Portraits Series: Research & Planning

For the portrait series, I'd like to focus on how our generation manages digital identity, drawing on my own experience of internet addiction throughout my adolescence. This is informed by my personal research into psychology and internet aesthetics, particularly at the end of this post. I'm really drawn to this imagery of choking/suffocation by coloured threads, and the connotations of brain connectomes and electronic cables. However, I need to be able to convey narrative through the final body of work, and don't wish to just go down the negative route of evil technological determinism.

This artwork by Miko Maciaszek also inspired me massively - while it paints a very grim picture,  if you will, I love the fluidity of the composition and use of colour contrast. The subject is an anonymous mannequin figure, their facial cavities invaded by strands or wires coming from apps on their phone, their eyes lit up by the input and their skull cracking. This very much describes how I've felt with internet addiction, as well as others who have been raised with digital culture being accessible at any time, leading to overstimulation and information overload. While it sounds bleak to say, screen time has been at the core of people's identities for many years, and I'd like my portrait series to make some sort of comment on that.

I researched this idea initially by asking people about their experience with the link between their internet use & their identity. This helped me gather a variety of angles to help inform the narrative of the series. Here are the results:

This really helped me understand a variety of different angles beyond my own to approach this topic, so I collated the key points people had mentioned in a brainstorm.

Then a narrative began to form, so I did a few thumbnail sketches of how the double page spreads of the book could look like, playing around with the idea of using digitally illustrated wires to connect the portraits together and utilising white space.

This idea is definitely applicable to generations other than my own, but it is largely a snapshot of how people's identities are formed as digital natives, raised in the information age. I want these images to stand out in a pleasing way both on their own and within the context of the book presentation. My next research post will be based on studies, journal articles and journalistic observations of phenomena such as: digital natives, information overload, internet/screen addiction and identity formation.