What happens if you reverse engineer the basic elements used to make commonplace items like an iPhone, a Starbucks cup, or a bicycle? Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta of Studio Drift, a Dutch art group, sought to find out by removing the components and representing them proportionally in cubes and prisms.

Their exhibition, Materialism, at the Shed in New York, urges visitors to leave culturally formed beliefs about different substances aside and look at the items with a newfound feeling of amazement.

Materialism is featured in another exhibition, Fragile Future, which is similarly obsessed with the material world, finding elegance in massive concrete blocks.

The five minivan-sized concrete blocks (dubbed "Drifters") in Fragile Future seem to float in the air, rotating and performing ballet that begins free-form before tracing particular forms around the observer. It's set to music by Anohni, a musician who's long been interested in environmental issues.

Materialism's sculptures, according to Nauta, are "deconstructions of everyday objects that we find interesting." Studio Drift wants us to recognize the connections between consumer goods and the societies that create them by reminding us that iPhones contain elements like nickel that are environmentally destructive to mine – as well as trace amounts of cobalt and tungsten, which have been linked to conflict mining. In a less world-historical sense, phones have evolved significantly.

When comparing the components of an iPhone 4S to those of a now-obsolete Nokia 3210, Nauta notices a huge difference in only 20 years. The major component of a Nokia phone is the circuitry, but the largest portion of an iPhone is specifically created glass.

"The function was more important at first," says Nauta of early-aughts phones. "The display was kept to a bare minimum. The physical connection used to be more significant, but today it's the visual connection that matters. There are several details: cobalt, mercury, and nickel from certain mines, to name a few. For our next project, we're going even further into it, adding an augmented layer so you can really delve inside the thing and learn more about the materials."

Although Apple claims to have phased out mercury in its devices in 2009, a spongy, kelly-green prism stands out from the mainly translucent or grayscale in Materialism's breakdown of a Nokia — a firm that previously sought to develop a tablet dubbed Mercury –

It seems odd, even radioactive in this setting.

The Internet, a single dark-gray block, could be the show's creepiest item. Nauta claims it's silicon. He computed the weight of all the electrons flowing across the internet on a given day in 2020 using the time-honored theory of E = MC2. What is the total? About 60 kg, up from 25 kilograms not long ago.

Many of these prisms are depictions of the materials rather than the actual materials. This is due to the finicky qualities of certain materials at ambient temperature, or their high cost, rather than their toxicity.

According to Nauta, the display ratios are more crucial. Take, for example, the Big Mac Menu.

He explains, "We kept it recognizable." "We could have gone to a molecular level, but we thought the fries, the sugar, the salt, the saturated fats, the pickle, and the straw could still be pointed out." It's fascinating since most people recognize it and correctly identify all of the blocks. So we have a logic in our heads that sees this hamburger and figures out how big the pickle block should be, which I find intriguing."

The Starbucks Cup is mainly water, much like the human body. When Nauta spends $5 for a cup of tea, he feels like he's been taken advantage of, but when he receives coffee with milk, he thinks it's worth it. ("But you're buying the same amount of water!" he argues.)

Once dismantled, this raises a slew of problems about how arbitrary human economics may be, ranging from human taste idiosyncrasies to the reality that the global coffee sector seems to be significantly more concerned with issues of fair labor standards than tea. The more processed something is, the more difficult it is for our brains to comprehend it.

The M16 and the AK-47, for example, are both geopolitical weapons. The AK-47, one of the most well-known Soviet products, has become a symbol of rightwing American liberty — it's a mini-cold war story.

According to Nauta, this Kalashnikov is a $500 instrument with steel rounds. The M16, on the other hand, is nearly a luxury item.

"The AK is made of wood, but in the United States, this high-grade polymer that's specifically developed for the M16 costs tens of thousands of dollars, and the bullets are nickel," he explains. "What makes these different war machines work the way they do?"

Then there's the bicycle, which, like the tulip, is a symbol of the Netherlands. Unlike the smartphone, most individuals can disassemble and repair it in their garage. Even analog technology, when stripped to its core, may reawaken a feeling of awe.

"Even when it rains or it's -15 degrees here, everyone rides their bike," Nauta explains. "Everyone knows how to change a tire or reinstall a chain on a bicycle. You go through three in a year in Amsterdam, and it becomes a piece of machinery that's simply a part of your existence. Even yet, it's hard to digest what you've gathered. "We live in an unusual world."

Thanks to Peter-Astrid Kane at The Guardian whose reporting provided the original basis for this story.