empire | portfolio of visual artist alexandra crouwers

Tools

Various media. Please allow the 3d models some time to load. The models can be viewed in full screen by using the button in the right bottom corner (visible when hovering over the image). Below: Tools (v004), glb, 18MB, 2025.

Tools is an ongoing project that examines the evolution of tools, artefacts and objects as carriers of meaning through time. Bringing together elements of deep history, contemporary technology and speculative futures, Tools explores how material culture shapes and reflects human existence by bridging archaeology, digital media and artistic practice.

Inspired by art historian George Kubler’s notion of artefacts across media and time forming a ‘visible portrait of collective identity’ (‘The Shape of Time’, 1962), the project reflects on how objects, whether ancient or modern, are entangled with cultural narratives, technological change and both human and non-human agency.

Some of the earliest known tools suggest a dual function, merging practical and symbolic use. ‘Tools’ continues this lineage, treating digital and physical artefacts not just as instruments of utility, but as records of human thought, adaptation and expression. Taking it further, the latest ‘Tools’ include artefacts of non-human origin: spruce bark beetle traced bark, and fossilised traces of early life.

The project has materialised in various forms: scenes (chapters) in digitally animated films, infinite video loops, virtual interactive sculptures, an emoji proposal, and prints.

Tools (v003) and Tools (v004)

Glb, 11,5 MB, 3d lidar scan, 2025 (003).
Glb, 18 MB, 3d lidar scan, 2025 (004).

Tools (v003 – below) and (v004 – at the top of this page) are digital interactive sculptures: 3D-scanned assemblies bringing together various objects that are part of my artist’s studio.

Tools (v003) combines a 6,000-year-old Neolithic stone tool, a cassowary bone chisel, bark covered with spruce bark beetle tracks, a decorated animal rib of unknown origin, and a computer mouse with a camouflage print – its cable tying it all together.

Notably, the digital object is part of part of the Museum of Stone Tools, under the section ‘contemporary art’. With many thanks to professor Mark Moore for the interesting conversation that came from the inclusion of Tools (v003) in his museum.

(v003) was shown in the online exhibition ‘Down the Silicon Meadow‘ on common.garden. It was minted as an nft on the Tezos blockchain in January 2025: visit (v003) on objkt.com.

Tools prehistoric art alexandra crouwers digital art 3d scan video installation berlin

Above: Tools (v003) as a videoloop rotating slowly in the exhibition space of Office Impart, Berlin, 2025.

Tools (v004) is a 3d scan of a fragment of a mammoth bone, an iPhone with a broken screen, a neolithic stone tool, yarn and needles, a pin with text set in Ips typography and cables. They are tied together with blue cloth-covered electrical wire, merging into one digital artefact.

(v004) was minted as an nft on the Tezos blockchain in February 2025. Visit it on objkt.com.

Such digital ‘sculptures’ raise a number of fascinating questions about materiality and durability. In some ways, these artefacts are less fragile than tangible objects: for instance, they can be examined in much more detail than art objects that are on display in museum cases. Digital objects do not have a fixed scale or location: they can potentially be summoned everywhere.

Stone Tool emoji proposal

PDF, 2020

In June 2020, I submitted two proposals for new emoji – Stone Tool and Hand Stencil – to be added to the expanding digital pictogram vocabulary. Unfortunately, Unicode, the organization responsible for the standardization of digital symbols, declined both proposals in its first selection rounds.

Unicode adds a selection of emoji each year, based on incoming proposals. Anyone can submit an idea for an emoji. The total selection procedure can take up to a year from submission to implementation. Many devices and apps use their own design sets for emoji, so the proposal is more a conceptual defense than a design challenge.

The Stone Tool and Hand Stencil proposals were deemed to be used not frequently enough for implementation, although I argued their conceptual merits would outweigh those, since especially the prehistoric cave art of hand stencils are the first examples of pictograms.