#cool3

Agua de coco by Conor F. Shine Via Flickr: & Bon Jovi

I began the project painting. This medium seemed far enough away from the digital that I could decontextualise the information  so that the viewers could see ideas that I was trying to express and take a step back from the digital world when looking at it.

My first painting is called “Bujiis, 388″. With this painting I aim to express the distortion of our friendships and social connections by giving so much value to the numerical side of our profile. The amount of friends we have on facebook serves the same function as a level indicator in a video game. We make snap decisions when we see a persons Facebook profile that take the place of the snap decisions we make when we first meet a person: When we see someone with thousands of friends we give their opinions and actions and actions more value because we know that they reach more people.... In a weird sense, the people with the most friends on social media are similar to the loudest people in a crowded room.

I took this into account when trying to find a portrait to draw. I decided that the amount of people that see an individual on social media dictates how much they exist (how big a “presence” they have on social media). The validation of ones existence online is based on how many people hear them online (or a number:  “friends: 388″). I painted Bujan with 388 brushstrokes, representative of his 388 friends. The less people you know the less you exist in the painting. 

As secondary research came along I began to observe social behavior on sites like Facebook, or Instagram. The manner in which we redefined our identities when we are online online and the importance we gave to numbers when it comes to how we value our online “presence” almost as if we cease to exist or begin to fade, like Marty in “Back to the Future”, if we don’t continuously remind more and more people of our very existence. It seems to promote business-like behavior in peoples personal lives... We feel the need to turn our  own selves into a brand, and act as if all our activities have a vastly greater influence on the world than they should. Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton’s acquisition of fame, and after social media platforms like Youtube, Vine, Instagram, and Facebook created their own starlets, the definition of “Celebrity” has become more and more blurred.... when on these sites people are goaded with the possibility that if they record the right thing or say the right thing the could “go viral” at any given moment and receive a taste of fame (which is another way of saying “mass social affection”, something that humans are kind of hardwired to love). It acts as a sort of carrot for us to continuously use these platforms and is shaping the face of social human interactions.