I have decided that my research needs to involve more active and conscious ethnography in the way I am viewing how people occupy digital spaces and looking at bedroom culture as a metaphor / framework for this study. I have planned some interviews for the phenomenological research to develop the script and am in the process of finishing the questionnaire for the trend reports which I am sending out in the first week of September. I have also been focusing on the cinematography and ways of shooting the film; I would like to include aspects of modern self portraiture/ selfies, CCTV and documentary style shots as a reference to reality tv and I really need to begin seeing if any AR artists would be willing to collaborate. I have been exploring the concept of the screen and would like to include that in the visual outcome and I have also been planning the film sets.
I am in the midst of constructing the first draft of my essay and have come to a point where I feel I need to further refine my research question (and aims/objectives). The current research question, “How is the fourth industrial revolution impacting identity construction through the concept of ‘beauty’ and phygital experiences?” is still vast and I have realised that it covers too many topics. I again asked myself, what is my personal aim as an artist? I want to encourage my audience to ask further questions, I want my art to trigger a reaction which causes others to think about their own attitudes, behaviours and experiences.
With this in mind, I decided to remove the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ as I am not really focusing on the biological aspect any more, more the merging of physical and digital. This leaves me with a title rather than a question, “Identity construction through the concept of ‘beauty’ and phygital experiences”.
In terms of how this will impact my script so far, I no longer think it is apt to set the film in the drained swimming pool – not only is it proving hard to do this for Covid-19 reasons, it also takes away from the ‘bedroom culture’ aspect I wish to focus on and seems to take away from what I am exploring.
I need to focus on the link between health and wellness being equated with virtual beauty – this was one of the main original theories that I was speculating upon. I will look into personal biometric surveillance – I am already looking at surveillance of the self in general.