For my year-long senior project I created five books that explore my identities as they relate to social media and computer-mediated communication. Through confronting my use of such media and how they have influenced me, I hope to encourage evaluation of one's everyday performances within the virtual space.
This project is deeply entrenched in its time — the early 2010's — when we were all waking up to how our digital movements are captured, analyzed, and regurgitated.
Though I was pursuing a degree in Communication Design, the staff and environment at the college helped me to find printmaking and bookbinding as new outlets for expression. Analog print and bookmaking are uniquely positioned to provide tactility and a feeling of permanence that played off the subject matter. I used my new skills to create a collection of five experimental zines.
Book 1 / Digital Native: A visual journal deconstructing myself as a digital and physical entity interacting with a virtual space. I used materials such as vellum, mylar, and transparency film to distort and layer imagery as a metaphor for the fluidity and multiplicity of identity. Heat-reactive paper caused the reader's touch to leave behind artifacts of the interaction.
Book 2 / Moments Ago: This component creates narratives based around the ads served to me on Facebook. This book subverts the social constructions I am subject to, particularly heteronormativity and gender stereotypes.
Book 3 / Mixed Messages: I explored the catharsis of posting by restricting my social media use, instead choosing to typeset and letterpress would-be status updates. Letter by letter, I had to sit with these words — both the insightful and painfully trite — and deny myself the satisfaction of public acknowledgement. The medium really is the message.
Book 4 / Privacy Settings: Pages printed on transparency film explore the fluidity and shifting nature of identity, and the conscious design of the self we present to others.
Book 5 / About: Here I provide synopses of each book and a Works Cited acknowledging all the sources I drew from throughout the project.
Poster / Two color screen print created as a takeaway for attendees of my thesis presentation. Variable edition of 100.
