Through the Looking Glass

Through the Looking Glass is a visual exploration that interrogates the surveillance state of social media by addressing the relationship of visual language and sentimentality of the photograph as a historical artefact. The exploration questions the effects of the visual imagery itself (a photograph) being corrupted or lost to the decay of over-processing and inquiries into the replacement of context from the original translation of the original file. This investigation has led the research of data decay/over-processing and how the translation of a photograph with lost information beyond basic translation is forced to use text or semiotics such as emojis, as an example, to compensate for the lack of contextualisation in its visual language. Although text/semiotics does not translate the original context of the visual language presented to the audience, rather it creates a new depiction of the context. The methodology approach of this photographic research used six post-production mobile device apps to explore the effects of over-processing/data bending the photographs and question the context of extremism being presented through modern photographic language. The series was created to be a part of the current debates/arguments in the issues of the internet is a critique of this shared space and the treatment of the photographic image in the public eye, while exploring the cultural impacts that the digital space and technologies have towards the historical preservation of documented events and how this could change the social behaviour of human rights in self-expression and freedom of speech in the modern-day society.