My on-going practice aligns mostly within the social commentary genre, with the intention to provide and explore commentary on society today. Currently I have been providing commentary on and exploring my generation’s overwhelming obsession with self-image that borders on narcissism, their online personas they portray themselves as and subsequent false realities. This has led to several recurring themes within my practice of The Uncanny, how it links to the rise of artificial intelligence and transhumanity, as well as who owns what we upload to the internet and social media.
A key reference point to my practice the past couple of years has been The Social Photo (2019) in particular the following passage “The infamous ‘New Yorker’ cartoon joked that “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” But then, as the story continues, social media became commercialized as it went mainstream; it got normal, and, along the way, spontaneous anonymity became replaced by a demand for consistent identity. Now that everyone knows you’re a dog, it’s difficult to be anything else.” (Jurgenson, N. 2019; 87) this has made be question how social media monopolies do with our data, our very identity, and whether this data becomes an entity in its own right, an ‘immortal’ online self. More recently Digital Uncanny (2019) has aptly tied into my practice and mirrors my own questions and commentary on what belongs to us with Ravetto-Biagioli writing the following:
“The more we interface (participate) with digital-profiling technologies as we go about our increasingly screen-based lives, the more details and “texture” we provide, willingly or not to our profiles – profiles that come to identify us but do not belong to us.”
Ravetto-Biagioli, K. (2019; 52)
In the first module I produced a series of images called Transhumane: Immortality of Self (2019) which explored the notion of the virtual self, and the potential future of the virtual self becoming an artificial intelligence in it’s own right, this subsequently led to me questioning the very reality of the stuff we upload onto the internet, and the subsequent development during Informing Contexts of a series called An Authentic Lie? (2020), which sought to communicate my thoughts around social media and photography as being non “authentic”, a lie of perfected curated manifestations of the social media feeds.
References
Figures
Figure 1 Murray, J. (2019) from the series Transhumane: Immortality of Self
Figure 2 Murray, J. (April, 2020) Who’s that behind the mask? from the series ‘An Authentic Lie?’
Bibliography
Jurgenson, N. (2019) The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media, pg 87. London; Verso
Ravetto-Biagioli, K. (2019) Digital Uncanny. pg 52. New York; Oxford University Press.
Jasmine Murray Photography 