Replacement Character plotter-scanner
Luke Shannon
Artwork Description:
The plotter-scanner extends the work of artists associated with the invention of the xerox and mechanical reproduction (like Helen Chadwick, Bruno Munari, and Sonia Sheridan) to the internet, a place characterized by the new and real power of being in multiple places at once; of seeing images and videos from across the world; of interacting and melding with thousands of people simultaneously in comment sections and forums. In short, to see without being seen. It is an expansive presence stretched across windows and gridded feeds, pieced together from individual, upgradeable, fragmented views. This fragmentation is also the cost: self-presentation online within systems like the Instagram grid splits us into individual sections that are replaceable. We become on the lookout for a better vacation photo, a wittier caption, a profile pic that is more “me”. When parts of ourselves are made separable and upgradeable, they lose their historicity, and we sit amid a constant churn of images and headlines that prevents events from sedimenting into a historical layer that can be built upon. The exhibition’s title “Replacement Character” refers to the symbol ‘�’ used by computers when a character cannot be recognized or rendered. The plotter-scanner explores the performance of a chameleon self in the digital age, and what it means to be seen: not only by other people, but by our environment, by our technologies, and by the ubiquitous systems we increasingly engage with and inhabit, leaving questions of how increasingly intelligent machines might “read” or interpret us through images.
Project Collaborators:
Heft Gallery ARTXCODE
