For my third project handling the relationship between analog and digital artwork, I decided to focus on how we distance ourselves from reality with each copy we make of something.
I began with this photograph I took of slot canyons in Utah a few years back. This photograph is a representation of what I saw while I was there, looking at this rock. This is the first copy of reality.
I then created my interpretation of this photo in a water color painting. This is the an interpretation of the camera's interpretation through my eye's interpretation of the canyons in Utah. What you are seeing here on this page is a photograph of my original painting, not the painting itself. This is a copy of the painting. It has been doctored a bit with contrast and coloring to make this painting look the best it can. It isn't even the true reality of the painting itself.
I then imported both of these photos into photoshop and overlaid them. I messed with different opacities and overlaying filters until I found a combination I liked best that highlighted both my painting and the photograph at the same time.
I then took this photoshopped complication of the two images and uploaded it to instagram. I then took a screenshot of the post, deleted the post, then went into my photos and cropped the screenshot so only the picture reminded. I then re-uploaded the photograph and repeated this process, messing with the instagram filters each time, until you could no longer recognize my photograph.
I repeated this process about 43 times until I came to this image you are seeing below. This degradation happened because every time you upload a photo to instagram, the app compresses your photo, loosing a little bit of detail every time. This is beacuse Instagram is a lossy process of reproduction.
I then took all of the instagram posts and lined them up in order of highest quality to lowest quality and created this gif you are seeing below.
I chose to recreate my photo through instagram because of its lossy process of reproduction. Since you are actually loosing detail with each copy, you are literally straying further and further from its reality, until it has become something completely different than the original.
I wanted to tackle this theme because I feel this can be applied to a plethora of topics. That each time you copy something you stray further and further from the truth. This can be applied to stories, gossip, media, thoughts, pictures and so on and so forth. I chose to express it in this way because this is actual, visible proof that you do loose details as you copy. You stray until the truth is no longer recognizable. This is evidence of this. With the original copies, you have my interpretation of the reality I saw, which makes your viewing of the photos and paintings biased towards my point of view. With each copy through instagram, the computer forces a loss of detail, so you are forcibly seeing less and less of my interpretation each time.
I hope my project makes you think about the reproduction process in any subject and makes you think twice about the inherent biased nature and distance from reality, interpretations of reality have.