Faculty of Design

Graphic Design

Stacey Arkhipova

(un)disguised

inkjet print on film sheet, collage

“I was drawn to exploring surveillance and data collection because I desire to be untraceable online, yet I can’t fight the urge to be seen and to see myself through being visible online. The dilemma whether documenting myself is vain and useless or self-aware and productive is constantly on my mind. Laurie Frick’s talk on using personal data to help people see themselves inspired this exploration. She uses her background in engineering and high technology to explore human patterns and visualize them through art. To answer the question ‘why’ she does this, she said: “we are always using external means to try to understand ourselves, to get a sense of who we are [...] maybe all these self tracking devices are a way to reveal a hidden part of us — the stuff we can’t see.” Capturing self-portraits that have been skewed by means of analog and digital distortion allowed me to see hidden parts of myself. The process of capturing my 3D self and re-arranging it on a 2D surface, then exporting the image back to the computer screen, revealed information that would've remained hidden had I stuck to only using screens as a means of self-exploration. I’m coming around to the idea that human behaviour tracking only carries negative connotations in the context of surveillance capitalism, where one party has the intention to capitalize on learning something about another party. In equal interpersonal relationships tracking and monitoring of the self can be liberating and beneficial in understanding ourselves and others.”