diptych

diptych is a multimedia installation that explores the dissonance between our physical and digital bodies. Inquisitive and diaristic in nature, diptych consists of a collection of acrylic paintings, printed text placards, and an interactive projection. The core questions I examine are around the warping of our self-perception, memory, and emotional processing as we traverse the uncharted terrain of living online. Each of the five acrylic paintings consists of two images within: one red, one blue. These images are obscured or revealed depending on the viewer’s position in the installation, a red-light body-tracking blob following them as they walk through the space.

Through this process, the viewer is able to craft their own imagery experience. In doing so, diptych again shows how a digital experience can bleed into and dictate our physical world. This interaction simultaneously questions the role of the self as not only the object of identity distortion, but also as the complicit participant in creating this dissonance between digital and physical selves.

moire

moire, an accompanying book and physical artifact to the motifs present in diptych, explores the themes of psychometric data, trauma and our physical bodies. Although there is a myriad of literature on yoga in the physical body, an exploration on how we may tend to our digital bodies, especially in the wake of loss, traumatic experiences, and dealing with grief, has not been conducted. I write to suggest that we are not existing in yuj, a harmonious state, between our physical and digital selves, largely in part to systemic issues with the Internet and surveillance capitalism. 

By examining our online presence through this lens, I aim to bring a new lens to the topic of neuroticism and how it’s used against us, how we think about grief in today’s society, and how we might move forward harmoniously, both physically and digitally, as we live through the bittersweet experience of being human. The body of work culminates in a series of speculative exercises envisioning a revolutionized Internet self, loosely structured through the eight limbs of yoga.