Anne de Vries is a Dutch artist working on the border of digital photography and other media like video and sculpture. De Vries is interested in how our understanding of reality is influenced by new media. In a world where contradictory information is often carefully separated, Vries' reconnects these paradoxical elements as raw material in his work, assessing how matter and information are constantly impacting one another. The works by Anne de Vries offer access to our increasing entanglement with technology – its material and symbolic origins, its influence on our sense of social reality, its socio-political implications and its future potentials. From the mines, energy plants and factories, where the hardware basis of information technologies comes into being, to brand names, advertising images, product displays, personal use and ultimately – piles of toxic waste – commodities undergo a variety of state changes throughout complex ecological cycles. What does it take for a commodity to live, and what are the ecological principles of art?