Aluminium,Beauty, incorruptibility, lightness and abundance, the metal of the future

“We have been up all night, my mates and I, beneath the hum of the microwave transmitter, electricity piped in through high-voltage aluminium conductors. Transported here by motors, alloy rims with deep polished lips, fat pipes and chrome spinners, bright as our souls. Like our machines, we are ruled by the internal glow of electric hearts. Trampling underfoot, the earth, we wear down the heels of violent Chinese pirates: Nike-faking factories slaving along the Cambodian border, we have been discussing right up to the limits of our programming and scrawling across filthy keyboards to create these demented writings.”

"Aluminium" is a futurist graphic book and film about the social history of aluminium. In 2009 it was a 100 years since Marinetti set out the Futurist manifesto in which advocated the consumption of metal bolts and engine oil to turn men into machines. Marinetti believed in speed, machines and violence, values that for him were epitomised in the recent invention of aluminium. Drawing on archival footage from the aluminium industry.

Harwood derives algorithms from the Futurist Manifestos to create the books cells by recording only the differences between key video frames. Caption texts are gathered up and edited together by issue crawlers as they search across the Internet. "Aluminium" takes the futurist logic of the 20th Century and turns it back upon its self.

Aluminium Beauty, incorruptibility, lightness and abundance, the metal of the future from Harwood YoHa on Vimeo.

download aluminium.pdf