Poster
Video
Reflection
To be honest, I feel my project hasn’t attracted an audience because my classmates’ works are so unique. In comparison, my project lacks a standout feature to catch people’s attention. When I entered the exhibition, I was drawn to “Gaze beyond the Grid” and “The Petertron.” These two pieces are really fascinating.
My project is centred around uncanny and digital identity. According to Malewitz (2020), Freud defines uncanny as the dread we feel in situations in which our childish fantasies and fears appear more real and truer than our adult worldviews. Many fears do not come from the outside but from a subconscious awareness of what is going on inside. The other on is digital uncanny mentioned by Ravetto-Biagioli (2016). It refers to the uncomfortable or bizarre experiences that are created when interacting with digital technologies. For example, virtual images, artificial intelligence and ubiquitous surveillance. Digital uncanny is based on these ambiguities. It reveals underlying anxieties about identity and authenticity. My project is about finding identity. Who I really am.
‘Digital technologies have provoked a litany of uncertainties about the status of the human: where does embodiment take place if it inhabits so many screening devices that present it as virtual and untimely. (Ravetto-Biagioli, 2016)’
With digital devices becoming more and more involved in our experiences, the boundaries between physical and virtual existence are becoming very blurred.
Secondly, ‘glitch’. According to Cameron (2017), one of digital media’s most distinctive forms of irresolution involves the ‘glitch.’ It’s a type of discordant art that feels weird and strange. It gives the impression of “Is this thing broken?
‘Glitched images can often be strikingly garish. (Cameron, 2017)’
Digital images distort, misaligned colors, and garbled text all remind me that AI can make mistakes, and digital media isn’t perfect. Our trust and reliance on the digital world are growing stronger, and glitches serve as reminders. They remind us that this is a virtual world, and we need to separate it from real life. Digital media is full of uncertainty, and it can actually be quite dangerous.
My project is entirely based on experiments conducted throughout the semester. The inspiration initially came from Experiment 4—Dialogue. It represents a conversation between oneself, which can be seen as a form of split personality. I believe that each of us intentionally suppresses ourselves. For instance, we might suppress our true selves to gain more friends, take on extra work to gain our boss’s approval, or cater to others’ preferences, even sacrificing parts of our authentic selves just to fit into the environment. Then, we learn to hide and compromise, all in exchange for the approval of others. I thought of my other class analysing the Nosedive in Black Mirror. Interestingly, the themes of these two projects align perfectly. The protagonist continuously adjusts her behaviour to please others in order to achieve a higher social rating. Every word she says, every expression she makes, and even the smallest decisions are meticulously crafted to earn others’ “praise.” This long-term suppression hides her true self deeper and deeper, so what does her authentic self-do? Does it willingly accept suppression, or does it push back, replacing the repressed self to live happily? Later, I encountered the “Glitch” experiment, which resonated with my exploration of digital identity. Glitch serves as a great element in this context. Is this simply a case of split personality, or could it also be a possibility of losing oneself? According to Balbi and Paolo Magaudda (2018; p.6), digital media have become one of the main obsessions of our time. We can lose ourselves in digital media, or rather, digital media can control us. However, this was just an initial thought when I was exploring these two themes; I never expected to realise it in my final assignment.
During the production process, the biggest challenge I faced was incorporating glitch effects, as I had never tried that area before. After spending a lot of time learning how to add glitch effects, the results were disappointing. The whole project looks very funny—no, not interesting, but outright ridiculous. This was feedback from my friends, including my actors. It was frustrating, but I also found it amusing because the effects felt very abrupt when I watched my work. This might be an area I want to explore further: how to seamlessly integrate effects into my work and how to edit a good piece. I can imagine it will be a long journey, but I want to improve, at least to the point where my friends don’t find it funny.
Throughout the semester, I drew a lot of inspiration from my classmates’ feedback. To be honest, it’s been really helpful for my work. Through conversations and idea exchanges with them, I gained many creative ideas. At the end of the video, the protagonist is locked away in place of her second personality. This idea came from a classmate who said it represents a kind of alternation—one side’s will often outweigh the other, so when one hides away, someone else takes their place.
Reference list:
Malewitz, ray (2020). What is the Uncanny? [online] College of Liberal Arts. Available at: https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-uncanny.
Ravetto-Biagioli, K. (2016). The digital uncanny and ghost effects. Screen, 57(1), pp.1–20. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjw002.
Balbi, G. and Paolo Magaudda (2018). Why Study the History of Digital Media and How? Routledge eBooks, [online] pp.6–26. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315209630-2.
Cameron, A. (2017). Facing the Glitch: Abstraction, Abjection and the Digital Image. Edinburgh University Press eBooks, pp.334–352