#Shadow01

2016, metal plate object


The multi angled sculpture only copies the pattern from one angle perspective. At the same time, it returns to the beginning by copying the actual object depicted in the photography. The classic analog camera serves as an artifact from a distant era, another cultural context - something that rapidly loses its value as an artistic tool. #Shadow01 works with the story of photography on social networks and its mass production.

The mobile app Instagram allows every smartphone user worldwide to publish their pictures. Over 55,000,000 photos are uploaded daily to this application. The sustainability of these images within Instagram is based on the number of followers of the person who uploaded it. If you don’t have a sufficient amount of followers, your photos fall into the void. In other words, the posted picture is elusive, and immediately after its creation it disappears into the data stream that spreads like a tsunami wave. Therefore, it was also my first impulse to select photos that have accumulated under the hashtag #shadow. Shadow is a physically unattainable place, a dark area where the light can't reach.

The algorithms of the app make me unwillingly a curator of this fictive online gallery. The pictures tagged with #shadow shown to me are according to Instagram the ones I should like. Accepting the role of the curator, I chose the one with the most likes. 


#Shadow02

2016, web presentation


Shadow 02 it was online database of URLs of all photos collected in the shadow category. The URLs are continually transmitted from Instagram to the white screen and show all the images uploaded to the app without the curating process of Instagram’s algorithms.










Mark