SJSU Art Galleries Tuesday Night Lecture: Lua Vollaard

An acclaimed weekly lecture series brings in artists, designers, and critical theorists from around the world, broadening the students’ experiential base and complementing local offerings. All lectures and exhibitions are open to the general public free of charge. Unless otherwise indicated, all events are in person on Tuesday evenings from 5-6pm, SJSU Art Building 133.

Lua Vollaard

Microchips underpin over 70% of global GDP and have profoundly reshaped the geopolitical, economic, and bodily conditions of contemporary life. Blood from a Stone: The Art History of the Microchip uses art history to offer an investigative lens onto the microchip, from its military origins through its dependence on women’s labour, into the present era of AI expansionism and geopolitical fragmentation. Punctuated by a 50-year distraction of consumer computing, the military origins of the microchip are once again determining the technologies’ future.

Drawing on studio visits, museum collections, restricted production facilities, and archival research, the lecture presents works by artists who have anticipated, resisted, and reframed dominant narratives around technological development. The lecture traces photolithography — the stone-etching process by which microchips are made — to its photographic and lithographic origins, two art technologies that are recognized as artistic technologies. It proposes that artists are often better equipped than economists or diplomats to press blood from a stone: to surface what geopolitical opacity, material scarcity, and forgotten labour conceal.