portfolio : media portraits

This work continues my exploration of individual identity in contemporary American culture. These portraits have been mediated through a variety of electronic devices, including still cameras, video cameras, cell phones, televisions, and computers. By retaining clear evidence of their travels from one electronic source to another, these works lay bare the extent to which we are, consistent with the writing of N. Katherine Hayles, creating a post-human identity in electronic media.

These portraits acknowledge Hayles' assertion that "it is no longer possible to distinguish meaningfully between the biological organism and the information circuits in which it is enmeshed." The artwork greets this realization with a strong sense of ambiguity and paradox. On the one hand, the telltale color and texture of flickering lights on the screen demonstrates the extent to which we present ourselves as "surface," and the fact that the images are many times removed from the original source conveys a sense of detachment, isolation and confusion that is a hallmark of our post-human identity. On the other hand, the work acknowledges the allure and possibility inherent in a shift from a material body to a cyberspace body. For example, a post-human, cyborg existence might enhance our ability to survive in the face of serious environmental threats or to overcome race and gender differences.

In each of three portfolios, the portraits have been mediated through multiple electronic devices. One portfolio focuses on portraits captured from random television broadcasts. Two others are comprised of self-portraits, in one case blending imagery of myself with random television broadcasts. In each case, the result is fragmented and disconcerting, indicating that our identities are awkwardly pieced together from disparate electronic media sources, and that the pace and complexity of the media are doing violence to our ability to form a workable and healthy concept of the self. At the same time, the vibrancy of the images suggests that we have the capacity for growth and change, even in a complex and mediated environment.

These portfolios are fundamentally a product of current technology and a musing on the role of the individual in contemporary culture. However, the work also contains clear references to other historical moments, including impressionism, pointillism, and cubism. The digital artifacts call attention to the way our brains form a recognizable whole out of a network of separate units, in much the same way that impressionism and pointillism did with brushstrokes or patterns of dots. In the tradition of cubism, the images expose more than one vantage point at a time and exist on the very edge between representation and abstraction.

By revealing the artifice and threats associated with a post-human, media-based identity and at the same time reveling in its allure and sense of possibility, these portfolios represent a case study on the ambiguity of being alive at the beginning of the 21st Century.