The sociopolitical landscape is in flux—public discourse and social conditions are being displaced by the motives and permutations of a pervasive spirit—a phenomenon contouring not only the making of culture but also the standardization of work, education, thought, and action—something that Bernard Stielger refers to as the ‘proletarianization of knowledge’. This circumstance made permissible by our captivity with the technological (the structural convergence of digital technology and the mediating force of design) is a subject of immediate relevance and importance.
   Our indivisible relationship with the technological embodies the materialized idea of productivism through which the technological is configured. We now find ourselves altered not only by how the technological constructs worlds but also by its modes of observation—cognitive and perceptual, as postulated by Tony Fry.
    By recognizing the projected symbolisms, satisfiers, (infra)structures, material conditions, and even, inertias, one is compelled to question and reflect on the integration, (inter)dependence, and dynamism of our bond with the technological—a phenomenon that inflects our everyday and profoundly impacts our future.
    Trevor Embury’s inquiry and body of work facilitate investigations into how design programs within a techno-social system and its effects. Specifically, the ways design acts to (re)configure—serving to construct or uphold values, power, and control (legacies) through strategic mechanisms such as visuality, language, and environments—in the broader context of how the programming is inscribed within the material and aesthetic dimensions (or the conditions for mediation) and the ways the technological acts to abstract, reveal, intersect, unlock, instrumentalize, produce, circulate, and inscribe these transactions.
    His work aims to problematize, speculate, and visualize notions of agency, congruency, history, instrumentalism, and mediation, in an effort to reflect on and evaluate how these aspects affect social conditions, ecological systems, and ultimately, our future—we within the (re)configured world.
    His work includes printed matter, writing, photography, video, and site-specific installations and should be regarded as a means rather than an end, providing new perspectives on reified status, and whereby critical inquiry leads to “irreplaceable capabilities for thinking and acting well in the artificial.” (Dilnot)

Image: Étienne-Gaspard Robertson’s Phantasmagoria. Illustration by Moreau, first published in Magasin Pittoresque, 1849

His practice is situated within the domain of inquiry-led, creation-based research—connecting artistic and academic discourse through scholarly examination, visual exploration, and critical reflection. His methods and perspectives engage critical discourse in fields ranging from cultural studies to ecological thinking rendered through the lens of graphic design.