​

What makes a bad day? How does it affect me?

 

I decided to work on a bad day that turns into a week. It is when I had to do a two-day online-exam in addition to all my other classes delivered through zoom. I had gotten an extension for the exam, 5 days. During this week, I went on the computer from 9 to 22h each day. Overstimulation from the computer, zoom fatigue and stress all combined. I began my research by looking at body-horror movies and art, that’s where I wanted to start, with the presence of the machine, the digital into the real world. I also looked at the work of Ed Pien as well.

 

I chose to do the portraits on tracing paper using a limited color palette: black ink, and metallic paint markers in gold, silver and copper. Being static, only the machine part of the drawings would be done with the metallic colors be it cable, or computer circuit board pattern seen on the faces. The machine taking hold of the real world. I choose to stitch the many faces with embroidery thread, again in gold or copper color, representing the links that we are forging naturally with each other. There is also the artificial link with the copper wire, more forced, destroying us, changing us. The faces are also crumbled due to the loss of empathy. The transparency of the tracing paper is used to show the loosing of the grasp of reality by the people being too much on the digital world. I used the multiple screens in the room, all set to a different static video to better amplify the fact that the digital world has left the screen and is present and affecting the real world.