Self Obsession (12 + n + 1i)

Description

The painting is an abstract design suggesting a vortex above a large white rectangle. Its surface is highly textured with raised swirls which suggests energy and movement of the blocks and shapes towards the vortex. A small video of a person, or people, gently appears, embedded in the canvas on the right side.  They appear to be taking selfies, the lights of their camera quickly flash, and their image disappears.  In the next moment, on the left, their black and white photograph slides upwards, into the vortex. 

12 vignettes play out in a continuous loop of 4 minutes. As each sequence starts, a QR code appears in the upper part of the white rectangle, encouraging the viewer to use a smartphone to link to an online biography. The biography tells us where the person is from, and where they live now, and something of their working life, their relationships, the highlights and lowlights in their life, and it tells one thing that nobody knows about them.  The page is written in the person’s native language, followed, where needed, by an English translation. Attentive readers will find, at the end of the page, the revelation that each biography has been generated by an artificial intelligence machine. 

Over time, and updated remotely from the artist’s studio, the original 12 will be supplemented by new vignettes, adapting and growing over time.

Motivation

I made this work in response to a number of contemporary issues. I am concerned that picture making is becoming too concerned with digital art, NFTs and A.I.  The way that people look at an artwork for only a number of seconds, or take a quick snap of it on their smartphones, before moving on, seems to be the norm in museums and galleries around the world.  

Self Obsession is an attempt to stop the viewer and to get them to engage in a much deeper way.  I created the painting so that the white rectangle emulates the positioning of a smartphone in the gallery-goer’s hand.  The vignettes, being of people taking selfies, is a reflection of the viewer taking a snapshot. I think that the sum total of all the photos we’ve ever taken is our own self-portrait: the snapshot the viewer makes of my painting, simply adds to their personal selfie.  

And in the making process, I realised that the people in the vignettes had so much more to say. We weren’t hearing everything, so I created biographies and linked them using QR codes in the painting. The codes gently appear in the white rectangle, just where the lens of a smartphone might be positioned. But what do these people say?  They are products of artifice and fakery, so it’s inevitable that fakery needed to persist: A.I was the perfect solution.

The QR codes reveal the unseen, the A.I constructs what’s never been spoken. In the video below, you can use a smartphone on the QR codes to reveal the unseen, and hear their stories. Viewer’s responses to this work has raised another important societal issue: how we often need technology to access information – no technology – no access. Information remains unseen to those without the tech, or the know-how.

Medium

Dimensions: 100 x 80 x 2 cm;
Painting: acrylic, enamel, oil paint and drawing media on canvas;  3 x digital screens embedded and connected by low power synchronised single board computers; 1 x battery and associated cables (no human interaction: just switch on/off). 
Video art: 3 x sequence of 4 minutes video, on a loop.

Credits

Original video content was produced and made freely available on Pexels.com by: Anna Shvets, Antoni Shkraba, Askar Abayev, August de Richelieu, Cottonbro Studio, Fauxels, Maksim Goncharenok, Mizuno K, and RDNE Stock project.  

About the Artist

David Bell is a student of the Open College of Arts, studying a BA honours degree in fine art. His emerging practice seeks to explore ideas of space and place and people, using a collision of traditional painting and drawing media with embedded digital elements (which he calls ‘pixies’). He lives in Sanremo, Italy.