Cyber Fantasy

In an increasingly saturated image culture, images have come to serve the same purpose as linear texts: that is, to distribute information, record history, and express language. This rise in media consumption as well as the rise of digital technology leaves us with a mental and emotional phenomenon that feels very human despite lacking the same tactility as verbal communication. Subsequently, the internet has developed itself as both a place of permanence and ever-flowing, abundant information. All of this accounted for, this series questions where photography stands within a space where it exists so abundantly.

By combining themes of mortality with themes of excess and referencing the styles of Vanitas and Dutch still life, this series explores the overlaps between the obsolescence of technology, and the consequential state of photography in a highly saturated image culture. This cross-examination establishes the relationship between the digital and the temporary. Despite the almost universal use of digital tools as cosmetic tools for photographs, this series asks how those digital tools can be used as an extension of the hand, including the artist’s own hands to interact with the arrangements as an interplay with the push and pull of the permanence of images.

Cyber Fantasy challenges the borders of the frame and the screen bydigitizing and manipulating the traditional still life to further investigate its place in post-internet art. The title derives from contextualizing the definitions: “cyber” meaning of or relating to computers, typically to one of the technology domains named with the combining form cyber-, as cyberterrorism, cyberwarfare, or cyberattack: and “fantasy” meaning imagination, especially when extravagant and unrestrained.