Net Work

2014 - 2016

Net Work considers mobile devices. It includes four still image series, Handheld, Mobile Friendly, Smartphone, and WhatApp?, plus Search, a section of documentary movies made from material derived from Internet sources. Net Work considers behaviours once restricted to the personal sphere that are now conducted under scrutiny. While a mobile device is convenient for many tasks, adoption transforms its user into an order of cyborg. Perhaps more problematic, government and commerce use it as a tracking device. It divulges a user’s preoccupations, predilections, finances, movements, politics and more. Nevertheless the enablement of the mobile device persuades people to accept these disclosures along with their involuntary status as cyborg.

The stills are generated by various post-photographic processes. The photo files in Handheld are subjected to an algorithm that causes the pixels to spread. Mobile Friendly images show app logos collaged onto street photographs. WhatApp? presents images of a mobile phone in a person’s hand. The phone’s screen remains unaltered but everything outside of it is pixilated.

Search movies are constructed from material found using Internet searches. To make Google Search: Why Don’t We, I entered the phrase ‘Why don’t we’ into a search box; the resultant texts play in sequence. In Missed Connections, texts from craigslist crawl across webcam portraits. 187Gangstersz is a string of episodes shot by prisoners from around the world. Smartphone is an animated gif built around the cell phone icon. Artificial Life presents images found using the search engine Tor. Its sound track is an agglomeration of appropriated elements. And finally Gregslist Vine is a real-time snippet from Vine, a short-lived, short-form video hosting service where users shared six second video loops.