In How Media Count, Simone Jones assembles a collection of works which probe “counting media” from historical, material, and metaphysical perspectives. Through photography, video, performance, printmaking, and sculpture, Jones thinks through and with the paradoxes that arise when we attempt to reconcile abstraction with experience. Two physical prompts provide entry to this inquiry, through which Jones examines the development of precision and standardization in the language and history of machining: the surface plate and the meter bar. The surface plate is a flat plane which serves as the primary horizontal reference within machine practice. All other precision machine tools are created from the surface plate, a fundamental baseline for dimensional measurement. The “Meter Bar #27” was the US standard of all length measurement until its replacement with a wavelength in 1960. The “Meter Bar #27” could not have been fabricated without the invention of the surface plate, and can be considered a material manifestation of an abstract quantity.

In this second iteration of How Media Count, Sydney Losser (’27) and Professor Jacqueline Wernimont join Jones’ installation with additional elements that focus on the long history of counting media and textile practices in particular. This will include a hand re-created and operational woven memory core, several historical examples of the memory core that Jones’ show calls back to, and other textiles that count.