OverAbundance (2022), is a series of three video works commissioned by Cement Fondu for “Virtue & Virtuosity” 2022.
Using Postdigitality as the framework for this project, I playfully reconcile the absurd relationship between predatory digital algorithms and their ironic promotion of healing, nature and wellness within virtual spaces.
The work is inspired by my attempts at self-care and improvement during recent COVID-19 lockdowns. Turning to the internet for guidance, I was subject to an overabundance of targeted product placement for expensive products and performative rituals, which yielded no real benefit to me, as a whole person.
I collaborate with digital technology to speculatively visualise the way algorithms track individual digital footprints to sell warped versions of beauty, self-hood and ‘nature’ to consumers. Using photography, staging, performance, digital collage, animation and motion tracking, I create surreal and fantasy-like tableaus where I perform the female consumer.
My body is fragmented, cut, masked, pixelated and literally consumed by an abundance of bright imagery. With hints of the grotesque, I demonstrate the over commodification of “nature” in digitally manipulated photographs of flowers, insects, leaves and fruit amidst artificial beauty/self-care objects: gemstones, butterfly clips, fake eyelashes, q-tips, magazine scraps, tissues and cotton balls.
In OverAbundance, I carefully compose each collage as an interplay between biological and digital and then hand over my collages to After Effects motion tracking tool which tracks each token onto the moving foreground as a way of mimicking algorithmic tracking. Eventually, each token moves away from their original location and some begin to detach and float away from the screen, depicting the futility of ‘nature’ and wellness being sold through algorithms, in bottles, as an instant cure-all and for the discount price of $99.99 (excluding GST) plus shipping costs!
Photo Credit: Jessica Maurer
