Doing a New Year tidy up on old files and folders, I came across these images. They are about Digital Identity and look at the idea that, since AI is prone to errors and biases, our digital identity likely includes errors and is constructed with biases built in.

I took a digital self portrait, printed it and cut the print into squares, deconstructing the whole into items of information. I then used these squares to reconstruct my identity, but with errors.

The titles refer to what has happened to the information in reconstruction.

While all the images are digital, the deconstruction and reconstruction are purposefully manual, which introduces its own irregularities and errors. This is a reminder that, for the moment at least, humans make AI and it is as imperfect as we are. 

For all its problems, I still like this work. I saw something similar recently but with jigsaw pieces, that looked much better. Rather like the embroidery work, there was something meditative about the slow process of putting the squares together – I used a scanner so all the squares were face down. I couldn’t actually see what I was doing and they moved at the slightest touch!

I was reminded of a talk by Milo Keller’s (Contemporary Photography and Technology) where he suggested that the point of producing objects is to slow down the hyper speed and hyper production of digital photography. This process does produce a digital image, but in a slow and reflective process.

Keller, Milo (2020) Contemporary Photography and technology. A Vimeo recording of a lecture from Self Publish, Be Happy, September 10th 2020 http://selfpublishbehappy.com/2020/05/online-masterclasses/ [Accessed 17th January 2021 – pay to rent]