3DoF - A work in progress

"But the shadows of stranger faces lurk here, in the Instagram Face’s figural hybridity, racial ambiguity, clay-like sculptural thingness, animal features, blank sublimity, eerie layeredness, and, of course, in its origin point and favored playground: the internet." - from “Stranger Faces” by Namwali Serpell

In the current era of the digital revolution, we find ourselves at the cusp of the Self as the dominant currency in the social economy. The increasing power behind big data and algorithmic manipulations has led to the rise of the eternally optimising self locked in the pursuit of increasing influence and ultimately social power.

We have exalted the virtual human icon that biological humans are increasingly using to orient their striving. This work is a comment on self-surveillance, self-optimisation and the expanding state of self-idolatry that is a product of the algorithmic mechanisms feeding the myth of our identities. We are being moulded by corporate interest to mine our sense of self and to continuously invent and reinvent in a cycle as vicious and cannibalistic as a snake eating its own tail. With every contortion, there is a transaction and a promise of being one step closer to perfection.

A work in 3 parts - a montage curated in collaboration with @garethphillips, an interactive AR component and a deep fake video piece - 3 Degrees of Freedom was created in collaboration with Ling Ang and commissioned for PHOTO 2022 International Festival of Photography. The work was installed in 2 outdoor locations: Alpha 60 and Supernormal on Flinders Ln, Melbourne, Australia, from 29 April - 22 May, 2022.