Giving up Control

Who is the user and who is being used? Is 'raging against the machine' possible or are we too numb and manipulated in our bubbles that we cannot act any more?

This print belongs to the second series: "SUR(REAL): When the surreal is more real than reality itself". A series exploring the behaviours/events/things that look surreal because of how real they are.

Who is the user and who is being used? Every time you open a burger menu or click on a rounded cornered square in a home screen are you acting intentionally? Is 'raging against the machine' possible or are we too numb and manipulated in our bubbles that we cannot act any more?

CONCEPT

This specific print was based on the idea of the exponential evolution of technology and living in a technocractic society where technology is more valued that the people that use it. Like Cartoons and Cereal are used to entertain us and "keep us busy", the new media information technologies are providing us with cheap entertainment, fake news, and other mechanisms to keep us apathetic.

I wanted to show this with the phrase "Giving up Control" to transmit the idea that we are actively giving it up and we can be more aware of things. I also wanted explore the idea of repetition in printmaking, and how repetition is used by advertising to push a message into our brains. In this case I used three still frames from a youtube video where man in a corporate office destroying the computer screen.

PROCESS

This was the first print were I tried to overprint two colours and still make it legible. In total I created 4 blocks. The three initial blocks are three separate frames taken from the video and distorted for easier carving.

The fourth block is a big A2 block for the text "GIVING UP CONTROL"

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