What is the materiality of an image if all images exist online.
I dragged a wire along the floor as an expression of the non-material nature of images. Images travel so quickly online that they lose all substance, becoming a bastardized version of an image with any original intentionality or material nature. Hito Steyerl asks in her essay ‘in defence of poor images’ whether online images are images at all because of their lack of substance.
I felt a wire was a good expression of the bastardized, substance lacking online image as being so thin, it is almost imperceptible. The action of dragging it along the floor as it curled around itself speaks to the passive nature of engaging with online images. The structure in the background (supposed to look a bit mountain-like) and light music is an attempt to contextualise the internet as the false or non-place in which images are transported, re-edited and compressed.
Another section of Hito Steyerl’s essay that piqued my interest was where she discussed online images as presenting a snapshot of the contemporary crowd’s neurosis, paranoia and fear, as well as its craving for intensity, fun and distraction.
I interpreted this craving for intensity and escape as being online sex and relationships, coming up with this character of an A.I girlfriend.
While similar to all other online images in the passive way they creep into Instagram feeds without asking, online sex and relationships struck me as images which, while aware of their existence in the non-material online, are distinctive because of how they are engaged with in a material way.
For my second performance I opted for no structure, removing any false sense of place and used lights in the dark with an overlay of more intense music and sound from a YouTube video entitled ‘you wake up next to your girlfriend on the couch ASMR’. I dragged the wire and carried a figurine of the A.I girlfriend I made from plaster.
For the presentation of my work, I placed a skeleton of the mountain up against the wall, made from cardboard and plastic, with CDs of my first performance ‘autoscroll of DOOM’ placed around it. I then placed the A.I girlfriend in some metallic looking plastic, which I wrote ‘sex with my AI girlfriend used to be great, now she just kinda lies there’ over and over again on. I laid the CDs of the second performance in a straight line on the metallic plastic. I hung the wire up around the wall, inspired by Richard Tuttle’s wire line sculptures and finally I projected the videos of my performances in the centre.