LOSING TOUCH
An installation of cast resin hands in texting gestures and invisible paintings with the reductive language of social media. Dimensions variable. 2021
Losing Touch explores presence and absence in real and virtual spaces. It engages with tensions present in and between communication, self-hood and control. The project originates in my own recollections of the intensity of childhood sensory perception and the diminishment of that intensity as a result of the augmentation of those perceptions with photography, screens and virtual spaces. The promise and lure of these technologies of the self, attract more and more of our attention, time, and connection, to the detriment paradoxically of physical human interaction and material states such as sleep and self-care.
This project raises questions about how we currently experience the world, in response to my fears of a diminishing sense of myself in my world and of ourselves in both the material and social worlds. Are we losing the ability to distinguish our real selves from our virtual constructed identities? How important is it to discern differences between physical experience and spectacles mediated by screens?