual space, casting actual shadows, demanding actual reckoning with scale. The choice of the forklift pallet as a base unit is pointed. These are objects designed to move goods through supply chains, anonymous workhorses of global commerce that carry the material consequences of the digital economy Glynn is interrogating. In stainless steel, they are simultaneously elevated and estranged, stripped of their utilitarian context and recast as sculptural elements in a system that grows almost violently as the eye travels from the single pallet to the towering stack of thirty-two. The work does not moralize, but it does insist on visibility, forcing the viewer to stand inside a geometric truth that statistics and charts typically allow one to absorb at a comfortable remove. Produced in 2017, Moore's Law arrives at a moment when anxieties about exponential technological growth had migrated from specialist discourse into broad public consciousness. Glynn, whose practice consistently mines the intersection of labor, power structures, and historical systems, uses minimalist formal vocabulary to pose questions with genuinely open answers. For collectors, the work operates on multiple registers simultaneously, functioning as rigorous sculpture, as conceptual provocation, and as a durable meditation on the pace of change that feels no less urgent with each passing year.

Medium
Stainless steel forklift pallets in stacks of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32
Signed
Yes
Location
MASS MoCA

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About this work

Liz Glynn, Moore's Law, 2017

Moore's Law presents six stacks of stainless steel forklift pallets arranged in a strict exponential sequence: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 units high. The progression mirrors the foundational principle of computing articulated by Gordon Moore in 1965, which predicted that processing power would double at regular intervals, compounding infinitely until physical limits intervene. Liz Glynn renders this abstract theorem in blunt industrial material, translating the invisible logic of technological acceleration into something occupying actual space, casting actual shadows, demanding actual reckoning with scale. The choice of the forklift pallet as a base unit is pointed. These are objects designed to move goods through supply chains, anonymous workhorses of global commerce that carry the material consequences of the digital economy Glynn is interrogating. In stainless steel, they are simultaneously elevated and estranged, stripped of their utilitarian context and recast as sculptural elements in a system that grows almost violently as the eye travels from the single pallet to the towering stack of thirty-two. The work does not moralize, but it does insist on visibility, forcing the viewer to stand inside a geometric truth that statistics and charts typically allow one to absorb at a comfortable remove. Produced in 2017, Moore's Law arrives at a moment when anxieties about exponential technological growth had migrated from specialist discourse into broad public consciousness. Glynn, whose practice consistently mines the intersection of labor, power structures, and historical systems, uses minimalist formal vocabulary to pose questions with genuinely open answers. For collectors, the work operates on multiple registers simultaneously, functioning as rigorous sculpture, as conceptual provocation, and as a durable meditation on the pace of change that feels no less urgent with each passing year.

Medium
Stainless steel forklift pallets in stacks of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32
Year
2017
Signed
Hand-signed by the artist
Seen at
MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, United States

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