Max Russell
Reddam House
DON’T THINK TWICE
Time-Based Forms
Coding in Python on laptop, webcam, TV
As technology integrates itself within all aspects of human life through social media platforms and the like, the notion of a 'digital identity' has steadily become more elaborate. This has given rise to global concerns about the loss of privacy through surveillance by governments and other controlling structures. My body of work is an interactive mirror that represents these forces by reconstructing the environment in various digital forms and continuously surveying your movements. We wilfully ignore the danger to our privacy and freedom posed by these social platforms, as our comfortable dependence on these digital constructions has taught us to not think twice about it.
My artmaking practice has been influenced by the study and interpretation of the following artists: MC Escher, Daniel Rozin.
Marker's Commentary
This low-fi Body of Work has been created by building a uniquely developed program that interacts with the audience as they view the screen to generate a visual sequence that amalgamates real-time and film imagery based on popular culture, politics and the cult of spectatorship. The assembled images fabricate an experimental narrative that is non sequitur and conveys the haptic nature of televisual images found in popular culture. The intentional, low-quality pixelated images employ propagandist aesthetics and weave a metanarrative of self and government influence with the image stitching created from the live feed generated by the camera. This submission innovatively weaves the images of society with those of the audience challenging the viewer to consider what and how they view and consume images in a contemporary society.
