6 Cautionary Artworks About Consuming Technology
The other night I started perusing new apps on my iPhone, and then I looked up and an hour had gone by. I don’t know how technology does it, but it’s so useful and sleek I can’t help myself. “Yes I would like organize my passwords!” “Live tv on my phone all the time? Have to have it.”
Technology is really spoiling us, and we tricked ourselves into thinking we deserve it because somewhere out there someone’s father invented it for us. Which is why it’s such a paradox that nostalgia is so in now – we probably couldn’t survive one hour without our little tethers to the universe in our smart phones, but somehow we pine for the 90s and love tv shows like Mad Men and movies like Django.
I think it’s because we’re worried about preserving the time before technology for those who won’t remember it. I’m 21 and I barely remember it, so my kids probably won’t even know what it’s like to have a car that won’t talk or maybe drive itself even. Do you think we’ll still teach our kids to drive, and will they teach theirs? Probably not, and that blows my mind.
Below you’ll find six artworks that visualize this bond that’s forming between people and our technology. They warn of dependency, surrounding us with screens and transforming us into them in amazing ways.
[zl_mate_code name=”Orange Dynamic” label=”3″ count=”1″ who=”div” text=”Even in 1974, television was inside our heads and here a man sits with his head behind one, his face shining through the screen.”]
[/zl_mate_code] Source: polychronidis.tumblr.com
[zl_mate_code name=”Pink Dynamic” label=”1″ count=”1″ who=”div” text=”A white ghost hand emerges from each screen, enveloping the girl whose fingers interlace with the hand in her laptop.”]
[/zl_mate_code] Source: noimnotluckyimblessedyes.tumblr.com
See more from this artist on her website.
[zl_mate_code name=”Blue Dynamic” label=”2″ count=”1″ who=”div” text=”In a warm outdoor scene a man looks up toward the light, with an old computer monitor instead of a head.”]
[/zl_mate_code] Source: Deviant Art
[zl_mate_code name=”Orange Dynamic” label=”3″ count=”1″ who=”div” text=”The sphere-headed man can’t follow suit as he stands before a square hole in the wall.”]
[/zl_mate_code] Source: workman.tumblr.com
[zl_mate_code name=”Pink Dynamic” label=”1″ count=”1″ who=”div” text=”A woman with a plug on the back of her head sits crisscross on her bed, but the outlet on her pillow isn’t three-pronged.”]
[/zl_mate_code] Source: anytimealways.tumblr.com
6. artist unknown
[zl_mate_code name=”Green Dynamic” label=”4″ count=”1″ who=”div” text=”Two giant fingers violently push a monitor through an empty-eyed open head and the mouth is vomiting brains.”]
[/zl_mate_code] Source: bjorklund1.tumblr.com
If you know who created #5 & #6, please email me! Googling descriptions got me nowhere…
