My main themes are still cemented in the future of identity, focusing on beauty, I have recognised that my strength lies in speculative media production which works perfectly with the current Covid-19 situation, allowing me time to develop the narrative and muse over the future. I have been focusing on forecasting and am looking at the digital transformation of society at this time and how the growth of technology continues to impact upon societal structures.
Additionally Covid-19 has sparked my interest in the idea of health and wellness and excess in commodified beauty, health and wellbeing disenchantment – linking back to society’s obsession with youth/ fear of age (which is highly relevant in the beauty industry). I have been heavily researching how technology will develop in the beauty industry and have been attempting to create speculative narratives around how that could be. I still want to play with tension within my films and make them as immersive as possible.
I am planning on creating a series of speculative advertisements ‘advertising for the future’ in which I re-imagine and muse about future ways of living/ socialising whilst imagining how technologies will develop, the future of identity, the future of human interaction. I am particularly interested in themes of the body, beauty and how multi sensory media could be utilised to create these advertising campaigns.
I knew that I was interested in the future from the beginning of this unit so was looking at XR technology, I have now realised that I will collaborate with artists who specialise in this field as I don’t have enough patience of passion to learn the techniques myself and I prefer to collaborate. I do however want to focus heavily on AI and will be interviewing a neuro-scientist turned artist on how AI can be used in the creative world. It has been challenging teaching myself technological terms ad well as delving into physics and biology in order to understand the future possibilities. I have established that in terms of my work I would like to speculate about how Machine learning will be used in beauty technology but I don’t want to use AI to see products on face ‘AR try ons’ or generate the perfect formula for skin, this has been done – I want to push boundaries further and look at both the innovation and the anxiety surrounding technology!
I also came to the conclusion through my research, that I am interested in human biology as well as artificial intelligence eg science performing the duties of the womb – cryspr technology which I am looking further into and will be creating narratives around. I have found that there are many underlying anxieties in late capitalism i.e. hypochondria, and pseudo-science which has pushed my work further and really excited me. I am also looking at concepts such as touch, scent, mood, temperature and how these feelings could be communicated through machine learning.
AIMS: I need to research platforms like TikTok as it is a massive part of the new language of how we communicate.
Write stories and begin pre-visualisation.
Create “An aesthetically pleasing morning routine” this week as an experimentation and reference Poppy’s video / Dystopian future – making work from subtle feelings.