Thesis: We are living in an era dominated by smartphones and their pitfalls- the constant distraction from one’s immediate surrounding and the people within them. Everything today is instantaneous and the expectations of immediate gratification/knowledge is assumed. With such advancement in resources, it is rather ironic that we actually have lost some basic skills of communicating and forming personal relationships for future generations. People, myself included, rely on text messaging, snap chat and other social media posts to stay connected as an equivalent replacement for face-to-face contact with people. Whether it’s the constant click of the ‘refresh’ button on your Facebook feed or your best friend’s newest instagram post, we crave to be stimulated by something ‘new’, and see ourselves involved in that ‘new’ post. Unfortunately this hunger comes at a price: our social skills and our isolation.
My research: The relationship with technology (especially my generation) has been a subject that I have been fascinated with, and I have done a tremendous amount of research in evaluating this relation over the year. For this post-humanism project, I am continuing to evaluate the technology’s role in communication, with a commentary that it has become a distraction. One could argue that we are becoming self-obsessed, and insatiable by the newest information due to technology’s advancements. Technology is becoming a crutch and a handicap for the upcoming population, and we are hiding behind our devices instead of being present in the moment. I took a course last semester that focused specifically on technology in art called “Creative and Critical Approaches to New Media’ that examined how new media influenced the disciplinary lenses of music, visual, art, design and marketing. It evaluated how technology is changing art, since computers and their advancement hasn’t change art, but rather enabled more to happen. We have higher resolutions, longer lengths of films, and more color variety, more tools, options and new ways to stimulate people’s senses. This new vocabulary within the art world is constantly expanding, and today we are seeing a big breakdown in how people use traditional media and performative installations. The art making experience and art genres are becoming blurred with new ‘mixed’ media, just like our daily interaction with technology versus interaction with individuals are interconnecting. This second project will be a series of daily life scenes with a text overlay that comments on our lack of recognition of our immediate surroundings, and the isolating behavior caused by our dependence on technology as a species. The scenes will have an incredibly rich and saturated color palette that suggests a vibrant, lively scene like a digitized image, but will appear almost artificial, zombie-like or robotic because of the lack of presence and actual interaction that is occurring.