CHIP is a mixed reality sculpture comprising two interconnected parts – a white stone column and a small digital I-form revealed in extended reality (XR). The minimalist plinth is both a sculptural object and a support for sculpture, an interlocutor and agent of meaning. Carved in Cararra, an ancient stone, the column is crowned by a gold barcode: a gilded portal that is scanned to release an I-form using a mobile phone and the artist’s bespoke app. The figure rises on top, a singular text or primordial totem, and a classical pedestal-bust for the computational era.

The virtual 'chip' I-form is carved from the codified ancient heartwood of a giant tree from a buried forest in Aotearoa New Zealand, carbon-dated to over 45,000 years. Standing as a universal and personal symbol, it embodies a fragment of time and existence in 3D pixels. Forged by artificial intelligence (AI), this micro-chip serves as both interface and artifact, once hidden in the Earth and now a digital echo, extending the roots of evolution to the datasphere. Intersecting ancestral and technological domains, CHIP navigates the thresholds between physical absence and perceptual presence.

AI-AR Sculpture launched August 2025
Gill Gatfield, Habeas Corpus
NARS Foundation New York City
International Artist Residency Exhibition Season III