200,000 hours a day
In 200,000 hours a day, Gourault shows how self-driving cars depend not only on smart technology, but also on rare materials from deep in the earth.
The work is a multi-screen video. Each screen shows a different part of the process: from mining in harsh conditions to the training of cars in detailed computer worlds. These virtual environments are called “digital twins” — copies of real cities made inside a computer. The title comes from the company Cruise, which says its cars do 200,000 hours of driving practice each day — in a digital world without night or traffic. Gourault wants us to think about how companies use more and more time, energy, and materials, often without limits. He also femtophotography, a special camera technique that can capture light moving — normally too fast for the human eye. The installation shows how modern machines grow faster and faster, but this speed has a high cost. Even the graphics card (the part of a computer that creates images) becomes like the camera of today’s world: not just showing reality, but building it.
