The Art of Creating an Online Artistic Illusion.

Amalia Ulman began acting out the tragic story of a fictitious alter ego. Through the images on her feed, Ulman created a scripted performance. Her followers were led by her spiralling descent into a state of narcissistic desperation. Ulman’s work reveals a disturbing truth about how the majority of people use and consume photography. By taking selfies and sharing them online, photography has given us what we all yearn for and identity. Only this identity is not necessarily ours. It is someone we have created to be liked and envied (Carroll, H. 2018).

I believe that curating your Instagram to match your own aesthetic of life can be fun, creative and exciting. Instagram has affected how we perceive people, choose who we want to hang out with and who is worth talking to. People “fix-up” and edit words, photos, and interactions online to make them more positive, flattering, and distinctive. They choose what they will share and with whom, and they select the mode of expression and what information gets revealed to whom. Thinking about exactly how one’s self will be revealed to others encourages the development of self and identity in interesting ways.

It is important to not envy people based on their Instagram. One has to remember the truth of the matter; it’s all fake. No matter how casual, cool and effortless someone on Instagram may seem, that is not the truth of it. With the digital age of technology to view and record one’s own picture via mobile phones and smartphones, shooting and sharing selfies has become immensely popular (Chako, M. 2018).

Identities are constantly being developed due to individuals representing, expressing, sharing, and recording themselves on the internet, particularly on social media. Full-fledged narratives about events, views, and lives — emerge when these representations collect over time. Social media facilitates the act of storytelling, of generating narratives about individuals and their lives. Instagram, therefore, is more than just a tool for sharing images, it is also a tool for people to create their identities (Wendt, 2014).

According to sociologist Erving Goffman, many elements of our life are “acted out”. This means that we are potential virtual actors, putting on a “show” wherever we go. The self evolves as a result of performing various roles, which causes the self to be “performed.” We try things out and act a bit differently in different settings. We attempt to only communicate certain aspects of ourselves in the expectation that we will be perceived desirably.

Throughout our life, identities evolve. As a result, socialisation and identity development are lifelong processes that never end. Social media allows individuals endless opportunities to view what our peers are doing at any time, examine the roles others play, and utilise these roles as mirrors for ourselves.

Adults, like children, continue to experiment with different roles. Throughout their lives, they continue to evolve and “excavate” new elements of themselves. On the internet, there are several options and choices for self-expression and representation, which can contribute to identity formation.

One often studied performance of self is the selfie, a shot one takes of oneself, usually close up and generally facing the camera. Zhao in Beyond the Self argues that the most critical elements of the selfie are the image’s capacity for evoking multiple perspectives of the ‘self’ (Zhao S, 2017). Similarly, Rettberg argues that creating a selfie usually entails taking several photographs until one is satisfied, which suggests one can never completely capture or express what one wants to communicate about oneself. The selfie, according to Wendt is a never-ending quest for the ideal self: “As if we are unable to understand our being in the world, we become accustomed to our being in the image” It is as if one creates selfies to search for an ideal version of themselves (Wendt, 2014).

It seems a bit off to think of our social life as a performance, but how you would act if there was no audience watching you — if you lived utterly alone without daily interaction with others. What characteristics of your personality might emerge?

This blog is a project for Study Unit DGA3008, University of Malta.

References

• Carroll, H, 2018, Photographers on Photography. ( Drysdale, S) Laurence Kind Publishing Ltd
• Chako, M. (2018). Super Connected. The Internet, Digital Media and Techno-Social Life
• Wendt, B. (2014). The Allure of the Selfie: Instagram and the New Self-Portrait (Network Notebooks, Volume 8); Institute of Network Cultures: Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• Zhao, S. (1735–1754). Beyond the self: Intersubjectivity and the social semiotic interpretation of the selfie. New Media Soc. 2017.