Digital Remains work in progress 1 
Digital Remains work in progress 2
One of the things I enjoy about making is the problem solving involved in taking something from concept to resolved piece. I am currently working towards an interim MFA show in the UCA James Hockey Gallery in March. The title of the show is ‘Unsettling Focus’ which is perfect for the glitched work I am developing about digital afterlife.
I originally had in mind five hanging pieces about 4m long; three in a sheer fabric and two folded paper forms like cascade accordions. The sheer fabrics will be printed with abstract images digitally manipulated from a decollage I recently finished. The decollage is constructed from layers of images from my archive. The intention is that these represent our view of the digital being ethereal and unearthly, and that I will have no control over my digital assets after my death.
Following this week’s tutorial I decided to change the format and not have the large hanging paper pieces, they were planned to represent the physicality of our digital systems, but I also want to use projected texts of the deceased account policies of the major social media corporations. These will be blocked from filtering through the fabric by the paper sculptures.
Instead, I have decided to have small paper pieces sitting underneath the hanging fabrics. They will have the text from the projection printed on them for visitors to read or takeaway with them. One problem solved, and that all seemed very straightforward, then I hit lots of questions – what shapes will they be, how big will they be, will they be printed on both sides, will they be coloured or plain white, how many should there be? I have started the process of making small maquettes to see which ones work best. I now have various versions and think I am leaning towards the square Menko folded packets. I think they work on a number of levels because they can look like pixels dropping off the baric, they are square in format which echoes Instagram and ‘packets’ is a technology term too:
A packet is a small amount of data sent over a network, such as a LAN or the Internet. Similar to a real-life package, each packet includes a source and destination as well as the content (or data) being transferred. https://techterms.com/definition/packet
I have the project space booked for the week after next so hope to start trying out the different combinations. I also have to order the fabric hangings!