Sara Beattie

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My project investigated the futility of living entwined with technology while searching for pockets of humanity. Some view our technological prowess as our greatest achievement, marking humanity’s superiority. Yet we seem to hate our creations for making us antisocial, removing us from ‘what matters’. Despite our praise, many approach our technology with an almost disgusted detachment. We operate with a symbiotic dependency, but are overloaded with information fatigue.

Through painting with watercolour on newsprint, I collated and arranged hyper-processed images to display the mass of noise we are confronted with daily, surrounded by our loved/hated screens. The brush strokes are disjointed and imperfect, blending one image into another to the point where they are often indistinguishable. The paper is not built for water, tearing and ripping under the stress, yet it persists. You search through the painting, trying to anchor yourself in familiarity.

Not all technology is bad. We can connect through international messaging, video sharing, and widespread political movement. Knowing that there are others who understand how you feel is how we keep going in our digitised hyper-capitalist world. Connecting over shared experience is something humanity has been doing for aeons. We are just doing it differently now.