Hayden Johnson-De Silva
Wyndham College
AYPON (ARE YOU PRIVILEGED, OR NOT?)
Photomedia
Chiffon print, small printed book
Humans are so involved with technology that we let our lives be run by it. As technology is controlled by a sequence of 1s and 0s, for my body of work I changed all of the numbers to binary to produce a simple spread of black and white inverted images. The work represents humanity’s toxic relationship with technology as well as showing how alike we all are, as each person photographed has a different nationality. My intent was to highlight that, while society attempts to define us by numbers, a number does not define who we are as people.
My artmaking practice has been influenced by the study and interpretation of the following artists: Annie Leibovitz, Nick Ut, Flora Borsi, Dorothea Lange, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Lewis Hine, Kevin Carter, Alecia Beth Moore (Pink), René Magritte, Tom Hussey.
Marker's Commentary
AYPON (are you privileged or not?) explores the notion that individuality and social position can define and determine your privilege in modern society. This multi-layered Body of Work presents digitised visual data across a veiled banner, book construction and documented images from the profiles assembled in a programmed website. The collected personal information produces a score from a wide and diverse community of adults. This information, defined by skills, class, education, gender & racial position produces a binary code from a self-generated program. The inverted black and white portraits are intentionally clinical in appearance, which on first impression disguise the characteristics of the people included in this social survey. This sophisticated Body of Work strategically merges technology, humanity, design and social identity over a compelling selection of platforms.
