The Human Body: Digitized

The purpose of my body of work for the post-human body assignment was to attempt to draw a connection between the present perks of technology in illustrating the psychosis that one can go through while switching digital identities. As my piece was evolving, I became more, and haunted by the image, and conceptually the accessibility, and effortless ability for anyone to take on a different identity. It truly is daunting, and yet haunting that our own digital natives will one day be a part of a world that through technological evolution will not be a safe place. I opted to do a self-portrait of both myself, and including my husband to be. The faces are our own identities, but virtually we have the ability to change, and evolve through the digital world. For my final project, I was hoping to create a body of work that displays the ambiguity, and the anonymity that our technological devices allow us to have in the futuristic and technologically world. I was inspired by the readings for this past week on the ability to select, and create a variety of 'selves' via the development of one's own avatar, and opted to juxtapose that with the outmoded technology of communications---such as letter writing, landline telephones, records, and newspapers. The composition aesthetically included consistent faceless models that hold their own faces hold her own faces in an aesthetic, yet haunting manner. I wanted to use the raw, and pure texture of the metal wire to be the application in which we are able to transport from one identity to another. The similar currents of background are to represent the walls of the existing virtual parallel universes that over 72% of the US citizens over the age of 3 partake in via video games, and social media access---as documented in a 2010 via Katherine M. Hertlein’s Digital Dwelling: Technology in Couple and Family Relationships.