Consumerisnt
Assignment
Create something using found material.
Notes
This piece examines the increasingly blurred boundary between personhood and producthood, using the altered form of a familiar technological device as its visual language. The screen, typically the focal point of interaction, is rendered transparent and empty, stripped of authority and pushed to the lowest level of visual importance. In contrast, the keyboard and webcam, elements often overlooked or passively accepted, are made solid and materially present, forcing them into the viewer’s immediate awareness. Delicate rainbow wires tether the acrylic anti-screen to the keyboard, mapping the uneasy relationship between user and used, participation and extraction. Through material inversion and hierarchy, the work reflects on surveillance, commodification, and the quiet systems through which human presence is translated into data. I had a lot of fun working with the acrylic, specifically the rounding of the corners of the screen. The eye inside the camera is from a Minions Christmas ornament.
