Looking at people's awareness and how easy it is to distract a person from what's right in front of them when you give them an instruction or a challenge.
Self Awareness
Who are you and how do you arrive at that knowledge?
Some are genetically influenced, some are internally perceived and some - such as our fingerprints and DNA profiles - raise ethical, political and social issues.While I've only been able to view a couple of images from this collection, the description and aims of the project are particularly inspiring in the way that it breaks down the different elements that make up a person's identity. This particular projects takes a very scientific approach and what I find especially interesting is the way it fuses the rather polar opposites of science and art; something that I have a personal interest in from my involvement in the Curious Directive ensemble.
- Digital photography: Has it become an obsession?
Everything we do is captured on camera – and our memories are being superseded by pixels
This has been the most widely documented decade in human history.
The head and shoulders of a love object snipped carefully from a 5x4 print is more real than the same thing Photoshopped neatly from a jpeg file leaving no trace of its theft at either end.
Michael Bywater
A step on from the Photo ID project, this article opens up another interesting avenue of the changing way photographs are used as a medium of art but also the changing way that photos are used as representations and documentations of our identity.
- Facebook Idenity: Fear of Theft
The truth is that you don't know who anyone is on the internet
Researchers found that two in five Facebook users happily divulged details such as their date of birth, phone number and workplace to people whom they have never met.
Tom Rawsorne
Obsession with Online Identity
What’s great about facebook is that unlike email, it creates a little online village of your friends – conversations are no longer singular, but circular, drawing everyone into the mix
What’s also great in a deliciously shallow sense is that it lets you act as your own personal PR agency. Careful selection of status updates, images and daily actions mean that “Brand Fryatt” is far more interesting, funny and having much more fun than the actual me.
Facey-B has also affected the way I act in the “real world” too. Going to a gig, meeting your mates down the pub, going on holiday – all are at some level Facebook events in my head before they’ve even begun – I start envisioning the Facebook presence before I’ve had my second pint.
When at their best, these new tools for communication, networking and citizen reporting give the world an amazing (and amazingly democratic) way to keep connected. But happy-clappy webtopia aside, the 55 unread Tweets I’ve received since I’ve been writing this has sent me into a state of utter hypertension.
Linsey Fryatt
The new influence of technology and how it has affected our representation and consumption of knoweldge and identity is something I would particularly like to explore further, as its something very current that my generation in particular have been surrounding by in our youth. This is something rather definate stylistically and would have to connect with or be on the same par with everyone else's ideas to work well. Yet, this element of technology, images and security are all themes I feel play a significant factor in our modern concept of identity.
Texts & Links:
- Photo ID, 'The Identity Project', The Welcome Collection, http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/the-identity-project/events-nationwide/photo-id.aspx
- Bywater, Michael, Digital photography: Has it become an obsession?, Independent on Sunday Online, Gadgets & Tech Features, 11th February 2009, http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/digital-photography-has-it-become-an-obsession-1606148.html
- Rawstorne, Tom, My Identity was Stolen on Facebook, Mail Online, Femail, 27th July 2007, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-471321/My-identity-stolen-Facebook.html
- Fryatt, Linsey, Facebook ruined my life, 'The Great Debate', February 4th 2009, Thomson Reuters 2010, http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2009/02/04/facebook-ruined-my-life/
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4&feature=player_embedded
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkn3wRyb9Bk&feature=player_embedded
