Final Images for Submission

In this image, I wanted to convey how our relationships are changing due to the emergence of new technologies and how social media has invaded the space of personal interaction. Two subjects sit in a social setting opposite each other. The lack of communication is shown from the subject on the right being preoccupied with his mobile phone, while the reaction of the subject on the left is hidden behind a profile picture; an image that represents her 'idealised self'. The viewer doesn't get to understand her attitude towards being ignored.

In this image, I wanted to convey how we use social media and picture sharing websites to create an 'idealised self' offline. The inspiration for this image was taken from a friend of mine who explained to me how she used Pinterest, an image sharing website, to look up examples of other people's make up to copy on herself - and then upload an image of herself back on to the internet. Here, I have used technology to literally reconstruct her face out of facial features I found on the website. This is a reflection on the notion that her identity is hidden by the 'idealised self'.

I have called this image Two Friends Shopping. The image conveys the superficial nature of friendships online, where we can only tell that these two individual's are friends from the presence of a blue tick on their profiles as confirmation. I wanted the two hands of the subjects to be touching, which is a nod towards the fact that friendships offline are complex and personal for the individuals; a Facebook profile would never be able to convey such complexity to someone looking on.

This image takes the Facebook 'Like' icon from the internet and places it in the real world. I chose only to show the hands of the subjects in this image, firstly, to demonstrate that online we never can see any further expression about what it is an individual likes about another's post and, secondly, to show how the symbol is an extension of our real hands that reach out to other's online in order to show satisfaction about something. The image intends to highlight that we now consider a quantity of 'Likes' online to base an opinion on whether our content is enjoyed by others, rather than the quality of actually seeing someone express their enjoyment for something in person.

This image attempts to show how the 'emoji' is now becoming the main way we express our emotions with apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger growing in popularity. Here, two individual's are taking a 'selfie', but the viewer cannot see their true emotions. The image attempts to convey the absurdity that a selection of emoji's online, uniform to every user, are enough to express the complexity of an individual's emotion.

The above images convey how human interaction online is less personal and less meaningful than having a genuine conversation. Both of the images show how we express laughter online, even though the subjects are not actually laughing at all. This again references the 'idealised self', the ideal person we wish to portray online, not actually being a true reflection of the individual in the real world.